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otmaaromanovas · 1 year

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Romanov myths part one: Alexei being injured by sledding down the stairs

Although Alexei was given more freedom than is assumed by many people, and certainly had a rambunctious personality, the long-standing story of him sledding down the stairs and then crashing, causing a haemophilia attack in Tobolsk is a myth.

Both Nicholas and Alexandra do not mention this in their diaries, and surviving letters from the Grand Duchesses also do not record Alexei’s rumoured ill-fated sledding adventure. This especially is unusual, as their letters from Tobolsk included a lot of detail about them having fun sledding and on the snow mountain they constructed, so this omission is telling. Alexei did, however, have a sled and a boat which he, his friend Kolya Derevenko, and sister Olga sometimes rode down the stairs and onto the pond (which appears to be mostly small pools of water with a lot of imagination) outside (Olga apparently lost her balance and then fell out once!)

From Alexei's diary (note how he does not mention crashing or having a haemophilia attack):

Sunday 25/7 March [1918]

At eight o'clock there was a religious service, Mama and the sisters sang because the choir was busy. Kolya came at two o'clock. We played in the garden in the afternoon. We shot at a target with bows and arrows [there is a photo of this - see below]. It's very interesting. After tea, we played hide and seek. I received a sleigh and a boat as a gift from a local trader, models of the sleds and boats of the region. Kolya and I played with them a lot and we went down the stairs in the boat. He left at nine o'clock.

Alexei’s sister Anastasia writes about the boat and ‘pond’ here:

4/17 April 1918

Thank you very much, dear Dalechka, for the letter. It took a long time to get here – since December! But it is good it arrived. How are you? We think of you often. It is more or less quiet here. The weather has been divine, but not very warm the last few days. We continue to chop and cut up firewood, and it turns out pretty good. We fixed up our swing, and started to use it again, but probably the ropes will break soon as it has been done poorly. Our garden is a mass of water and mud. My brother has a little boat in which we, so to say, take a ride (it is a big imagination.) There is still not enough water, so we push it of the tracks with sticks and of course get completely soaked. Well, it is a little bit of fun! And how do you pass the time? Well, we are off for a walk so I must finish. I wish all of you the very best. Big greetings to all! I kiss you firmly. Greetings to your Papa and Seryozha.

Anastasia.

In reality, Alexei injured himself after contracting a bad cough. This was most likely caught off one of the visiting children to the house who kept him company, probably Kolya. The repeated coughing unfortunately triggered internal bleeding, leading to a haemophilia attack which left him unable to walk.

It was this attack that meant Alexei, Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia were not moved to Ekaterinburg with their parents and sister Maria, as the Heir was too ill to move across the country. However, he did make some sort of recovery, at least to the point of being able to be safely transported to Ekaterinburg, and he is photographed sat upright on the Rus steamer, although looking thin. Despite this slight recovery, he was still unable to walk for the rest of his life. The night of the execution he was given a chair to sit on due to being unable to stand independently for any length of time.

A staircase at Tobolsk

So - where did this myth of Alexei sledding down the stairs causing his last haemophilia attack come from?

Robert K. Massie’s 1967 book ‘Nicholas and Alexandra’ appears to be the origin of the story in popular history. On page 490, Massie wrote:

‘[Alexei] was devising new and reckless games which no one seemed able to inhibit. One of these — riding down the inside stairs on a boat with runners which he had used on the snow mountain — led to calamity. He fell and began to bleed into the groin.’

Whilst Massie’s book is a cornerstone in Romanov historical works, it was released 56 years ago, when there was still a fair amount of mystery and rumour surrounding the Romanovs and their final months. The 1971 film, also named ‘Nicholas and Alexandra’, adapted the book into a three-hour epic film dedicated a whole scene to re-enacting this myth, giving it more publicity.

VIDEO CREDIT: Nicholas and Alexandra, Franklin J. Schaffner, 1971, Columbia-Warner Distributors, Archive.org, uploaded by Olga Movie Man on December 26, 2019, https://archive.org/details/1971nicholasandalexandra. Alexei played by Roderic Noble. They make Tobolsk look a LOT rougher and barren than it actually was!!

A floor plan of the Governor's Mansion, Tobolsk, drawn by Prince Vasily Dolgorukov. Translated in red by Helen Azar.

