The 1918 execution of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra at the hands of Bolsheviks in Yakterinberg has coloured popular understanding and many histories of the Romanov family’s life. Now another chapter has been opened in Romanov mythology with news that Russian investigators are exhuming their bodies to work out whether new remains found in 2007 are those of two of their children, Alexei and Maria.
Tsar Nicholas was a young man unsuited to autocratic rule, but utterly determined to uphold his father’s strict authoritarian regime regardless of the need to reform a modernising Russia. The Tsarina was a devoted wife, tormented by the ill-health of her haemophiliac son, embroiled in a scandalous relationship with advisor Grigori Rasputin and keen to make every effort to support her weak husband in his aim of preserving the autocracy.
Their lives seem dominated by ominous portents and ill-judged decisions, relentlessly propelling them towards their inevitable fate after the 1917 revolution. In 1896, the Tsar’s coronation was overshadowed by the Khodynka field tragedy when thousands were killed and injured – the royal couple made matters worse by attending a lavish ball later that evening. In 1905, Nicholas granted but then limited democratic reforms. And during World War I, he became commander-in-chief while Alexandra took charge on the home front, advised by Rasputin.
