The Twilight of the Imperial Eggs

By 1916, the Imperial workshop was making eggs out of steel, not gold -- a small, telling sign that even the House of Faberge couldn't shield the Romanovs from the war closing in around them. The 1916 Steel Military Egg and the unfinished pieces meant for 1917 were the last the dynasty would ever commission; within a year the Bolsheviks would sweep the whole imperial world away, workshop included. It's less an egg than an epitaph, and it changes how the other 48 in this collection read once you know how the story ends.