Tuesday, October 28, 2008

"Common doom threatens two sad royal sisters"

This is the headline in the October 29, 1910 Los Angeles Times (with a dateline of October 24th)

The two royal sisters are Empress Alexandra and Grand Duchess Elisabeth of Russia. According to the article, the two women are suffering from similar mental breakdowns. Elisabeth, the widow of the murdered Grand Duke Serge, is said to be "steadily lapsing from religious exaltation into religious mania." Her younger sister, Alix, who is the wife of the Russian emperor Nicholas II, "has the mania of persecution, and believes that all the world is conspiring against her life."
Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna "that the heavens are in league against her," she believes she can save "soul alone by wrestling with her accusing conscience." She spends her day "in holy works and her nights in anguished prayer."
These two Anglo-German princesses were "not long ago, the wildest, bravest and merriest of all the daughters of Europe's courts."

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