An historians detailed quest to understand the plans and plots to rescue Tzar Nicholas II, Tsarist Alexandra, and their four daughters and one son. We are given insight into the complicated relationships between the children and grandchildren of Queen Victoria and the role they played in World War I.
In summary: “Whatever the degree of responsibility of the King of Great Britain, the Kaiser of Germany and their various European royal relatives in the terrible fate of their Russian cousins, there is no doubt that the murder of the Romanovs at Ekaterinburg in 1918 was a pivotal event in the long history of European monarchy. It dealt a body blow to an institution that had persisted against the odds, through centuries of revolution, acts of terrorism and the constant threat of republicanism” (p. 292).