Royal_Court

In 1982, I read a book by American writer Jerrold Packard called The Queen
and Her Court, a chronicle of the court, courtiers, palaces, and
personalities that featured in Queen Elizabeth II's reign. A few years
later, as I continued to work on my biography of Empress Alexandra and began
to look ahead to writing about Prince Felix Yusupov as well, the amount of
material I was amassing on the Romanovs, on Nicholas II and his family, and
on their palaces and possessions led me to ponder the idea of taking
Packard's work and using its rough framework as a way to write a book about
the court of the Last Tsar. I began actively collecting research material
for this future work in 1989, and after the first publication of my
biography of the Empress, I began to work on both this book on Nicholas II¹s
court and on the biography of Prince Felix Yusupov simultaneously,
alternating back and forth depending on my mood.

Over the next thirteen years, I frequently worked on The Court of the Last
Tsar between projects and in addition to other books that I was writing,
again alternating between texts depending on my interest, mood, and
publishing commitments. I was never quite satisfied with the format I
eventually laid out. Unlike most books, I didn't think that the wealth of
subject matter in a book on Nicholas II's court would lend itself easily to
a narrative structure or simple chronological approach. I also did not want
to break up enormous chunks of information and spread them across the book,
so that, for example, one had to look in four or five places to discover all
of the information about a particular palace. I toyed with many variations
of laying the book out, asked for many opinions, and had a number of people
including Russian émigrés and aristocrats, read various drafts of the
manuscript and proposals on how to possibly change it.

In the fall of 2002, when the manuscript for The Fate of the Romanovs was
sent off to John Wiley & Sons, I again took up the court book. This time,
however, I was comfortable with the format, dividing the book up into
sections covering specific topics. My only regret about the eventual book
is that, owing to considerations of length, my publisher insisted that it be
kept to a certain word count; this meant that original chapters on various
Grand Ducal residences and other palaces; an extra chapter on members of the
Romanov Family; and longer sections on certain individuals and events-all
had to be cut from the finished manuscript. Despite a few problems and the
absence of some additional material, however, I am quite happy with the end
result and it has, next to my biography of the Duchess of Windsor, become my
best-selling title.

In July of 2005, while I was proofreading the manuscript for the forthcoming
Court of the Last Tsar, my editor at John Wiley commissioned a book on
Queen Victoria from me. Initially, it was to have duplicated the format and
presentation of The Court of the Last Tsar, but this proved impossible
given Queen Victoria's lengthy reign and the hundreds of courtiers involved.
Instead, after some discussion, I elected to focus only on a single year in
the Queen's life as an evocation of her court. I was immediately drawn to
the period from 1896-1897, when there were a number of family visits,
weddings, and travels, culminating in the Diamond Jubilee. Within this
framework, I tried to examine the Queen's life in this particular year,
following her from July of 1896 to June of 1897. This device allowed me to
deal with her courtiers, her residences, members of her family, and
important events.

I had never had any intention of writing about Queen Victoria, and the
timeframe imposed upon me by my publisher meant that the book would rest not
on disclosures from archives but rather on the compilation and presentation
of a wealth of little known detail. In the end, I think the book succeeds
rather well at portraying the Queen as she was, and in bringing to life what
it was like to be a courtier or servant in the Royal Household during those
years.

c. Greg King, 2008

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