THE WHITE NIGHT OF ST. PETERSBURG

Another Romanov steps out of the shadows—and this time it appears to be the genuine article.

Himself part of that storied, noble clan (“my grandmother, the grand duchess Olga, was a Romanov”), Prince Michael of Greece (a novel, Sultana, 1983; The Empress of Farewells, 2002, etc.) relates a suitably improbable tale: when he was attending the 1998 funeral of Nicholas and Alexandra and their children, murdered by Bolsheviks 80 years earlier, Michael was enchanted by the presence of a regal, 82-year-old relative with the sturdy name Natalya Androssov Iskander Romanov, who claimed descent from the black sheep of the Romanov family, “Nicholas Konstantinovich, your grandmother Olga’s brother.” Nicholas, according to Natalya—who had survived the Soviet years while working as a motorcycle acrobat—had been stricken from history for having scandalized all Russia with his carryings-on, not least his affair with an American gold-digger named Fanny Lear. Prince Michael brings a certain Barbara Cartlandish sensibility to his invented description of the first encounter between these star-crossed lovers: “It was his mouth that drove Fanny wild with desire. Rather large, with red lips whose curve cast a spell over her, a smile now caressing, now ardent.” The prose toughens up a little when, on the one hand, Nicholas begins to catch on that Fanny is a little less than virtuous, and, on the other, when the royals finally boot her out of the country, having implicated both her and Nicholas in an elaborate scheme to spirit away rare jewels and fund an anti-tsarist revolution therewith. Fanny fades away into history, having failed in her effort to cash in with a memoir published in France (“the imperial government, once alerted, managed to get the French Republic to confiscate the book and deport its author”). Nicholas was shipped off east of the Urals, where he distinguished himself as a geographer and explorer, still nursing his love for Fanny.

A modestly intriguing pastime for royalty buffs, though one requiring a certain willing suspension of disbelief.