Tragedy, Time and Two Seats

Peter who first established the Russian city, Yekaterinburg, for his wife Catherine I.

Peter, often considered the greatest leader in Russian history. Peter whose explorer, Vitus Bering, first discovered Alaska.

Peter’s later successor, Catherine II acquired Crimea, the land first made Russia by Vladimir the Great.

The Alexander Tsars who lost both Alaska and Crimea.

Russia comes full circle with one leader, upon whom converges the unresolved royal histories, from Vladimir the Great to the son of Alexander III, who died in Yekaterinburg.

The history resolves through Vladimir Putin — and through another person, of an unfilled seat, and is a female.

The two seats that happen to resolve not just Russia, but by way of Russia, the world.

A’s family’s intersection of history in Russia occurs first in the 13th century, upon the Mongol invasions of Korea at the same time as their invasion of Kiev.

Centuries later in the 19th century, Nicholas II took the throne after his father’s death in 1894. The Korea Queen had been assassinated in 1895. A’s ancestor, the Korean ambassador to Russia, bonded with Nicholas II on the same — as the ones who both knew how Alexander III died, which was also by assassination.

The Ambassador thanked Nicholas II, but mostly his now-widowed mother Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna, for allowing the survivors of Queen’s immediate family, to take refuge in the Russian embassy in Seoul. Not just on behalf of the Queen’s married-into family (Joseon) but on behalf of the Queen’s birth family. The family without which there was no Queen of that family. Nor for that matter, a sovereign legitimacy in Joseon into whom the Queen married.

A few year later, the Romanovs who needed refuge as Russia was now being overturned in the Bolshevik Revolution. Angela’s family, with great pain, could do nothing. Korea had since been overtaken by Japan.

The indebtedness, carried over.

A seat unfilled, the one correctly infers to be the one of A, is also the one of a great sadness and tragedy.

However in the generations since 1895 to today, and in the generation born with A, takes on a new form.

The one that converges a history going back many centuries before 1895, and even beforehand. To the 13th century, through Mongol invasion times, to Kiev, and also to the Holy Land where he traveled.

And before hand, to the times wondered about in the Holy Land — is there a holier land, than the one in Jerusalem?

The fantastical-sounding journey that nonetheless underlies the great quest of many powerful Americans, those seeking a holy grail throne for themselves. Thus did they encircle A, trying to claim it. I.e., to use her for their personal enrichment.

A who obviously said no to all of them. Chaos ensued, triggering an event a continent on the other side of two oceans.

In the generations since 1895, and beforehand, the sadness, tragedy, grief and history, take on new form. With A, and a person on the other side of two oceans, the quest of a different kind of question.

The one resolving grief and sadness, yes. The kind known only by those of two nations that lost their entire nations at the turn of the century.

The grief, sadness, tragedy, that could cause people to be resigned, and give up.

Or the kind that, after some time has passed, can see, and feel, the matter in larger context.

The question of why — and why we continue.

The answer to the question, why we are here at all.