Recent content by Kalafrana

Wulfert was a Guards officer, so highly unlikely that he was Jewish. To me the name simply sounds German.

The authors of 'Purple Secret' are John Rohl, David Hunt and Martin Warren.

Since 'Queen Victoria's Gene' appeared, another book, 'Purple Secret', has demonstrated pretty convincingly that there has been porphyria in Queen Victoria's descendants, which seems to knock out the 'Victoria was illegitimate' theory (never very convincing, in my view). I have a copy, but it's...

Just found this thread, so long delay in responding to the picture Warren posted on 11 August 2008. There definitely is a touch of Prince Harry there! Link: http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=809710&postcount=88

Prince Michael of Kent qualified as a British Army interpreter in Russian! My understanding is that the Orthodox Churches do not recognise marriage between first cousins, and therefore would regard the marriage of Kirill Vladimirovich and Victoria Melita as invalid (the wedding took place in a...

Turning now to a less controversial language than German, did Olga Alexandrovna need to learn Danish when she settled in Denmark with her family? Of course, Olga was 14 years younger than Nicholas, but if she already spoke Danish when she went to Denmark, this would suggest that her older...

Anna Anderson has been conclusively proved a fraud from two different directions (her own DNA plus the recent discoveries near Ekaterinburg). What I find interesting about her is that quite a number of people who knew the real Anastasia (such as Lili Dehn and Sigismund of Prussia) were prepared...

French was indeed a language of the court as much as Russian, but that does not mean that nobody at court would bother to learn German. That German was a normal part of upper class Russian education does not mean that the imperial children learned it, but it would make it more surprising if...

'The imperial family's German relatives spoke English fluently, that's why it was not necessary for the Imperial family to know German. ' This is like saying that nobody in Britain or the US needs to learn foreign languages because 'everybody' nowadays speaks English. Nicholas and Alexandra's...

For the record, I am not and have never been a supporter of Anna Anderson. I decided a long time ago that she was bogus and for a number of reasons, not least that her English (in an interview shown on a documentary narrated by Prince Michael of Kent from around 1990) was very broken and heavily...

Fremdenkirche? It should have been Friedenkirche. Somewhere I have a postcard of the mosaic, and will put it on here if I can find it. Very sad that such an intelligent and talented man as Friedrich Wilhelm had to be put under a regency when only in his early sixties.

Friedrich Wilhelm's principal interest was architecture, and he designed a number of buildings in Potsdam, in particular the Fremdenkirche. This church contains a superb Byzantine mosaic, which Friedrich Wilhelm purchased when travelling in Italy as Crown Prince. Hearing that the church it was...

Alexei was born on 30 July/12 August 1904, so not quite 14 when he was killed. It did occur to me that poor health might have something to do with his not having German lessons, but why should that be so?

I wonder why Alexei didn't have German lessons, given that his sisters did. I ask this because if there were sound reasons for the girls to learn German, there were equally sound reasons for Alexei to learn German (perhaps more so, since he was intended to be a ruler). The obvious possibility...

What are we arguing over? I would be very surprised if Alexandra 'could not' speak, read or write in German (she was a German princess after all), but am happy to accept that she preferred English and was quite possibly more fluent in it (in the sense that it came more naturally to her)...