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The Last Tsarina

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The ill-fated story of Alexandra Feodorovna, granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the last Tsarina of Russia. From the bestselling author of The Queen’s Midwife .

When Princess Alix of Hesse meets "Nicky" , the Tsarevich of Russia , it is love at first sight. But their romance is destined to end in tragedy. Nicholas and Alexandra are a devoted couple. But the Tsar's people do not share his admiration for their new Tsarina. Alexandra's attempts to win their approval are a failure. Events conspire against the Tsar and Tsarina. A deadly catastrophe during their coronation marks Alexandra as a bad omen. Disapproval deepens as she repeatedly fails to produce a male heir. Hope is renewed with the birth of a son, Alexei . But the family curse of haemophilia casts its cruel shadow. Alexandra is convinced that only Rasputin , a spellbinding Serbian peasant, can help her. As Russia marches towards a new destiny, the clock ticks down for her Imperial Family.

188 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

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About the author

Ursula Bloom

310 books17 followers
aka Sheila Burns, Mary Essex, Rachel Harvey, Deborah Mann, Lozania Prole

Ursula was born in Essex, but as a child lived in Whitchurch, Warwickshire, where her father, James Harvey Bloom, was the Rector of the village. She went on to write books about his work into their family history.

Ursula published over 500 books in her lifetime, an achievement that once won her recognition in the Guinness Book of Records. She wrote many of her novels under pseudonyms - Sheila Burns, Mary Essex, Rachel Harvey, Deborah Mann, Lozania Prole and Sara Sloane.

Her work was predominantly romantic, although her first book, Tiger, privately printed, was written when she was seven years old. She was encouraged to write by a family friend, a well-known author of the time - Marie Corelli.

Born into the fringes of middle class, with aspirations of grandeur but little money, Ursula became a master of story-telling in her own life - keeping up appearances with an imaginary housemaid because "it would have been a social stigma to do our own work" and pretending to her first husband that she could control the servants and not they her - writing was both an outlet and easy with someone of her imagination and humour.

She married twice - in 1916 to Arthur Brownlow Denham-Cookes, to whom she had one son, Pip, born in 1917, and in 1925 to Charles Gower Robinson.

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Displaying 1 of 1 review
25 reviews
June 9, 2025
Was hoping for more history

This story was very tedious, repeating the melancholy of the tsarina, with too little background history. Might have been more enjoyable as a (very) short story!
Displaying 1 of 1 review