Maria's subsequent marriage provided a splendid occasion. The groom was Prince Franz Wilhelm ... a great-grandson of the last German kaiser and a cousin of Louis Ferdinand .... Once again the genes of the greater European royal family were pooled. The king and queen of Spain and a number of royal exiles from Italy, Bulgaria, Albania, Portugal and Egypt inflated the importance of the wedding with their presence.

Officials guarding the frontier between Russia and the German zone took malicious delight in harassing those wishing to pass. Since Marie and her husband were without documents and without shelter in a town completely strange to them where they knew no one, they could not stay. Nor could they return.

The Commander of the British cruiser Cardiff, who happened to be an old friend, got wind of Olga's presence in town and invited her to his ship. After tea on board, the grand duchess was tactfully presented with a length of navy-blue cloth, enough to make clothing for the four members of her family, and she was relieved that they could be respectable again.

... despite the Turks' friendliness, most of the exiles soon left Istanbul. No opportunities existed there for them, and Turkey seemed an alien land. Private individuals proceeded to western Europe, French visas being most sought after. Russians still regarded Paris as the center of civilization, especially in contrast to the ferocious Stone Age into which Russia had fallen, or to the sleepy lands of the former Ottoman Empire.

Lunch in Paris, dinner in St. Petersburg" had been the kaiser's terse summation of German grand strategy.

Typhus was raging and even some at the Danish consulate were infected.... The pharmacies, running out of medicines, sold Orthodox amulets, and people were instructed to tie their sleeves tightly at the wrist so as to prevent lice from creeping in. Former ladies-in-waiting were sleeping on the floor, with eleven former aristocrats sharing one room. A feeling of doom was spreading all over the city, like typhus itself.

The Turks, themselves defeated in the Great War, treated the Russians surprisingly well and smiled acceptingly when their uninvited guests would rest on the stairs of mosques. They would even allow the Russians to enter the Hagia Sophia, which before the Ottoman conquest of 1453 had been the major cathedral of Eastern Christianity. Greeks and Armenians, old foes of the Turks, were still banned from this enormous mosque.

No one knows how many Russians in all fled the homeland. Perhaps one million, perhaps many more. We are interested here in seventeen, the senior Romanovs, the grand dukes and grand duchesses who escaped the revolution.

Minnie could believe in miracles but, unlike many of the Romanovs, she was not attracted to mysticism and the occult and would come to abhor these practices in her later years.

[Minnie] knew what the public wanted of her and relished her role as empress, playing it extremely well, taking an almost childish delight in brilliant jewels, stylish clothing and grand parties. People responded readily to her pleasure. Physically small, she stood with royal carriage and a vital presence, commanding any room she entered. Her public both admired and liked her.