Annette Ranald's Blog: Annette's History Reads - Posts Tagged "empress-alexandra"
Novelists as writers of historical non-fiction.
While I write historical fiction, I hope to someday graduating to writing non-fiction books about history. Carolly Erickson is an author who writes both novels and non-fiction historical works, including Josephine: a Life of the Empress, Alexandra: the Last Tsarina, and To the Scaffold: A Life of Marie Antoinette. She has also written biographies on Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, Elizabeth I and II, Anne Boleyn, Mary I, Henry VIII and Bonnie Prince Charlie.
The advantage of having a novelist write a non-fiction historical piece is that they capture the little details that fill out the character. While a writer who focuses on non-fiction dwells on the facts, the novelist concentrates on the backstory and interconnection that make those facts interesting. Alexandra was a well-meaning woman who couldn't get ahead in her husband's family and kingdom no matter how much she tried. Isolated, burdened with unnecessary guilt over having brought hemophilia into the Romanov family, she was vulnerable to users and abusers like Rasputin. Josephine was a deeply trouble woman thrust into a position for which she was ill-prepared. An aristocrat born into poverty, risen to become the wife and empress of one of the most ego-driven and megalomaniac men in history, she lost herself in a web of spending and gambling. Did she love Napoleon or did she love the lavish lifestyle he was able to afford? She, like Alexandra, found the duties of her position difficulty, but at the end it was so hard to give it all up.
Erickson's treatment of Marie Antoinette is the most tragic of the three. Marie Antoinette is often pictured in history as a frivolous featherhead who destroyed her husband's country through her own mad pursuit of pleasures. However, by the time Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette ascended to the throne, France was already teetering on the brink of collapse. What few people know about Marie Antoinette was that beneath the scatterbrained exterior was a woman who was genuinely interested in the welfare of her subjects and devoted a lot of time to charity. She was also the mother of a deeply troubled daughter, Marie Therese, Madame Royale's memories of her mother were a mixed bag of longing and resentment. Ultimately Marie, like Alexandra, tried to rescue her husband's government and only made the situation worse.
The advantage of having a novelist write a non-fiction historical piece is that they capture the little details that fill out the character. While a writer who focuses on non-fiction dwells on the facts, the novelist concentrates on the backstory and interconnection that make those facts interesting. Alexandra was a well-meaning woman who couldn't get ahead in her husband's family and kingdom no matter how much she tried. Isolated, burdened with unnecessary guilt over having brought hemophilia into the Romanov family, she was vulnerable to users and abusers like Rasputin. Josephine was a deeply trouble woman thrust into a position for which she was ill-prepared. An aristocrat born into poverty, risen to become the wife and empress of one of the most ego-driven and megalomaniac men in history, she lost herself in a web of spending and gambling. Did she love Napoleon or did she love the lavish lifestyle he was able to afford? She, like Alexandra, found the duties of her position difficulty, but at the end it was so hard to give it all up.
Erickson's treatment of Marie Antoinette is the most tragic of the three. Marie Antoinette is often pictured in history as a frivolous featherhead who destroyed her husband's country through her own mad pursuit of pleasures. However, by the time Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette ascended to the throne, France was already teetering on the brink of collapse. What few people know about Marie Antoinette was that beneath the scatterbrained exterior was a woman who was genuinely interested in the welfare of her subjects and devoted a lot of time to charity. She was also the mother of a deeply troubled daughter, Marie Therese, Madame Royale's memories of her mother were a mixed bag of longing and resentment. Ultimately Marie, like Alexandra, tried to rescue her husband's government and only made the situation worse.
Annette's History Reads
I enjoy reading and writing about history. I've loved history all my life and read a ton of books. Now, I'll share a few of them with you. I also want to take you along with me in this new and strange
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