Royal Romances of To-day — Reading Companion

A Reporter's Access

The book's origin in commissioned magazine articles gives it a particular texture. Durland traveled to Russia and Italy specifically to gather material, and the text carries traces of direct observation and interview. The foreword mentions that the Woman's Home Companion sent him to write 'the story of the early days, courtship and marriage' of the Tsaritsa, and a similar assignment for Queen Elena followed. This explains the wealth of domestic detail—descriptions of nurseries, children at play, and family routines—that a purely archival study might lack.

Readers should note that Durland's access was likely mediated by court officials and approved sources. The tone is uniformly admiring, and no critical voices appear. The book presents itself as an authorized or at least sympathetic portrait, which shapes every anecdote and characterization.

The Tsaritsa's Inner World

The longest excerpt concerns Alexandra Feodorovna, and it reveals Durland's fascination with her spiritual life. He traces her interest in mysticism and spiritualism to her ancestors' belief in ghosts, and devotes a chapter to 'Spirit Whisperings.' The description of her face—'unusual other-worldly beauty' with lines of 'wistful pathos'—links her appearance to 'soul development' and religious contemplation.

Durland explicitly states that Alexandra's life as Empress must be passed over lightly in favor of her roles as wife and mother. This choice is ideological: he argues that her devotion to Nicholas, not to the nation, defines her. The reader watches Durland balance admiration for her personal qualities with an implicit acknowledgment that this private focus may have had political costs.

Scale and Servants

A striking passage enumerates the Tsaritsa's household: nearly thirty thousand servants, fifty thousand head of cattle, five thousand horses. Durland notes that this vast retinue is 'divided into groups and officered by various functionaries,' much like an army. The Tsaritsa's word, spoken to a lady-in-waiting, suffices to command this host.

These details serve a dual purpose. They establish the immense power and wealth of the Russian court—the Tsar's private income from Siberian mines and timber, plus a government salary of nearly five million dollars a year. Yet they also reinforce Durland's central argument: that Alexandra chose the 'quieter life of the home' despite this scale of power. The contrast between her resources and her domestic focus is the book's recurring theme.

Three Queens, One Template

The table of contents shows that each of the three parts follows a similar arc: courtship, wedding, motherhood, and a chapter on the queen's character or public role. Queen Elena's section includes 'The Heroism of Queen Elena' and 'Simplicity of the Italian Court,' while Victoria Eugenie's covers 'A Baptism of Blood' and 'Winning a Nation's Love.' The structure suggests Durland saw these lives as parallel romances, each illustrating the same ideal of royal womanhood.

Readers should be alert to this template. The book does not offer three independent biographies so much as three variations on a theme. The evidence for each queen's personality is filtered through Durland's consistent lens: that a good queen's true history is her family life. The excerpts do not reveal whether the queens themselves would have agreed with this framing.

Durland's book is best approached as a period piece of royal journalism, written at the height of the European monarchies just before World War I. The three profiles share a structure and a thesis: that these queens' significance lies in their domestic devotion, not their political influence. Readers interested in the gap between public image and private reality, or in the conventions of early twentieth-century biographical writing, will find rich material here. The excerpts offer a consistent voice but an incomplete picture—each queen's story is told from a single, admiring angle.

There’s a particular tenderness in those old royal profiles—queens shown mostly as wives and mothers, their crowns almost an afterthought. It reminded me, oddly, of how we once imagined history as a simple family story. That same quiet wonder follows me into The Discovery of America by the Northmen, 985-1015 — Context and Discussion, where discovery feels less like conquest and more like a careful, homesick voyage.