Anastasia - From a Certain Point of View

Prologue

I smiled and nodded.

"Oh, Grandmama!" She threw her sweet young arms around my neck. We hugged as if we would never let go.

Suddenly, about a year later, Russia went into war with the rest of Europe. The orchestra stopped playing. The laughter died. Anastasia and I were seeing less and less.

The crowd men parted like dry leaves before a wind when they marched into battle against the Germans.

During a quiet, cloudy day at home in November of 1916, a man swept toward us—an old friend. He was tall and thin, dressed in long black robes. His gleaming black moustache and beard hung below his waist.

His name was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, we knew that he was a holy man and a mystic who healed my grandson from hemophilia, but others believed he was power-mad and had a dangerous influence on my daughter-in-law.

Slowly the man made his to the Czar. His hypnotic eyes blazed with fear beneath thick black brows.

Nicholas met his gaze, unafraid.

"You think you can live this far?" the man cried. His lips curled into a quiver. "By the mystic powers invested in me, I have come to warn you! Mark my words: at the end of twenty five years, not one nobleman will be left in Russia. Brother will kill brother, everyone will kill each other and hate each other. None of your family, none of your children and relatives will live more than two years."

Anastasia clung to me as Rasputin's words echoed through the great ballroom: "The Russian Land will perish. And I perish, I have perished already, and I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family."

Then I noticed a familiar object hanging from a chain around Rasputin's waist. Looking closer, I saw that it was a rosary—a fancy crucifix about eight inches tall. Its jewels glowed like devil's fire.

Eyes crazed, Rasputin left the palace and muttered a few words. A bolt of lightning shot across the sky, and it crashed to the ground. People scattered as the sky plunged into darkness.

The servants rushed to light the candles around the room.

Anastasia and I trembled in each other's arms until the soft glow of candlelight filled the room. I left shortly after for the Yelagin Palace.

Rasputin had been killed by my grandson-in-law Felix Yusupov and several of his friends in retaliation of his negative influence on Alexandra.

No one danced another step after Nicholas had been abdicated by a politician named Vladimir Lenin. Rasputin's death had stolen our joy.

On the night of November 7th, 1917, as I got ready for bed, I heard an angry crowd of demonstrators outside the gates of the nearby Winter Palace.

"Death to the Czar!" they shouted. "Let the people rule!"

A cannon from a cruiser fired off, followed by the shattering of an elegant palace window.

Lenin, I thought. He was a communist who hated the Imperial Family. Some said it was because of our poor performance during the war that he distrusted our efforts. Did he have a hand in the terror of those events? My guess was correct.

I only know that the spark of unhappiness in our country was fanned into flames—flames that would destroy our lives forever.

Later that night I awoke to a loud knocking. I flung back my satin coves and hurried to my bedroom door.

The maid Anna Demidova had come to warn me: revolutionaries led by Lenin and his ally Leon Trotsky had broken through the gates. They had toppled a statue of my late husband Alexander III. Now they were trying to break into the palace. They meant to kill the royal family and the chairman of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky.