All in the Family: Divine Right of Kings

I'm currently reading Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, a biography of the the last Romanov monarchs. I have always had a deep fascination for all things royal, but this book is striking a different chord in me. The idea of "royal family" is blowing my mind.

The beginning stages of the book gives a humanized picture of the Tsar and Tsarina. Nicholas is nice, polite, somewhat humble, well-educated, God-fearing and loyal to preserving a more folksy Russian culture than a modern, European way of life. His wife Alix is devout, devoted to her family, and sacrifices much of her own culture to marry someone she truly loves.

Perhaps it is our American patriotic and egalitarian values that causes us to look down on those who inhereited the lineage and birthright of kingship, but such a humanized account as Massie presents helps me to see how prejudiced such a worldview can be. When I look at Nicholas and Alexandra, I'm heartbroken over their plight. They did not deserve to be brutally murdered. They were good people who raised a beautiful family. They were subject to prejudice all around, Alix in particular, as the Russian people never liked that she was German. The irony in that is that the royal families across the globe were actually all family at the time. They constantly married into one another's family. The movie Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola shows the sacrifice that royal women in particular had when it came time to marry another royal of a different culture. There is this beautiful and shocking scene at the beginning where Marie is stripped of her German garb all the way down to her little dog and is given all French wear and accessories. The cultural transformation is so immediate and even tragic, yet in the person of Alexandra, we see a woman who truly comes to love her new home and new people.

Another point that seems to me so ironic and such a lost opportunity is that the royal families all deeply feel called by God to rule their countries and feel burdened to rule well. Yet, war is still inevitable. How bizarre that WWI would plunge nations against one another when the royals who approved of war were often blood relatives or immediate relatives by marriage to a royal in another country. Marriage and blood did not prevent sovereigns from becoming enemies in war. How easily they could have said, "we are family, let's make peace." It seems that this model had such potential for peace, if only the kings would work together. It is so frustrating to see this missed opportunity. How do those who seem to be so God-fearing seem to miss such a gospel-inspired opportunity??