Ella: Princess, Saint and Martyr
by Christopher Warwick
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Book Summary Information
Author: Christopher WarwickEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-01-16
ISBN: 047087063X
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Wiley
Book Reviews of Ella: Princess, Saint and Martyr
Book Review: A Virtuous Royalty
Summary: 5 Stars
Princess Elizabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, Grand Duchess Serge of Russia, was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Born three years after the death of Prince Albert, she became one of her widowed grandmother's favorite grandchildren. This seemed to set a tone for Ella, as she was known, throughout her life. Very beautiful, she had a deeply religious side to her which was intensified by long visits to her perpetually mourning grandmother and by her mother Princess Alice's deep devotion to bettering the lives of the common people. Ella lost her mother when she was 14, further encouraging her religious interests, as did her eventual marriage to Grand Duke Serge, brother of Tsar Alexander III.
Serge was and is an enigma. He was either beloved or hated. Rumors of his sexual proclivities and peculiarities abounded while he was alive and intensified after his death at the hands of a terrorist in 1905. Christopher Warwick admits that no one can now know the truth about Serge, but he speculates that Ella's marriage was unconsummated, which naturally affected her emotionally and helped lead her to her eventual doom.
The finest parts of this book come toward the end, when Warwick describes Ella's putting aside her wealth and social position and founding an order of nursing sisters in Moscow. Her devotion to her work kept her from fleeing to safety after the Revolution, and eventually she was murdered just one day after her younger sister, Empress Alexandra. The circumstances of her life and death have made her an Orthodox Saint and Martyr, and she is remembered today in Westminster Abbey as one who suffered and died for her faith.
Warwick writes well and does a very thorough job covering Ella's life. Sometimes the descriptions of court ceremonies and celebrations wax a bit tedious, but that is how they must have seemed to some of the participants, like Ella, who had their minds on higher things.
Summary of Ella: Princess, Saint and Martyr
Considered to have been the most beautiful princess in Europe, capable of arousing ?profane passions?, Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, or ?Ella? as she was known, was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the daughter of Princess Alice of Great Britain and Grand Duke Louis of Hesse. A privileged, happy Victorian childhood was touched by tragedy not only with the early deaths of her youngest brother and sister but also that of her young mother. Close to Queen Victoria, Ella spent some of her happiest times in Britain. At 20, however, much against the wishes of her grandmother, who despised everything Russian, Ella became engaged to Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich, the authoritarian younger brother of Tsar Alexander III. It was at their wedding that her younger sister, Alix, formed a love match with the future Tsar Nicholas II; an event which not only sealed the fate of both sisters, but that of the Imperial House of Romanov. But for these two marriages, the history of Russia might have been very different.With the assassination of her husband, Ella renounced society and, against considerable opposition, founded the first religious Order of its kind in Russia, working for the poor and destitute of Moscow. Though loved for her charitable works and pionerering achievements, Ella, like Nicholas, Alexandra, and fourteen members of their family, met a brutal death at the hands of the Bolsheviks. At the height of the Russian Revolution, she was taken captive to Siberia where, having been clubbed with rifle butts, she was hurled alive into a disused mineshaft and left to die of her injuries. Later retrieved, her incorrupt body was eventually laid to rest on the Mount of Olives. She was subsequently canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the Holy Imperial Martyr Saint Elisabeth Romanova.
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