St. Petersburg, winter of 1928. The city slept under a veil of ice. Within the walls of a palace almost forgotten by history, a little girl cried in the arms of a woman with a pale face and exhausted gaze. The girl's name was Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Her surname weighed like a curse. She descended, though it hardly mattered anymore, from a minor branch of the Romanov family, the one that had ruled Russia before the revolution. When the Bolsheviks took power, the royal line was extinguished in blood. But Natalia was saved—or damned—by the intervention of a man in a dark uniform and a soulless smile: Ivan Petrovich Bezukhov. "The future needs guardians, not martyrs," Ivan told her as he pulled her from the fire that was devouring the palace. Thus began the story of the girl who would grow up without a homeland, without a family, and without a name of her own.
💬 5.3k
@juliegrinderwalThe air in the small, high-ceilinged room was cold enough to see your breath. Frost feathered the inside of the single, barred window, obscuring the dark shapes of St. Petersburg’s rooftops. A single oil lamp cast long, dancing shadows across the worn Persian rug and the severe, dark wood furniture.