Promo: Death of a Princess by R. N. Morris
Today, I'm delighted to welcome author R. N. Morris to Ruins & Reading. We're showing off Roger's latest release, Death of a Princess, a murder mystery set in a Russian spa in the late 19th century. Here, Roger shares his inspiration for the series.
Death of a Princess is currently on blog tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club. Check out other fascinating articles, enticing excerpts, and reviews HERE!
The inspiration behind Death of a Princess
by
R.N. Morris
Vera Figner, a Russian revolutionary whose photograph provided the inspiration for my character Vera Vasina
Maria Oshanina, one of the founders of the People’s Will revolutionary movement, another inspiration for Vera Vasina
Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, whose photograph inspired my character Nadezhda Lapynova
Death of a Princess is a work of historical fiction set in the sleepy spa town of Lipetsk, Russia, in 1880. It features a group of fictional terrorists who pose as holiday makers while carrying out a deadly secret mission. But as so often happens, the human factor gets in the way and events quickly spiral out of control.
The congress of terror
The inspiration for my story came from a real historical event. In 1879 a group of eleven young people descended on Lipetsk. The ten men and one woman stood out from the geriatric invalids who comprised the resort’s usual visitors, thanks to their youth, physical fitness and striking good looks.
They posed as patients, even taking time out to lie in baths filled with Lipetsk’s famous healing mud. But they weren’t here for their health. They believed it was Russia that was sick. And they saw it as their mission to cut out the cancer that was destroying their country. The name of that cancer was Tsar Alexander II.
The eleven individuals were a diverse bunch, united by their hatred of the tsar and their impatience at the lack of progress made by Land and Freedom, the radical party they had recently broken away from.
Model revolutionaries
The sole woman was Maria Oshanina. The beautiful daughter of a wealthy landowner, she was by her own admission, thirsty for “the blood of the oppressors.” She provides the inspiration for the character of Vera Vasina in Death of a Princess, although the visual inspiration came from a photograph of another well-known female revolutionary, Vera Figner, who was not at Lipetsk.
There are two women in my group of fictional terrorists. The inspiration for the second, Nadezhda Lapynova, comes from a photograph of Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife. She too was not at the Lipetsk congress as she would only have been 10 at the time! There is something about her expression in the photograph - she seems both resolute and humane – which impressed me. The other two women’s faces seem cold by comparison. There’s a revolutionary certainty to their eyes, as if they are capable of anything. Well, those are just my impressions.
As you can see, the fictional characters are formed out of an amalgam of different historical personages.
Boating and picnics and dynamite
The real-life Lipetsk group passed their time peacefully enough, enjoying the leisure facilities that the spa town had to offer. They went boating on a reservoir known locally as Antichrist Pond. The Antichrist in question was Peter the Great, unpopular because he had swept away many old traditions and ruthlessly put down opposition.
Then, at a picnic party in a secluded forest on the outskirts of Lipetsk, the group got down to business. It was here that The People’s Will was founded, a new party based on statutes drawn up by the group’s leaders. As they put it in their manifesto: “Since the Government, in its battle against us, not only exiles, imprisons, and kills us, but also confiscates our property, we consider ourselves entitled to return the favour.”
Their political strategy was one of violence and terror. Their main political weapon would be dynamite.
At a further meeting, they moved on to discuss the primary objective of the new party, the overthrow of the tsarist regime. Effectively, they put the tsar on trial, reading out a long charge sheet against him.
A death sentence
In Alexander’s defence, mention was made of the reforms he had introduced earlier in his reign, including the emancipation of the serfs, which the terrorists approved of. The question was asked, do these good works outweigh “all the evil he has already done and will do in the future?” The case for clemency was put to the vote and resoundingly defeated.
The tsar was sentenced to death in absentia.
It would take nearly two years and several unsuccessful assassination attempts before that sentence was carried out, when People’s Will activists hurled two bombs at Alexander in St Petersburg. The first killed one of the tsar’s Cossack bodyguards. The second fatally wounded the tsar.
By 1881, when Alexander II was assassinated, the People’s Will had grown from a founding committee of eleven to a movement of 500 registered members, though the number of sympathisers was estimated to be at least ten times more, with cells in towns and cities across Russia.
The 1879 meeting in Lipetsk gave me the idea of placing a group of attractive terrorists in Lipetsk. But what happens in my novel is very different to the historical events. To find out how different, you’ll have to read the book!.jpg)
Summer 1880.
Lipetsk, a spa town in Russia.
The elderly and cantankerous Princess Belskaya suffers a violent reaction while taking a mud bath at the famous Lipetsk Sanatorium. Soon after, she dies.
Dr Roldugin, the medical director of the sanatorium, is at a loss to explain the sudden and shocking death.
He points the finger at Anna Zhdanova, a medical assistant who was supervising the princess’s treatment.
Suspicion also falls on the princess’s nephew Belsky, who appears far from grief-stricken at his aunt’s death.
Meanwhile, investigating magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky arrives in Lipetsk from St Petersburg, seeking treatment after a nervous breakdown.
Against his better judgement, Virginsky is drawn in to the investigation. But is he getting closer to the truth or walking straight into a deadly trap?
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