author
Lili Den
1888–1963
A close friend and lady-in-waiting to Empress Alexandra, she wrote one of the best-known firsthand memoirs of the Romanovs’ final years. Her recollections offer an intimate, personal view of the Russian court as it moved toward revolution.
1 Audiobook
The Real Tsaritsa
by Lili Den
About the author
Born in 1888, Lili Dehn was a Russian aristocrat who became a lady-in-waiting and close companion to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. She is best remembered for her memoir The Real Tsaritsa, a personal account of life at the imperial court and of the last years of the Romanov family.
Dehn knew Alexandra and her children at close range, and her writing stands out for its direct, sympathetic picture of the empress. Because she witnessed major events around the imperial family before the Russian Revolution, her memoir has remained of interest to readers drawn to Russian history, court life, and eyewitness accounts.
Her life spanned the collapse of imperial Russia and the upheavals that followed. She died in 1963, and her work continues to be read as a vivid personal perspective on a world that disappeared.