Anastasia, The Last Grand Duchess, Russia, 1914 by Carolyn Meyer is, so far, my favorite book in the Royal Diaries series. This one is the diary of Anastasia, beginning when she is 12 years old. The book eventually ends as World War I is causing a lot of chaos and havoc in Russia as their military is not doing well.
I didn't know much about Anastasia except for her name before reading this book. I never watched the movie inspired by her when I was a child, so I didn't really have a sense of who she was and what happened to her. I learned that she knew Rasputin (yes, the one from Boney M.'s song), and there was a picture of him in the appendices in the back of the book that show the inspiration and historical figures mentioned in the diary. The epilogue and historical context in the back made me sad because I didn't know how Anastasia and her family died and how tragic their death was.
I really liked the humor in this diary specifically. I was laughing out loud at parts because Anastasia's fictional diary just had the most amazing one-liners for a fictional duchess. I found her sarcasm and commentary on her sisters and life as the grand duchess to be funny and charming.
This diary ends at the beginning of World War I, making it the most recent diary historically I've read thus far, and it was really interesting to see references to the United States and an American servant in the Russian palace, that this Anastasia was fond of. In addition to Anastasia and her life, I also learned about the Julian versus the Gregorian calendar since the diary featured both, which was really interesting. I had never thought about different countries using different calendars because I knew they existed, but I didn't know they co-existed like this as recently as the early 20th century.
Would you read a fictional diary about Anastasia? Let me know in the comments!
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