Harry, on the other hand, was happy to speak in whichever language was spoken to him. English was for everyday, French was elegance, and Russian became the language of drama and excitement. Russia was big. It was cold. And above all, it was great.

Peter the Great, Catherine the Great-Harry had been weaned on their stories.

“Bah!” Olga had scoffed, more than once, when Harry’s tutor had attempted to teach him English history. “Who is this Ethelred the Unready? The Unready? What kind of country allows their rulers to be unready?”

“Queen Elizabeth was great,” Harry pointed out.

Olga was unimpressed. “Do they call her Elizabeth the Great? Or the Great Queen? No, they do not. They call her the Virgin Queen, as if that is anything to be proud of.”

It was at this point that the tutor’s ears grew very red, which Harry found quite curious.

“She,” Olga continued, with all possible ice, “was not a great queen. She didn’t even give her country a proper heir to the throne.”

“Most scholars of history agree that it was wise for the queen to avoid marriage,” the tutor said. “She needed to give the appearance of being without influence, and…”

His voice trailed off. Harry was not surprised. Grandmère had turned to him with one of her razor-sharp, rather eaglish stares. Harry did not know anyone who could continue speaking through one of those.

“You are a stupid little man,” she pronounced, then turned her back on him entirely. She fired him the next day, then taught Harry herself until they were able to find a new tutor.

It wasn’t precisely Olga’s place to hire and fire educators for the Valentine children, who by then numbered three. (Little Edward had been added to the nursery when Harry was seven.) But no one else was likely to involve themselves in the matter. Harry’s mother, Katarina Dell Valentine, never argued with her mother, and as for his father…well…