To summarise: although Alexei did have a boat and a sled whilst at Tobolsk and did ride them down the stairs, these games never caused a haemophilia attack and he never crashed them to the point of causing serious injury. Rather, he contracted a cough which caused internal bleeding. Robert K. Massie mistakenly put this in his book 'Nicholas and Alexandra', and the myth became more popular due to its inclusion in the 1971 film of the same name.

SOURCES:

Diary and letters quoted available here

Alexei: Russia's Last Tsesarevich - Letters, diaries and writings, by George Hawkins

Anastasia Romanov: The Tsar's Youngest Daughter Speaks Through Her Writings (1907 - 1918), by Helen Azar and George Hawkins

Nicholas and Alexandra - film, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner - free to watch here

Nicholas and Alexandra - Robert K. Massie - free to read here

Floorplan of Tobolsk - Helen Azar's website

Tour of Tobolsk in its current form as a museum - (Russian language!)

Photos: public domain, toptyumen

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fire-emblem-poll · 8 months

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FE ship tournament bracket

Round 1:

Felix x Dimitri vs Raven x Lucius

Ryoma x Rinkah vs Libra x Tharja

Maribelle x Lissa vs Tatiana x Zeke

Alear x Rafal vs Reyson x Tibarn

Celica x Faye vs Marth x Caeda

Ephiram x Lyon vs Oscar x Kiran

Petra x Dorothea vs Byleth x Shez

Byleth x Lindhart vs Alear x Alfred

Morgan x Nah vs Maribelle x Donnel

Erk x Priscilla vs Louis x Pandreo

Arvis x Deirdre vs Shannam x Homer

Pent x Louise vs Corrin x Gullveig

Deirdre x Sigurd vs Perceval x Elffin

Ninian x Eliwood vs Leonie x Lorenz

Lon’qu x Mirel vs Oboro x Orochi

Everyone x Therapy vs Dimitri x Claude

(I just had to include the therapy one thank you to that one person)

#fire emblem #fire emblem poll #feh #fire embem awakening #fire emblem engage #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem fates #fire emblem echoes #fire emblem path of radiance #fire emblem the sacred stones

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scenetocause · 9 months

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Hello! I hope you're doing well.

I was just wondering if you're ever going to upload a new chapter of your Daniel goes to Fe fic? No pressure either way but I love it so much and regularly re-read it, and I was just wondering if you were still working on it (it's fine if you aren't!)

aha. well. i am still working on that. i actually made some progress over the weekend which for various reasons had the potential to be the funniest thing i have ever done but yeah, i will be uploading i hope soon? maybe today. i always have that ambition. the next chapter is very long and the usual mix of painfully entangled.

but i do want to finish it. so actually. i could go and do some of that now instead of staring into space.

here's a snippet as proof of life:

Jev momentarily feels like he may have missed a step. Not about Stoffel and Mitch snogging, which he should probably find gross or at least mildly annoying but instead somehow seems genuinely quite cute - maybe he’s getting old. He’s definitely not sure what’s going on in the conversation he’s having with Daniel, so perhaps he’s already going deaf. “And they - I dunno, maybe I should tell him because, like, I wonder if they’re just worrying about it because of F1 and whatever but then again, we were alright. Kinda.” Daniel pauses to chew his lip for a minute. “I dunno, I just think the bloke deserves to be happy and like, Lando’s a weird choice for that but if it works for him then they seem to like each other.” “For… who?” Jev’s wondering if his English has got a lot worse or something. “Max - my Max. Well, no, not my Max, that’s kinda the other one I mean McLaren Max, y’know, from the other night.” This hasn’t explained anything any better and Jev sort of wants to stop the conversation because it’s making his head spin. “He seemed nice.” “Yeah, he’s a really good kid.” Daniel sighs. “I gotta give him my car in Berlin, was supposed to be Monaco.” “Oh, yes.” The rookie test is a relatively safe topic that Jev doesn’t feel like he’s drowning in. “I am hoping we get Tatiana - you know, Caldéron - back, she was very good at Techeetah, if she is free.” “That’s cool,” Daniel knocks back his drink. “We’ve got a girl, too. Someone Seb knows or something.” When his mouth stops moving, it’s wet. With a chip of ice on his bottom lip that Jev can’t stop staring at. Daniel seems… unfocussed, in the way he has every time Jev’s seen him this year, wrongfooted and off-balance like someone carrying a tray of drinks you don’t want spilt on you. “Do you ever think about - I mean, I guess, probably not, with being married now.” For the first time in the conversation Jev is painfully aware what Daniel’s referring to.

