The Lost Crown

This week I have started The Lost Crown by Sarah Miller. It's the story of Anastasia and her family starting before the revolution and probably ending at their deaths.

It's a pretty interesting book and I'm learning a lot about the family and what it was like back then. The author likes to throw in Russian so there is a little dictionary in the beginning which helps a ton.

The book begins with the family on vacation on a boat and everyone is running around having fun until Alexei bumps his ankle and hurts it. Three days later it is still swelling and now about the size of his knee and getting worse. For those of you who don't know, Alexei has Hemophilia B which means his blood cannot properly clot.

The family gets back from the vacation and Alexei is still extremely ill. His mother is having trouble holding everything together because Russia might go to war with her home, Germany. There is a great deal of war whisperings that go from sibling to sibling and trying to keep it hush hush from their mother who, unbeknownst to them, already knows.

Where I'm at right now, Russia will go to war and Alexei is still in bed so he has to miss the ceremony where his dad announces going to war and I'm in the middle of the ceremony. Reporters are going crazy trying to figure out what has kept Alexei from coming (again). He is so sickly that he often has to miss events such as this because his future country (at least it would have been before the revolution) cannot see him as sickly and weak.