Nicholas: Oh, Alix, You're Smiling! What At?

Nicholas: Oh, Alix, you're smiling! What at?

Alexandra: Oh, nothing. Life is misery.

"It seems, in the matter of love, that the two - the Archduke and the Duchess - were the wisest, yet the late Empress and the Archduchess Zita are more often held as the ideal, the pinnacle, as it were. But the romance of 'Sopherl' and 'Franzi', as they call each-other, is undoubtedly, even in such a subjective matter as affection, something that should be looked up to, perhaps even idealised."

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and future wife Countess Sophie of  Chotek von Chotkow and Wognin, playing tennis.

Nicholas: I have no idea what I’m doing at this point I’m too afraid to ask

Thinking about how Mrs Everdeen got Maysilee's pet bird after she died and in-narrative it's presented as a nice thing but it was probably because Maysilee's family couldn't bear to have it in the house, especially since she died because she was attacked by birds

i have my mother's eyes

and her hair

and her sense of humour

but hair changes

and so do eyes and a sense of humour

all i have to connect her to me

is things that will change

like everything does

and i suppose that is natural

but it is also tragic

because she will not change

the dead cannot

but i will

i will not always be the eleven year old i was

GISELE PIERRAT