#emptyhalf fic

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volturiwolf · 2 years

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Exiles - A Felix Volturi x vampire!fem!reader - part 1

Felix Volturi Tag List:

@xxx-wounded-angel-xxx @venusdelaroix @justsvtmxaddicted @iloveslasher (@paisley-37)

(Y/N)’s POV

Another day, another mission. I wasn’t usually this tired and bored to go on missions, but I was tired of having a mission every single day these past few years. Nettie’s decision to send me to every mission wasn’t unjustified; after all, I was her best fighter and a gifted vampire, so having me on every mission guaranteed that mission's success.

But I became tired of working almost every day for the past 3000 years, all because of Aro. When he left and took Didyme, Sulpicia, Marcus, Caius, and Athenadora with him, Nettie did not care enough to stop them. She said that no matter how much Aro tries, he would never be able to surpass the power the Greek Coven held.

Nettie was a good leader, a great leader even, but she underestimated Aro’s evilness by a lot. Within the next few eons, Aro had managed to establish his own new coven outside of Greece, in Italy, from where he started to expand his power and influence. So, what Nettie did in response was to collect as many talented vampires as she could herself.

Without anyone really noticing, Nettie had managed to create a sort of vampire network, where she would collect vampires, or humans-to-be-turned-into-vampires, from a variety of countries, mainly focusing on the Balkan, Arabic, and African countries, as they seemed to have a better and closer understanding to the Greek culture and way of thinking than the Western countries did.

Many vampires came and went - they were actually killed off, but we currently had 50 vampires, including Nettie herself, who were part of the coven for a few centuries already. It had always been difficult to maintain our “somewhat anonymity” and work behind the scenes without Aro’s new coven noticing us.

There was always the constant fear that they would come after us, trying to “recruit” our vampires or even myself, which Nettie wouldn’t even think of; she didn’t want to lose me to Aro. My gift made me precious to her and an important part of the coven. My ability to manipulate someone’s actions, thoughts, and memories was not just useful. It was plain dangerous in the wrong hands.

It took me centuries to train myself, not only to develop my gift but also to train myself morally. Most vampires don’t have morals or moral codes, that’s true, but I had to push myself not to take advantage of my gift and manipulate someone in vain. Nettie respected my decision to not use my gift for everyday “inconveniences” that could easily be solved by fighting or torturing someone, and I thanked her for that.

That was why I only recognized her as my leader. I wasn’t one to obey others, nor was I ever willing to follow someone’s orders, but Nettie had proved that she cared about each and every one of us, and her leadership skills were extraordinary. She combined a strong personality with a strong emotional intelligence, which was why she managed to keep the coven strong and in a position of (hidden) power all these millennia.

Though more than half of the coven was gifted - each of us in our own way, nobody ever dared to overturn Nettie. She was the connecting link between us, and she kept everyone in order. There were many vampires around who wished for Nettie’s position, but we knew that if her role was ever compromised, we would go against anyone who dared to question her authority.

Our loyalty lay with Nettie, and we made sure everyone stayed loyal to her. Whenever there was anyone who seemed suspicious, it would first be Kerime the one to identify them. Kerime could read someone’s aura, so she could warn us if anyone came to us with malice in their intentions or not. Nabil would then read their mind, and, if necessary, Tatiana, Kerime’s mate, would be the one to manipulate their emotions to force them to open up.

Alexandros would paralyze them; Dima would use his biokinesis power to control their body; Zuzanka would cause them incredible fear - I didn’t even want to know what she was showing them; Vera would force them to see whatever she wanted them to see. In the case they still attacked, Radmir would be the one to force them to stay back, causing them terrible discomfort and sickness.

