The course of history presents us with unique characters. And Empress Alejandra played a role that historians have been able to measure over the years. Beyond the sparkle, the tinsel and the roles to assume, Alejandra was a special woman.
Espido freire locates us a few months after the October Revolution headed by the Bolsheviks, where the slogan "Peace, bread and land" already clearly implies the claim to erase all vestige of the Empire of the Russian Tsars.
Alejandra, the last tsarina it is discovered stripped of all its brilliance, its power and its influence. During his last moments before the alleged flight (which actually ended in the summary sentence in the very basements of the house), he had to face that encounter with a harsh reality, in which the hatred that he could intuit of a Russian people who never he felt it as his own predicting the harshest revenge.
The narration then focuses on the passage of Alejandra's memory through her own life, through her first years as princess alix; for all the circumstances lived; with its lights and its shadows. Alejandra evokes everything she has experienced through the prism of being her own judge in the shadow of a possible near end.
Beyond the destiny that her arrival to the Russian throne had written for her, in those moments in which reality appears physically painful, Alejandra does an exercise in introspection. Perhaps she did not know or could not communicate everything that was inside her, but she was sure that a kind spirit governed her. The reader listens to your arguments with the closeness of the first person. Meanwhile, Empress Alejandra thinks, with the certainty of that dark night, that she is probably offering her last plea.
You can now buy Call Me Alejandra, the latest novel by Espido Freire, here: