PLEASE READ: This is all FICTION. I made this all up in my head. If its not factual I apologize; thats why its fiction.
Preface: Told by Nicola Vera Romanova
No one ever explained to me growing up why I couldn't go to school like a regular girl. Or why people looked at us in disgust if they knew who we were. Or why we couldn't have the curtains open in fear of being seen. Or why there were always photographers by the front gate. Or I guess the most important thing, why I was an EX-duchess.
My parents unfortunately didn't explain all this, well, truthfully, until my 18th birthday. Everyone knows the lost dutchess Anastasia, right? Well she just so happens to be my great great great grandmother.
What Wikipedia and every other book you read won't tell you is she had a child before her unfortunate death. Given she was only seventeen and unwed gives plenty of disgrace to my family now. Only the highest Russians in power knew of our dirty little secret until the job paparazzi was invented.
Because of this, after the Romanovs' death, other family members removed the title from Anastasia's son. Obviously frustrated, when he, Andrei, became of age, he took it to court. After it was proven he was really her son, he was allowed the title Ex heir apparent. By the time it got down to me, I was an ex duchess.
As the titles got better, the seclusion and disgust from the world got worse. As a duty to my family and my great great great grandmother Anastasia, and in an effort to save our family's name, I was to marry the newly appointed James Taylor Wright, Duke of Kent.