Olga Romanov: Russia's Last Grand Duchess

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

“Cat Lady Really Russian Royalty,” read a somewhat vulgar Toronto
Star headline a few years ago. But indeed, the aged woman who died in a
tiny room above a hair salon in a poor section of Toronto was the
daughter of Alexander III, Tsar of Russia. She grew up among seven
palaces, was waited on by countless servants, and was poised to
co-inherit a fortune worth more than $30 billion. Then came Lenin’s
revolution.

The fall of the Romanov dynasty has fascinated us for decades, but
attention is usually focused on Olga’s brother, the ill-fated Tsar
Nicholas II and his Queen, Alexandra. Here, well-researched,
well-documented, and well-told, is the equally fascinating and equally
incredible story of one of the tsar’s sisters, who evaded two
assassination attempts, escaped the postrevolutionary chaos of the
Soviet Union, and, after some three decades of uneasy exile in Europe,
ended up first in rural Ontario and then in Mississauga. The cast of
extraordinary characters includes the last tsar who, already at 14, was
“terrified at the prospect of becoming Emperor,” as well as the
infamous Rasputin, his murderers, and the strange woman who claimed for
decades to be the tsar’s daughter, Anastasia. An appendix lists 76 of
the jewels that Olga and her sister brought to the west and gives
details about the sale of each. The book has photographs, but one would
like a map to follow the harrowing escape of the pregnant grand duchess
from Russia. An earlier (1985) biographer had the benefit of a series of
interviews (in 1959) with the grand duchess, but journalist Patricia
Phenix, in this fine new book, had access to “dozens of
never-before-seen letters to and from Olga, as well as Olga’s
childhood diaries,” held in newly accessible Russian archives.
Quotations from these add poignancy to this gripping story, which one
reads as one would a novel—but this narrative is more astonishing than
most fiction.