Clare McHugh

Clare McHugh is the author of two historical novels, A Most English Princess and The Romanov Brides. After graduating from Harvard College with a degree in European history, she worked for many years as a newspaper reporter and later magazine editor. The mother of two grown children, McHugh currently lives with her husband in London and in Amagansett, New York.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I feel so lucky to have landed on the perfect title for this novel! What better title than The Romanov Brides for a book that brings to life on the page the momentous decisions made by two German princesses, the sisters Ella and Alix of Hesse, to marry into the Romanov family, imperial rulers of Russia.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think that my teenage self would be delighted to see that I achieved my dream of publishing an historical novel. In fact, The Romanov Brides is my second. In 2020 I published A Most English Princess, about Vicky, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings are so challenging. So much about a story’s scope, intention, and tone is established in its first chapters, and must be perfectly rendered in order to draw the reader in and retain his or her attention. I find it particularly difficult to choose where in a character’s life to begin, because I love to write childhood scenes. But a little of that can go a long way for readers! For The Romanov Brides I ended up removing 15,000 words from the book’s first section so as to “cut to the chase” of the action more rapidly. I must have rewritten the initial chapters twenty times over. By contrast, I find the second half of any book easier to write because once the first half is in good shape, one is set up unspool the action deftly and end it.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

Both Ella and Alix are characters with whom I share personality traits—inevitably so, I believe! They are my creations, although I depended on their letters and the contemporaneous memoirs written by others to render them historically accurate. Like Ella, I tend to be a people pleaser (even more so when I was younger.) I am attracted to an artistic temperament, as she was, and once I love a person, I am, like Ella was, loyal to the hilt! Ella has a capacity for faith that I lack and a kind of pride that comes with royal status which is both out of reach to me, and, I fear, unappealing. But characters are never perfect, and if they are, they are flat and boring. I share Alix’s longings for love and security, and her desire to be understood. Her stubbornness, her iron will, and her insistence on being right I certainly relate to—although having lived much longer than Alix did, I hope I have learned to soften these tendencies!

Visit Clare McHugh's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Romanov Brides.

--Marshal Zeringue