Anastasia Romanov fate

[zezia]

You know I been thinking about Queen Anastasia Romanov and how messed up it was for her to take the throne of Irrisen. Here we have a young girl traumatized from her execution and the rest of her family taken to a alien world where magic, gods, and demons exist and she is excepted to rule over a foreign nation with a completely different culture, religion, and tongue. She is damn near all alone in a country filled with evil witches that hate her and the commoners that don't know what to make of her.

Its really messed up that the adventures who saved her made her Queen.

[keftiu]

Counterpoint: she’s smuggling cool Earth technology into Golarion.

Or at least somebody in Irrisen is.

[PossibleCabbage]

I imagine she realizes that she's probably better for the common people of Irrisen than the actual evil ruling class that previously was in charge. Like it might be rough on her, but she probably realizes that as much as the Jadwiga are leery of her, she's still Baba Yaga's choice for the throne and second guessing the queen of witches is hazardous to your health. She can certainly do more good in her current position than she could dead, or if she runs away from Irrisen.

I mean, was there a better choice for the crown at the end of Reign of Winter?

[Tender Tendrils]

zezia wrote:

She is damn near all alone in a country filled with evil witches that hate her and the commoners that don't know what to make of her.

Its really messed up that the adventures who saved her made her Queen.

I think it was honestly the best choice for her - if she had stayed in Russia and somehow become Tsarina, she would have.... Been a young girl traumatized from her execution, ruling over a technically not foreign, but actually very foreign to her (stepping out of a tsarist palace into the real russia would have been like visiting a different planet) nation with a completely different culture to the one she was raised in (again, the palace vs real russia thing), filled with revolutionaries who hate her and commoners who don't know what to make of her.

So the situation isn't much different, except the option I listed above wouldn't have been possible at all as she would be dead instead, so at least on Golarion she gets to be alive and ruling a strange country, and in a world that is a lot less sexist than the real world. Being ruler gives her a comfortable life instead of probably starving/freezing to death or being eaten by a roaming troll.

[The Raven Black]

I thought the PCs would still be around to support / advise her (I haven't played nor read the AP). And she has Baba Yaga's blessing.

If she has enough determination, she can go past all the things you mentioned and succeed as a leader. Like her ancestor Catherine the Great.

[Zaister]

keftiu wrote:

Counterpoint: she’s smuggling cool Earth technology into Golarion.

Or at least somebody in Irrisen is.

I guess she has some kind of hand in it, after all it is named for her.

[zezia]

Tender Tendrils wrote:

zezia wrote:

She is damn near all alone in a country filled with evil witches that hate her and the commoners that don't know what to make of her.

Its really messed up that the adventures who saved her made her Queen.

I think it was honestly the best choice for her - if she had stayed in Russia and somehow become Tsarina, she would have.... Been a young girl traumatized from her execution, ruling over a technically not foreign, but actually very foreign to her (stepping out of a tsarist palace into the real russia would have been like visiting a different planet) nation with a completely different culture to the one she was raised in (again, the palace vs real russia thing), filled with revolutionaries who hate her and commoners who don't know what to make of her.

Don't get me wrong her options on Earth were limited to say the least so her going to Golarion was the best choice of a shitty situation. Its just in the adventure path its never really mention on how Anastasia feels over the idea.

[Phillip Gastone]

After a name change and intense training, she becomes the Golorian version of Black Widow!

[zezia]

I just realized something. Won't Anastasia and her children suffer the same fate as the previous queens? As we learn from the Adventure Path Baba Yaga slaughtered the children first and then use the queen as a battery for her own life force. Why would Anastasia ever agree to become Queen? The adventures learn of this during the Adventure Path and I would think to tell her.

[Grankless]

The post-campaign material at the end of book 6 also has the player characters make Baba Yaga promise not to do that to Anastasia if she becomes queen. Presumably Dear Grandmother might look in to alternative methods to get extra juice during the intervening times.

[zezia]

Grankless wrote:

The post-campaign material at the end of book 6 also has the player characters make Baba Yaga promise not to do that to Anastasia if she becomes queen. Presumably Dear Grandmother might look in to alternative methods to get extra juice during the intervening times.

