When I was in grade school there were these royal diary books I was OBSESSED with, and one was written as if it were Anastasia’s. That + the hauntingly beautiful animated movie cemented the fact that I would be obsessed with the doomed royal family the rest of my life.
Let’s not psychoanalyze that too much, and just focus on the gilded moulding, shall we?
Thing to Read
THE book on the Romanovs/Romanoffs/whatever spelling tickles your pickle (a favorite Slavic food)
It details the 300-year rule of a family full of warped characters. The one family saw through truly the changing of the face of a nation— which to be fair the book does not overly credit to the family, but it is VERY interesting to look at how aristocracy changes and what rulership has looked like over time.
Thing to Watch
The Great on Hulu, a sarcastic fun poke at the OTT* early life ato court of Catherine the Great.
I love it.
The sets & costuming are GORGEOUS wow wow wow (are they period correct? I don’t know, and I don’t care. I’ve recently realized this can be a point of contention on historical costume tiktok.)
*Over The Top
Thing to Wear
Lace or silk or a hooded cloak or low blocky heels or luxurious bejeweled pieces or heavily embroidered folk pieces, the list could go on. The family ruled for 300 years, so the span of style across Russia’s Westernization is vast.
A present-day designer doing glitz and glam to a Russian degree is Simone Rocha
The beautiful layered diaphonous fabrics and hevy feminie detail (almost always theres pearls, bows, or floral embroidery). The design house also has a rather popular purse that just looks like a large pearl you can carry a phone in. I die.
Additionally, I have seen a resurgence, if I can call it that, of the fur hat trend— as seen in the 60s— popular in Russia in the 1860s, and.
Thing to Cook
Pickle soup. Trust me, if you’re looking for a flavor adventure and you like pickles, you want in on this.
https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdk1XDVd/
Thing to Listen to
Russian post punk, obviously.
Saint of the Week
So, the Russian Orthodox Church is not The Holy Roman Catholic Church butttttt there’s saint overlap. I looked for some stand alone, just ROC saints, to keep things fresh
FWIW: “The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided at its meeting of 5 May 2015 also to add the name of the Venerable Paisios of Mount Athos to the Menology of the Russian Orthodox Church, establishing his feast day on June 29/July 12, aligning with the Menology of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople during the present century.”
Also, Anastasia and her sisters were all actually named Maria, and their middle names were just different. That’s what they went by. This isn’t terribly uncommon in older devout communities.
Compulsory Sports Thingamabob
So if you weren’t obsessed with Anastasia when you were 10, maybe you don’t know the Bolsheviks overthrew her father’s reign (technically he abdicated), and that led to what eventually became the government of the USSR.
Here’s the sport of the nation as the sun set on that era:
Beauty Bomb
Imperial beauty
