Word: czarevitch
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...several million people round the world who read Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, few failed to be impressed by the author's empathetic handling of hemophilia. The disease, characterized by uncontrolled bleeding, threatened the life of the young Czarevitch, made the lives of his father and mother into a nightmare, and helped lead to the fall of the Romanov family. By dealing with the Czar and Czarina as distraught parents, the book transformed them from foolish pawns of history into figures of personal tragedy...
...helped them escape from this paralysis-among them the doctor who defied tradition to teach them how to handle Bobby's transfusions at home and the calm Russian princess, now living in a New York suburb, who had played as a child with her hemophiliac cousin, the doomed Czarevitch Alexis. But the book does not mince words about the American medical system, which tends to hinder rather than help hemophiliacs. The Massies' anger is understandable. American blood bankers, by and large, have done little to bring down the cost of the blood fractions that hemophiliacs must have...
...sons and a carrier daughter. Alice's elder carrier daughter Irene married Prince Henry of Prussia; one hemophilic son, Waldemar, lived to 56, but another died at four; Alice's younger carrier daughter Alexandra married Czar Nicholas II, was murdered with him and their hemophilic son, the Czarevitch Alexis. Beatrice's daughter Victoria Eugenie married Alfonso XIII of Spain, had two affected sons, Alfonso and Gonzalo, who bled to death after accidents...
...something special as an Easter present for the Czarina. Fabergé produced an enameled egg so pleasing that giving jeweled eggs became an Easter custom in the royal family. Each of the eggs held some surprise inside-other eggs, or perhaps a hen, or a miniature of the czarevitch. Even when Czar Nicholas II was at the front in 1916 fighting the Germans, he took time out to telegraph instructions for what turned out to be the last eggs the imperial family ever received...
...eggs-delicate trinkets of gold and enamel, flawless rose quartz, pearls and diamonds-were the gifts of Russia's wealthy classes; the largest and costliest eggs were reserved for the reigning Romanovs. Three handsome examples (opposite) are the gold and lapis lazuli egg, with a miniature portrait of Czarevitch Alexis, given by Nicholas II to his Czarina in 1912; the fabulous rock crystal egg (at top), which contains a revolving gallery of twelve gold-framed miniatures capped with a perfect, 27-karat Siberian emerald; and the engraved gold egg which opens to eight painted panels showing favorite imperial charities...