I was the last solution, the most effective, but still the last, just as I wished. In the case anyone was rendered too dangerous for the coven, I would step in and manipulate their minds, deleting thoughts and memories, and forcing new ones according to my liking. I was working mostly alongside Cyriaque, who was Zuzanka’s mate and had the ability to hypnotize others.

Nettie had paired us up based on our powers, as she wished for the best outcome in each case. I had difficulty working with others all of a sudden, working alone for about 3000 years. But, over time, I realized that working alongside others meant the work I had to get done with was minimized, and the responsibilities were shared among many people, though I still was in charge of others.

I was third in command, after Nettie and Zenobia, though I was the one who was the most active and involved in the missions of the three of us. I was the one to train the new vampires as they came to our coven, physically and in terms of developing their powers.

However, I was never one to crave the kind of power and authority Nettie had over us. At the end of the day, I was satisfied with my role in the coven, as I didn’t have to worry as much about keeping everyone in order as Nettie had.

I had a fun life when I wasn’t going on missions. I was either going shopping, having sex, or going on vacation. I liked dressing up or down; experimenting with new trends and technologies. Humans could be fun in general. When I wanted to go out in public, I always took Vera with me, so her illusions would hide our true identity.

When it came to feeding ourselves, we would either go on our own or have some vampires within the coven who were responsible for bringing us food. They were usually grouped in pairs - one of the non-gifted vampires along with one of the gifted ones, so they would each help in their own way. I was never asked to fetch food for anyone because each of them owed me more than I owed them.

Centuries and millennia would go by like this, hiding away from other covens; hiding our identities; avoiding crossing paths with the Volturi or other vampires who may have been associated with them. It wasn’t that we were scared of the Volturi, but we didn’t know a lot about them, only what we heard from others who would pass through our territory. We never made it known that we owned that territory because we knew that, one way or another, Aro would eventually find out, and we wanted to avoid conflict, their patriarchy against our matriarchy.

All I knew was that I hated Aro with a passion. He was a hypocrite, an evil, wicked, and dishonorable person. He took advantage of Nettie’s kindness and acceptance, and when he saw that he couldn’t force others to follow him, he took the ones he brought into the coven himself and left.

Nettie helped him, Didyme, and Marcus develop their gifts, and they still chose to leave her, though I knew that Marcus had no choice but to follow Didyme, who was forced to leave with Aro because she loved her brother too much. Sulpicia followed Aro because he was her mate, and Caius and Athenadora followed him because they wanted the power he was promising them.

Aro thought he could rule the whole world, and we let him think that way until he started expanding to other countries, taking more and more vampires for his coven. About two centuries after he left, he found Chelsea - then Charmion, a sweet-looking girl from Thebes, which was part of our territory. He took her to Italy and changed her into a vampire, making her his coven’s most useful and important asset, literally the link that connected all Volturi vampires to Aro.

There was also Demetri, who was taken by Amun, while he was still human. Nettie, already having her eyes all over Greece for potential members for the coven, confronted Amun as he was about to leave for Egypt with Demetri. Nettie didn’t know the potential Demetri could have, though Ilija with his gift of presentience warned her about the future if she let Demetri go. Amun offered Kerime as an exchange for Demetri, and Nettie accepted as she wanted more women in the coven.

I had never met Demetri myself; only Nettie, Zenobia, Cyriaque, and Nabil, who could read minds, were allowed to go on that mission. Back then, I thought that I was lucky I was spared this mission because it would mean more work for me. But, thinking about it afterward, I kept thinking that I could force Amun to give us Demetri and any useful vampire he had. However, I also knew that Amun’s coven was destroyed from the ground up, and he could use a useful vampire or two.

Besides, we had too many vampires for a coven’s standards, even back then. However, after finding out that Aro started collecting more and more vampires, Nettie saw it as a kind of challenge to collect vampires herself. She was lucky, in a way, to have collected so many gifted vampires as more than half of the coven consisted of gifted vampires over non-gifted ones.

For Nettie, every gift was useful and she viewed every coven member as equal between us. While others would estimate which gift was useful and which wasn’t, Nettie didn’t care because “every person and every gift had a potential for greatness”, as she would say.

