(no subject)

[cactuswatcher]

I haven't finished the book on Rasputin, but I'm making progress.

Thought I'd mention a few things today about the last couple books I've been reading. I'm not sure if it's a trend or just a coincidence, but the latest few books on history I've been reading have been heavy on regurgitating research and very light on making the history understandable. Some of it is carrying academic arguments into popular works of history. Some of it is trying to squeeze every last bit of info into a book to make it less likely someone else can publish it first. Let's face it, getting a publishing house to publish books on paper these days is getting more and more difficult. So why publish mass market books on paper that are going to be hard for most book buyers to follow? I think it's a simple matter that for a while large printed books have been selling better than thin ones. People see more book for the money maybe, I don't know. I'm just not sure that some of the books I've been reading in the last year or so would have been published a decade or more ago in the form I read them.

Notes on Russian royal titles: I'll talk about most peoples' gripe, Russian names, when I finish the book. For now I'd like to mention a few common terms that are odd or occasionally confused.

Czar vs Tsar: The first word used to be the preferred English spelling and it is, in fact, the Polish spelling. There is no easy way for an English speaker to pronounce it other than just knowing it. Most English speakers (mis)pronounce it as *Zar* anyway. Most English speaking writers will use the second these days. It may not be easy to pronounce, but it's possible.

Tsarina: This word is purely English. It is believed to have come from the perfectly logical German word 'Tsarin,' with a not particularly logical '-a' stuck on for good measure. The Russian word for the wife of the Tsar always has been Tsaritsa. We English speakers should stop using 'Tsarina.'

Tsarevna: Is a daughter of the Tsar.

Tsarevich: Is a son of the Tsar.

Tsetsarevich: Is literally 'the son of Caesar,' but in normal usage 'the Crown Prince' or 'heir to the throne.' Tsar Nicholay/Nicholas II's son was both Tsarevich and Tsetsarevich.

Frankly, to make matters easier I would advise English writers to refer to the later Russian Tsars as 'Emperor' or 'Empress.' It's also correct and a lot less subject to misinterpretation. I wish that using 'prince' and 'princess' for 'tsarevich' and 'tsarvena' worked as well, but sadly they do not. Knaz' the Russian word for 'prince' requires that (') which is liable to get lost, isn't likely to be pronounced correctly and in any case is not the correct term; Velikiy Knaz' 'grand prince' is correct but in addition to its other problems, it can also be translated 'grand duke' just causing more confusion.

Comments

[mamculuna]

But what about those other Russian princes who aren't children of the Emperor (and maybe we should call him Caesar!)--I get the impression from reading Russian novels that "Prince" was a title more like "Duke" for the English, that didn't necessarily imply being in the ruler's immediate family--Prince Andrei in War and Peace, for example.

[cactuswatcher]

Yes, Andrei is a prince and Elena, Pierre's horrible first wife, is a princess. Yes there was a lot inflation in the hereditary title department. Once upon a time 'Earl' was as high as it got in British nobility. Since then 'Duke' and 'Marquess' have been squeezed in from the French practice. The Russians borrowed 'Graf' from the Germans for count or earl. Natasha's father in War and Peace is a Graf. 'Baron' originally is also Germanic, though I suspect both the Russians and the English borrowed the title from the French.

The Russians never had a separate term for 'duke.' When their society began speaking French, the ancient title kniaz' was translated into French as prince, so we go from there. War and Peace begins in French with the dialogue directed to Elena's father, "Eh, bien, mon prince..." Like Earls in the time before William the Conqueror in England, there were many with the hereditary title kniaz' in what became Russia. The Velikiy Kniaz' was the ruler till Ivan the Terrible, who made himself the Tsar. Like Kaiser, Tsar is from Caesar, so it was the first of two Russian borrowings of the name! The Russians had a word for king (from Karl, as in Charlemagne), but never used it for their own rulers. I think it was Peter the Great, who decided to add Imperator, 'Emperor,' to his list of titles. Most English histories of Russia refer to the women rulers (the two Catharines, Anna, and Elizabeth) as Empress rather than struggle with what form of Tsar to use.

By the 1917 revolutions Russia was crawling with princes and grand princes.

[mamculuna]

Wow, fascinating! I guessed the general outline (that prince must be the equivalent of some lower French term and that tsar/czar was from caesar), but didn't know any of those specifics. I do know that the English earl is very old, found in Old English as eorl (as opposed to ceorl or carl, commoner), and I do know that duke is from the Roman dux--but no doubt you also know all that!

[cactuswatcher]

I should add that while in England only the oldest son inherited the title, in Russia all the boys and later all the girls as well inherited it. The women generally were known by their husband's title even if it was lower. As you might have noticed in War and Peace there wasn't a lot of difference socially between the Counts (Grafs) and the Princes. Grand Princes were all relatives of the Tsar, but not necessarily very close ones.