I could read about the Romanovs all day long. Such interesting but tragic lives.
My 'royal I read all I can about' is Princess Alice. Her life just couldn't have been further from the fairytale princess image.
She nursed her grandmother, the Duchess of Kent, then was her mother, Queen Victoria's support through that.
She was the one who kept the court running while her mother mourned Prince Albert. Her wedding was shortly after her father's death and although she insisted it go ahead the way Queen Victoria was meant it was a thoroughly miserable wedding.
She then went off to Darmstadt to build her married life. There was tension between her mother and husband as her husband was too skint to build a home 'befitting' of a daughter of QV (and the people of Darmstadt weren't willing to pay).
Her husband went to war while she was pregnant, and the war put her on the opposite side to her sister Victoria.
Her youngest son fell out of a window and the internal bleeding due to his haemophilia killed him.
Her daughter Marie died of diptheria during an outbreak in which everyone bar her youngest child had it (she had been sent away to her Grandmothers). She kissed her son to comfort him over his sisters death and caught it herself, then she also died.
The tragedies continued - Her daughter Alix married the Tsar. One of her other daughters married Sergei and even though he was long dead and she a nun she was also murdered by the Bolsheviks.
Her grandson, Louis Mountbatten, was murdered by the IRA.
Such a sad lineage. Although her great-grandson, Prince Philip, hasn't done too badly.