Living Banner: A novel featuring Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich Romanov
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Romanov
1878 – 1918
Living Banner immerses the reader into the confusing last years of Imperial Russia.
In 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the Romanov throne in favor of his younger brother. According to the Pauline Laws of Succession, Grand Duke Michael then became the next, and last, emperor of Russia–Tsar Michael II.
He was also the first Romanov to be murdered by the Bolsheviks because Lenin feared popularity with the Russian people.
Living Banner relates the story of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich Romanov, Emperor Nicholas II’s designated heir, who insisted on offering the Russian people the opportunity to transition from an autocratic government to a constitutional monarchy based on a public referendum. Although Lenin’s Bolsheviks crushed the plans for a November 11, 1917 election by seizing power in October 1917 (9 days before the election), Living Banner completes Michael’s dream of a new Russia a century later by placing a Romanov on the throne of The Sovereign Nation of Russia governed a constitutional monarchy.
Living Banner parallels Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich’s life during the last days of Imperial Russia with the present-day story of Dr. Steve Swete, an American history professor, who discovers his murdered father was Grand Duke Michael’s son and heir to the Romanov dynasty. Steve refuses to acknowledge his Romanov ties but is forced to escape from his comfortable life in New York’s Adirondack Mountains after unscrupulous Russian Federation officials target him as the new heir. Clandestine Orthodox clergy and loyalists take action to ensure Steve’s survival by falsifying his death and concealing him and his wife on Kauai and later in Salzburg. After surviving an attempted poisoning and a 100-mile ocean escape from Kauai to Oahu through a treacherous storm, Steve embraces his heritage and successfully emerges as Stepan I in Russia’s new constitutional monarchy.