With the fifth season release of “The Crown” on Netflix and a storyline involving the Russian House of Romanov, Westminster College noted Russian scholar Dr. Russell E. Martin explains the family connection between the Romanovs and the Windsors in an interview with Today.
Westminster history professor’s new book examines Russian royal weddings
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A new book by
Dr. Russell E. Martin, professor of history at Westminster College, explores how royal weddings in early modern Russia were choreographed to broadcast powerful images of monarchy and dynasty.
The Tsar’s Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia’s Rulers, 1495-1745 shows how the vast, ornate affairs of royal weddings reflected and shaped court politics during a time of dramatic cultural and dynastic change.
Using an array of archival sources, Martin shows how the rites of passage in these ceremonies functioned as dazzling displays of monarchical power unlike any other ritual at the Muscovite court. And as dynasties came and went and the political culture evolved, wedding rituals become important symbolic expressions of dynastic continuity and legitimacy. Martin also relates how Peter the Great remade wedding rituals to symbolize and empower his effor