The Last Czars: Russian The Crown, but darker and more thrilling
To my great regret, I never learned anything about the Romanovs in my history class, while they could have probably motivated me enough to get rid of my sixes mentality. But no, unfortunately. My first introduction to the Romanov family was through the cartoon Anastasia (which I – no shame here – still love to watch). Quite a dark cartoon though, with the über bad guy of course being Rasputin. But now we finally have a full-fledged series where we learn all the ins and outs of this Russian family: hello The Last Czars. Or eh, привет. Thanks Google Translate, but no idea how to pronounce this.
Fortunately, The Last Czars is also just spoken in English, because that Russian would distract me a bit, I'm afraid. A brief introduction to the Romanovs: this family managed to rule for no less than three hundred years over Russia. But then the fun was over (last year was actually a hundred years ago) and the Romanovs were brutally taken down by the Bolsheviks.
The last tsar, whom this six-part series mainly revolves around, is Nicholas II. He didn't really see the role of tsar as appealing and is said to have expressed this to his advisor. But yes, nothing to be done: he had to rule. Also somewhat annoying that the Russians themselves were not exactly fans of this family, and that was thanks to his predecessor, Alexander III. He ruled quite harshly, with no press freedom or freedom of speech, a lot of violence (and deaths) at ‘peaceful‘ demonstrations, and he also started a war in between. How not to be a Czar 101. Good luck shaking off that image, huh.
But what might be the most interesting aspect of this whole family is also highlighted in The Last Czars, namely the role of Anastasia Romanov (yes, the one from the cartoon indeed). When the entire family was exterminated, all the bodies were later found in their house (mansion) Ipatjev, except for hers. Perfect formula for the beginning of a legend, of course. Multiple (thousands, probably) women have claimed since then that they are the Anastasia, but a real identification has (not) taken place. The chance that she is still alive now is quite negligible, as she was born in 1901. But still, it remains an interesting story.
It is striking that The Last Czars actually receives mostly positive reviews (and rightly so, I think) except from... Drumroll, the Russians. Yes, because if you touch their country, history, culture and put it in a not-so-good light, then it's trouble. See Chernobyl for example number 2. But well, I would say: just watch? that series. More fun than The Crown, I'm sorry to say. A bit shorter though, because as I said, The Last Czars has six episodes of forty minutes each. You can check the trailer below and you can of course watch the whole series on Netflix.
