I don't have a page up yet for this character, but I've been thinking about the fictionalized versions of the Romanov royal family, especially as I got into re-watching the Anastasia stage musical last year in which they replaced Rasputin with a Bolshevik officer. I'll miss Broadway musicals so much if that industry never recovers.
Feel free to scroll way wayyy down until it says TL;DR again (stands for Too Long; Didn't Read—summarizing the point of all the paragraphs above.)
Anyway, I think the Romanovs were pretty interesting— Prince Alexei, the only son and heir apparent, had hemophilia, so Queen Alexandra consulted a mystic who seemed to heal the episodes very effectively. And then this mystic was assassinated several times; not really "attempted" assassinations, but more like in one night conspirators fed him donuts covered with cyanide powder, then got impatient and shot him, and then he still wasn't dead so they drowned him in a river, and it must have been some kind of real life magic that these assassins had to try so hard.
The phrase "trigger warning" sounds actually very inappropriate for this next bit, or maybe it's too appropriate…?
When the royals were rounded up because people wanted better government than the traditional monarchy had been, the princesses (or duchesseses, whatever) sewed jewels to their undergarments because they guessed they wouldn't return to their palace for a long while and would need portable precious metals to exchange for goods and services. Unfortunately, an asylum/exile deal with the U.K. didn't push through, and the people who imprisoned the royals didn't want them to just keep staying alive and in Russia, in case they became symbolic figureheads for a retrogressive government system. When the royal family was lined up to get shot at, the bullets reportedly bounced off the princesses because of the jewels in their undergarments acting like armor. So the firing squad shot bullets at the unarmed young women some more (…let's say that's what did it…because evidence of bayoneting and bludgeoning to death after the bullets ran out is just, ummmmm, sad let's say I get really sad) and that was basically the end of that.
After some other people tried to dig the bodies up again out from where they'd been buried—for science, or history, or something—rumors spread that not all the skeletons were accounted for…which is why there's this legend floating around that the youngest princess Anastasia escaped the execution of her entire family, somehow.
Anastasia would have been 17 years old at the time of her family's execution that included her own execution (or assassination, or massacre, whichever you want to call it), her older sister Maria was 19 at the time, Tatiana was 21, Olga was 22, and Prince Alexei was 14.
While Anastasia is obviously a favorite historical figure for reimagining a happier ending—legends have been so much more kind to Anastasia than to…like…Marie Antoinette—I've also been interested in some historical rumors suggesting that Maria was so charming and lively that a guard who was supposed to be intimidating the royal family to stay imprisoned until their exile nevertheless felt moved to surprise Maria with cake on her birthday. (This guard's superiors assigned him elsewhere after that incident, of course, because you're really not supposed to boost the morale of your prisoners, although being royals they were under something more like house arrest in the first place and not in prison cells exactly. Under militia compound house arrest, not under palace house arrest.)
TL;DR I'd like an AU Maria Romanov living her best 1920's flapper life, with or without Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
