The Life & Times of Eugenie Shakhovskaya

Okay, I'm going to write this as a rant. No editing, we're going to go all natural. Imagine I'm sitting across from you and you've just asked for the absolutely wild story of Eugenie Shakhovskaya. I'm about to tell it to you.

Okay, everything I'm about to say is going to sound like a lie. Everything is going to be crazier than the last thing. You should first know that a comically little amount about this woman is easily found online, but everything mentions these facts with such ease like oh yes why would it possibly be strange that this woman did this or she did that. So unless the internet and seemingly reputable sources about women in aviation history are lying to me, then this insane story is true.

Eugenie Shakhovskaya was Russian, if you couldn't guess that by the name. Her full name was actually Princess Evgeniya Mikhailovna Shakhovskaya (I'm using the english translation of Evgeniya). Yup, that's right, Princess. Her cousin was the Tsar. Anyway, she begun flying lessons when she was around twelve or thirteen years old and got her pilot's license shortly after. However, she gave up flying after her instructor died during a flight in 1913.

So young teenage princess Eugenie was flying a plane and -the facts are murky so I'm assuming here- she crashes. She's fine, but her instructor is dead, and she believes that it is her fault. So she swears off flying forever.

Then, not even a year later, her cousin, the Tsar convinced her to get back in the cockpit and fly reconnaissance missions in World War 1, making her the first female military pilot in history.

Again, facts are murky here, so I'm making the most probably assumptions (which are still straight insane). On one of these missions, she flew over enemy lines and was thus convicted of attempting to flee and therefore treason. This was grounds for execution. And I feel it important to mention that she was like 16 years old at this point.

Had she been anyone else, Eugenie Shakhovskaya would've been killed, but given that she was cousin to the Tsar, he sentence was softened to life in prison. However, when the Russian Revolution rolled around shortly after, she was freed along with all the other prisoners of the royalty.

Think this is crazy enough yet? You don't know the half of it. Eugenie could've gone and had a normal life. Hell, she could've even kept flying. Russia was always one of the most progressive countries when it came to female pilots. But instead of doing any of that, she became a chief executioner for General Tchecka in the midst of the Russian Revolution. Weird, right? That someone who herself so narrowly escaped execution could don it out so easily for other people. But no, Eugenie was having the time of her life.

She had discovered drugs. She became insanely addicted to narcotics. She was hardly ever not in a drug-induced delirium and, in one of these states, she grabbed a gun and attempted to shoot one of her own guards. Eugenie was killed in this mess. She was 31.

Eugenie didn't fly combat missions, but she is repeatedly described as the first female combat pilot. So the woman who holds this title and will always hold this title had a life this insane.

BUT no one even knows if it's completely true. Everything after that flying lesson wherein the instructor died is hazy. She could've stuck to her word and never flown again, but that's uncertain. The things that are known are: she was the third Russian woman to get a pilot's license, and she knew how to fly a plane.

History is hardly ever this careless with stories so great. They are usually kept under lock and key, easily organized in those verifiable fun facts that will pop up on a listicle on any given holiday that you still need to go to work for. But this stuff is just laid out, unorganized and unverified, like pins on a board with red string connecting them.

Sources: Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation by Eileen F. Lebow; GirlMuseum.org; Monash University; EarlyAviators.com