Throughout The Family Romanov, Fleming emphasizes the huge disconnect between the nobility—which consists of only 870 families, or 1.5 percent of Russia’s population—and the vast, impoverished Russian population in both the cities and countryside. As Fleming explains in the Prologue, this noble minority “own[s] 90 percent of all Russia’s wealth” (2), and turns a blind eye to the deprived majority of their country’s population. At some point, this immensely disproportionate, volatile society must ignite—and it does so, in the form of revolution. Thus, the gap between rich and poor becomes an impetus for change throughout the novel.

Fleming opens her book with the scene of an extravagant costume ball in St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, immediately followed by a depiction of the grim realities of Russian peasant and working-class urban life. Thus, Fleming quickly sets up the dichotomy between rich and poor she will continue to emphasize throughout her work. The author takes pains to emphasize just how much wealth and territory Tsar Nicholas II possesses: the tsar rules a population of 130 million over “one-sixth of the planet’s land surface” (3), and with a fortune valued at $45 million in US dollars, he is “the richest monarch in the world” (3).