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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. The Summer Queen
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Family Tree of King George III
  5. Family Tree of Queen Victoria
  6. PART ONE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. Chapter Twenty-Three
  31. Chapter Twenty-Four
  32. PART THREE
  33. Chapter Twenty-Five
  34. Chapter Twenty-Six
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. PART FOUR
  42. Chapter Thirty-Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Select Bibliography
  53. The Summer Queen
  54. By Margaret Pemberton

I have to share this news with you, or I will go mad. I had a miscarriage less than a week after the coronation – and that I did isn’t surprising, my coronation robes being so heavy that I could barely move in them and, once I was crowned, my crown was so heavy I thought my neck was going to break. How I endured the weight of it all, I truly don’t know; and then afterwards there was a celebration dinner – again hours and hours long – at which Nicky and I were still wearing robes and crowns, and then a ball. It was utterly exhausting for someone in my condition. Whether I would have had the miscarriage four days later, even if the Khodynka Field tragedy hadn’t happened, I don’t know, but what I do know is that the horror was on such a scale – the final death toll was more than three thousand – that it will live with me until my dying day. Nicky and I went immediately down to the hospitals, and oh, the sight of the children, May. It would have broken your heart.

And then, on top of everything, the grand-uncles (Vladimir, Sergei and Paul) absolutely insisted that Nicky and I put in an appearance at a ball that had been arranged in our honour at the French Embassy. We argued and argued with them, but not even Sergei would have it any other way. As we left it, our carriage was spat at in the street and then, when we finally arrived back at the Kremlin Palace, I began to bleed and half an hour later I miscarried what the doctor (sworn on his life to secrecy) said was a boy.

The grief of it is almost more than I can bear. Please pray that my next child will also be a boy, May. I have become so unpopular (and unfairly so) that only if I give the country a boy am I likely ever to have the chance of becoming the kind of popular empress and tsarina I so long to be.

Your more than heartbroken Kindred Spirit, Alicky

May stared at the dismal view in front of her. There was more lawn and then a small lake, or a large pond. Either description would have fitted. It wasn’t a pretty water feature, being ringed on its near side by reeds and on its far side by thickets of laurel, its only decoration being a lead pelican.