I believe that is only through a certain boon. Even then if you were Anastasia would you want to take that risk?

[Rysky]

She did yes.

She and her family were also killed back on earth already so…

[Meraki]

Funnily enough, that's exactly why Anastasia isn't queen in my table's version of Golarion. :-) They asked her what she'd prefer to do, and she was like "actually, I'd like to just kinda be a person without having to rule anything." So per the end of our RoW game, she was hanging out with her time-shifted twin sister (hey, what's one more historical liberty?), Baba Yaga's been replaced by "Mama Odette" (one of the PCs) and another PC and his Jadwiga boyfriend are ruling Irrisen.

Now I'm thinking "Stasian tech" in our Golarion is because she's become a scientist and is working to popularize it. :-)

[zezia]

Meraki wrote:

Funnily enough, that's exactly why Anastasia isn't queen in my table's version of Golarion. :-) They asked her what she'd prefer to do, and she was like "actually, I'd like to just kinda be a person without having to rule anything." So per the end of our RoW game, she was hanging out with her time-shifted twin sister (hey, what's one more historical liberty?), Baba Yaga's been replaced by "Mama Odette" (one of the PCs) and another PC and his Jadwiga boyfriend are ruling Irrisen.

Now I'm thinking "Stasian tech" in our Golarion is because she's become a scientist and is working to popularize it. :-)

That makes sense. Anastasia not wanting to rule over some foreign nation after what she been through? She remembers being executed with the rest of her family and then being resurrected (how is she going reconcile that with her beliefs), and learning that other gods and magic are real. One would think she might be a tad overwhelmed with everything.

[nightflier]

She would probably find it difficult to imagine a female ruler. Ekaterina The Great was long time ago for her, and her mother was Christian fundamentalist so I don't believe that RL Anastasia, young as she was, could even imagine becoming an empress (which is a shame, and things are a bit different nowadays in the Romanov family).

[Mudfoot]

Historically, the Romanovs were offered asylum in England by the British royal family, so she could have gone there and been (reasonably) safe and happy. It wasn't possible to get them to England during WW1 so it didn't happen, but I suspect some high level PCs could have arranged it quite easily.

[Pnakotus Detsujin]

Honestly, to me this plot never made sense.
Even from a mechanical point of view ... If we suppose that Anastasia is wearing her queen's regalia, then she's forced to wear a crown that give all non winter witches around her 3d6 cold damage at round.

Either Baba Yaga deactivated that function, or she strongly changed Anastrasia to allow her to bear such crown.

Again, i would honestly blame the crone. To me, Baba is allowing this just to mess with the world, hoping to have another of her escaped daughters to come out from hiding to reclaim their legacy from an unfortunately inexperienced foreign princess. Moreover, to me she's also aware that the world could have ended in 4718, so putting Anastasia for a few years on the throne was to her a minimal investment. Now that we've survived the doomsday dawn, the old, hateful crone may well change idea.

[Grankless]

Is that like a mechanical thing Elvanna had in 1e? It is probably easy to turn off given it would not be useful for Anastasia to get killed by her own crown or kill everyone around her. She's not evil, textually.

[W E Ray]

I don’t think Anastasia has to become a scared, traumatized, out-of-place, weak ruler. I think many people have a personality that would drive them to overcome the trauma and prosper. I see Anastasia becoming a powerful queen and strong personality.

And as a human who is mortal, well, at best you were gonna die in a few decades anyway but now you get to rule as an absolute monarch for a guaranteed 100 years?! — hell yeah!

I don’t see a problem with any of it.

I actually kinda don’t like the (very realistic) portrayal of her being a wilting trauma victim, sure it sounds reasonable, but equally as reasonable is her becoming strong and developing into a powerful queen.

[zimmerwald1915]

Pnakotus Detsujin wrote:

Honestly, to me this plot never made sense.

Even from a mechanical point of view ... If we suppose that Anastasia is wearing her queen's regalia, then she's forced to wear a crown that give all non winter witches around her 3d6 cold damage at round.

Either Baba Yaga deactivated that function, or she strongly changed Anastrasia to allow her to bear such crown.

Or gave her a major ring of cold resistance to wear with the crown. 3d6 cold damage isn't that much.