“A Fatal Passion: The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia”, by Michael John Sullivan

473 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0679424000

A Fatal Passion: The Story of the Uncrowned Last Empress of Russia by Michael John Sullivan is a biography of Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Edinburgh, the third child and second daughter of Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, as well as a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Victoria’s siblings were Alfred, Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the only son and heir apparent of Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha who died aged 24 under circumstances still not entirely clear; Marie Alexandra Victoria, who became the last Queen of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I; Alexandra Louise Olga Victoria who, upon her marriage to Ernst II, became the Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg; and Beatrice Leopoldine Victoria who married Alfonso de Orleans y Borbón, Infante of Spain, a first cousin of Alfonso XIII of Spain (got all that?).

While it didn’t take long for the marriage of the Duke and Grand Duchess to go south, Marie managed to raise the girls to be smart, cultured and independent women for their times. Victoria Melita wound up marrying Ernst Ludwig Karl Albrecht Wilhelm, the last Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and who was also the brother of the last Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra – and then divorcing the same, whereupon she married Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril) Vladimirovich of Russia, a son of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia, a grandson of Emperor Alexander II and a first cousin of Nicholas II, Russia’s last Tsar (don’t worry; my head is spinning, too). This was a huge scandal at the time since divorce was almost unheard of, especially amongst the nobility, most of whom were content to stay trapped in loveless marriages and conduct a series of empty affairs.

All of these European dynastic entanglements are fascinating, and all, but ultimately this is a rather frustrating biography as we learn so little of Victoria Melita herself. What were her principles? What did she stand for? What were her hopes and dreams, and so forth? Sullivan would have it seem that her body and soul went from being controlled first by her parents, and then by first one husband and then another. Are we forgetting that this was a fabulously wealthy woman with connections to the most important people in the world in her day? Oh, the author’s writing style is enjoyable enough as it flows so easily from topic to topic, and his interjections of relevant background stories, talks about the times, and chapter-ending cliffhangers – which, worry not, get explained in the next chapter – are all well and good.

But it seems from this book that Victoria Melita was an empty shell of a person without decisiveness or a will of her own. The image it casts is of a Royal Victim, swept along in a tide over which she had no control her entire life. This is plainly untrue, and plainly a matter of her own choice and her own decisions, as any member of royalty who pursued a divorce in the 18^th Century must have had a backbone of steel, but we see none of that in this book. Where is the spunk? Where is the determination? How were other royal divorcees treated by society at large? Was she snubbed? Did it hurt her? Or was she just the perennial mournful martyr and victim? Surely that can’t be true of the real person behind this facade.