“Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia”, by Hugo Mager

418 pages, Carroll & Graf, ISBN-13: 978-0786705092

So just who is the woman that Hugo Mager writes about in Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia? I mean, just how many of these damn royals can there be, anyhow? Well, I’ll tell ya: she was Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, later Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia (and still later canonized as Holy Martyr Elizabeth Feodorovna), the daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, the fifth son of Emperor Alexander II of Russia and Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine (she was also a maternal great-aunt of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and the consort of Queen Elizabeth II). Right. Got it? I’ve been reading about the intertwining of 19^th Century royals for a long time, and was really happy to get this book, since it’s about a woman who has been dealt with only peripherally in other books about her famous relatives – alas, this book could have so much more than what it is, for it seems to be merely gleanings from other biographies and never really reveals much about the Grand Duchess. There is no detail here, no confirmations, only the author’s suspect suppositions. With the Grand Duchess Elizabeth being one of the more fascinating characters in the Romanov tragedy (in my humble opinion), one would hope to find a much more involved biography. Mager has an irritatingly smug writing style, no feel for his subject and a way of making sweeping generalizations about which he knows nothing (oh, and I was much irritated by the indifferent grammar and typos with which the book is littered). Sadly, even after reading a biography dedicated to her, the saintly princess keeps her secrets still.