Well, when we last left Nicky and Alix, the long-awaited Tsarevich had just been born and things were starting to look up for them again. However, two things overshadowed the birth of little Alexei for both Russia and the Imperial Family, namely the Russo-Japanese war and the disease haemophilia. I'll probably post an essay about haemophilia on here later, but it's basically a heriditary disease passed through the female line of the family, but only affecting males. It prevents the blood from clotting and so sufferers often bleed to death from seemingly trivial cuts and blood can also build up in the joints, causing intense pain and swelling. It's a horrid disease and, unfortunately for the Romanovs, Queen Victoria passed it onto her son Leopold and two of her daughters: the ill-fated Alice (see the previous post for a little about her) and Beatrice. Therefore, Alix was also a carrier and Alexei, who appeared to be the future Tsar of all Russia, inherited the disease.
The other problem was the ongoing war with Japan, that began in 1904 and ended the next year. Extremely simply, Russia and Japan were both trying to build up their empires and, as Russia wanted an ice-free port and Japan wanted to keep its dominance in Korea, both countries chose war instead of more inconclusive negotiations. Now, Russia was a vast country with an army of around one million men, a reasonably large navy and looked as if it should easily wipe out the entire Japanese fleet in seconds and be back home in time for tea and cake (or whatever the Russian equivalent is.) Unfortunately for Russia, Japan had quietly been modernising herself and so what pretty much everyone thought would be an easy victory turned into a humiliating defeat...for Russia.
Naturally, there were howls of outrage from absolutely everyone and, when a peaceful march to ask the Tsar for better factory conditions, led by Father Gapon, a priest, turned into "Bloody Sunday" that was enough to spark a revolution. Not THE revolution, I hasten to add, as this one was stopped by a number of factors, primarily the October Manifesto and the creation of the Duma, Russia's first parliament (though it had almost no power and was dissolved at random intervals when it got too effective, it was still a parliament.) However, just twelve years later, there would be another revolution and there would be no stopping it that time.
Well, we're getting ahead of ourselves at this point, so let's get back to Nicky and Alix. As Alexei was destined to be the ruler of such an enormous and powerful country as Russia, his illness had to be kept a secret from the "dark masses" as Alix called the people (read on and you won't blame her either.) Therefore, no one but the family's closest friends and associates were told about his disease and Alix was driven half out of her wits worrying about him, as Alexei was a spirited boy who liked to play terribly lively games, which then resulted in bleeding and being bedridden for weeks at a time.
Therefore, when a monk called Gregory Rasputin (see to the left somewhere) turned up in St Petersburg, claiming to have healing powers, Alix immediately wanted to know whether he could have any more effect in curing her son than the doctors, other religious men, healers and all the many people she'd enlisted to try and help Alexei. It turned out that Rasputin could actually stop the bleeding when Alexei cut himself, though whether this was down to simply calming Alix (and therefore Alexei) or actual magical powers will probably remain a mystery. Either way, Alix quite understandably didn't want to send away the one man that could stand between her son and death, so his influence in Russia grew and grew.
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In 1914, war broke out in Europe. Involving very complicated matters involving Austria annexing the Balkans, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Germany threatening war if Russia fully mobilised her army to get rid of Austria in the Balkans, this would become known as The War To End All Wars.....until the Second World War at least. At first, the war meant a burst of patriotism in all countries involved and in Russia the people looked to the Tsar to lead them through this war a bit better than the one against Japan.
Sadly, after a few victories at the start of the war, more and more defeats befell Russia and Nicky decided that enough was enough and that the generals were incompetent (which most of them admittedly were) and that he would not take sole control of the army. So, in 1915, that's just what he did and...there were even more defeats. Unfortunately for Nicky, he had just given the people a scapegoat for all their troubles in himself and so he was even more unpopular than before. He had also made the fatal error of ignoring the Duma, which had originally supported the war and the Tsar but, after Nicky disbanded it again at the start of the war, it lost faith in him and thoughts turned to revolt.
Even worse, while Nicky was away on army business, Alix was left basically running the country. Fine, you might think, she'd probably do a reasonable job and all would be fine and dandy. Alas no. The Russian people immediately pounced upon the fact that Alix was German and, due to her acute shyness being mistaken for aloofness and a cold demeanour, what little popularity she had gained vanished. As if things couldn't get any worse for the poor family, another person, even more unpopular than Alix, was also running the country: Rasputin. As he could keep her son alive, Alix trusted him and listened to him so that eventually generals that Rasputin approved were appointed, as were ministers and he held more power in Russia than the people could stand for. In 1916 he wad murdered, but had to be poisoned, shot and then thrown into the river Neva before he actually died. Though this removed one threat to the Romanov dynasty, the damage had been done.
In February 1917, everything went wrong for Nicky and Alix. This time no manifesto or Duma would save them. However, I must stop here, as this post is becoming very long, but there will be one more post recounting the fate that befell Nicky, Alix and the children.
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