For example, Selene who could control animals came useful when it came to using them instead of other vampires or people, as nobody could ever suspect that an animal would work for us. In a similar sense, Sergei, who could shapeshift into anything he wanted, whether that was an animal or an object, went beyond suspicion in such cases. Miri, who had the gift of psychometry and could read the history of an object just by touching it, could tell us whatever happened around an object if at least one person came in contact with that item.

Such gifts would go unnoticed or not be used properly if there was no Nettie. Nettie gave everyone the chance to develop and use their gifts and feel useful within the coven. It was why we cared about contributing to the coven as much as we could. It was why I kept helping wherever and whenever I could, even though I was sometimes getting too bored to do anything.

We didn’t get to experience too many exciting things in our lives, and when we did, there were over soon. Things like fighting strong vampires who would be a challenge for us, or getting to know someone new - just things that would cure our boredom and make us feel like there were more to our endless life than hiding and just surviving. We still stayed in the coven, despite the boredom because we felt like we fit in, and anything other than being in this coven would just not do for us.

We had created a sort of family here, and we felt close and trusting of each other. We didn’t rely on someone keeping all of us together and submissive to Nettie, like Chelsea did to keep all the Volturi together and submissive to Aro. We stayed because we wanted to; we stayed because we felt appreciated and needed. Whoever didn’t want to stay did not deserve to stay and they were quickly discarded, though I had always offered to just erase their memories instead of killing them off.

And life would pass by relatively quietly, until the day we came across the Volturi.

#felix volturi #felix volturi imagine #felix volturi x reader #felix volturi x fem!reader #volturi #the volturi #the twilight saga #twilight #twilight saga #twilight renaissance

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formulatrash · 1 year

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Hey Hazel,is there any driver you'd really like to see in FE?

[dropping to my knees, howling at the sky] Alex Lynnnnnn

no, he's in a better place now. but never forgotten. uhm; I guess right now I can't really say I think FE is a good place for a driver but if we slightly shift reality to a better version of Gen3 and a championship in a more stable place, then there's a bunch of people it'd be cool to see.

FE has a very odd driving style, if you ask drivers about - actually you know what, I have asked drivers about it one moment let me get a quote Stoffel gave me.

"It's probably actually one of the the biggest changes, career wise almost, jumping from F1 to Formula E, just because of the way you have to drive the car.

I would say in Formula 1 and all the junior series leading up to Formula 1, everything kind of makes sense. Every car has a little bit more grip, a bit more downforce, a bit more power, it's a bigger car and every step you do is kind of logical.

While suddenly jumping from a Formula 1 car to Formula E, it's like: the whole technology, the way the car behaves is... well, there's only Formula E, there's no other car that behaves that way.

So in terms of driving style, you really have to get used to certain things, especially the braking where you have the regen on the rear axle, the feeling of the brake pedal is quite different.

And then we have a lot of software tools and programmes that help us out, or you can influence as a driver as well, so it's quite technical. And yeah, it's not a straightforward one to jump into."

which is why sometimes it doesn't work out for drivers who've done well in other categories. and there's not particularly a recipe for what makes a good Formula E driver, except that they need to be someone who can handle a strange car. and they really need to be able to memorise massive amounts of information to handle the energy management in the race. drivers that don't get much out of sim work are probably going to struggle.

given that, someone like Lando would be interesting. I think he'd find the car frustrating but fun. it'd actually suit Sainz's driving style (he has some interesting interpretations of kerbs)

(Lewis would either find it the most fun ever and kind of a novelty or be immediately incredibly annoyed with the whole thing, I don't think Seb would like it at all)

I'd love to see Alice Powell get a race seat (she's the test and development driver for Envision) and Tatiana Calderon was blisteringly fast when she did a rookie test, I think she'd be really great in a full-time seat.

I sort of hoped Max Fewtrell might get rescued into a seat or at least a test/sim role a few years back, since he was talking about wanting to be in FE. I'm pretty sure any talented junior series driver would, if they put their mind to it, be able to make the transition to FE and do well.

Marcus Armstrong's description of himself as liking braking earlier (in The Side Pod yesterday) makes me think he'd probably be weirdly naturally adapted to FE. but if he likes hitting the apex of corners he might struggle with the absence of downforce or grip. he does have experience with having relentlessly, sinfully appalling luck though and doesn't seem to have completely given up so he might have what it takes.

#fe asks

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