Spoilt Royal Brats: Alexei Romanov January 7, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern , trackback
Royal parents have a unique problem. They have to bring up their children like anyone else (or, ok, pay others to do so), but they also have to convince their children that they are God’s anointed. Infants painfully learn that the world does not revolve around them: yet, in the case of royal children, particularly heirs to the throne, the world often really does and the lesson is never learnt. The unusual character of many royal adults very possibly originates with this unique form of grooming: while arguably the relative mental balance of some female rulers comes from the fact that they (unexpected and unplanned heirs) missed out on such special treatment.
Beach recently came across some special examples of royal misbehavior on film: the naughtiness of Alexei, the last heir of the Russian crown, murdered 17 July 1917 in Siberia: he was thirteen. Note that these are stills from a BBC documentary about the Romanov children: Russia’s Lost Princesses. Beach doesn’t often say this, but the BBC did good. If you want to see the stills as film fast forward to 36 mins and let it roll:
The first still at the head of this post shows Alexei Romanov in a line of young cadets. Alexei, third from the right, has been ‘outraged’ by something that the boy to the left has done, and has spontaneously slapped him. Looking at the film, the boy’s mistake is not obvious. It is a shocking clip because Alexei is so natural in the role of castigator. Not for a second is he concerned that an adult might intervene or tell him off. The second still shows Alexei pushing a woman in the royal entourage on the bottom. Her crime? She has turned her back on the prince. This phenomenon must have gone on for centuries but the Romanovs were forever photographing each other, and there is an unusual amount of celluloid that survives of their home life. We see it here, then, and it is shocking. The images are much more powerful in film.
Other examples of spoilt royal brats: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com The whipping boy starts to make more sense…
