In the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, in the middle of the night in July 1918, a firing squad forced the last Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children into a small, dimly lit room. The soldiers raised their rifles and fired. Bullets ricocheted off the walls, filling the tiny space with smoke and chaos. When the smoke cleared, the soldiers realized something was profoundly wrong.
Nicholas, Alexandra, and their son Alexei lay dead. But their four daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—were still alive, their bodies protected by diamonds sewn into their clothing. The stones had absorbed some of the bullets, but it only delayed the inevitable. The soldiers finished the job, and the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for over three centuries, ended in a bloodbath.
But the Romanovs were no strangers to blood and tragedy. Their story began in 1613, when Michael of Russia built the House of Romanov out of the ashes of the Time of Troubles, a period of chaos, usurpers, and collapsed social order. He was just 16 years old when he came to the throne, poorly educated and not particularly intelligent, according to one historian. He married Udoxia Strechneva, and the couple had 10 children.
As a young man, Michael got into a horse accident that left him with a leg injury not unlike Henry VIII’s. It was a seemingly minor ailment, but it led to a lifetime of trouble. By the end, he couldn’t even walk. In 1645, at just 49, he suffered from scurvy, dropsy, and likely depression.
In July of that year, he fainted in church and died just days later. The next decades of Romanov rule were far from glorious. Michael’s son, Alexis, began wars wherever he could. His own son, Fodor III, died childless, sparking the infamous Moscow uprising of 1682.
When brothers Peter I and Ivan V came to the throne as joint rulers, it looked as if the Romanovs were well and truly done for. Peter was only 10 years old. Ivan was older, but reportedly mentally feeble. With the help of powerful courtiers, the boy’s sister, Sophia, led a rebellion to become regent, murdering many of the young Sar’s relatives and friends during her brutal rise, even making him witness some of these executions.
Then in 1696, after both Peter’s mother and co-ruler Ivan died, Peter truly came into his own. Now 22 years old and standing at a reported 6’8 in, people called him a second Goliath. They would eventually call him Peter the Great, and he changed the Romanov dynasty forever. Peter dragged Russia into the Enlightenment era, instituting sweeping reforms, relocating the imperial capital from Moscow to the more European St.
Petersburg, and leaving an outsized impression on Russia forever after
When his mother was still alive, she pushed him to marry Udoxia Lukina,a minor Russian noble. Peter was never happy with the union, treating both Udoxia and their son, Alexei, with disdain. His relationship with Alexei was strained at best. But around 1718, it imploded.
To Peter’s fury, Alexei renounced the throne and fled abroad, an act Peter equated with treason. When Alexei returned to Russia, Peter locked his own son up for 5 months and tormented him endlessly, employing draconian methods including thumb crushing and limb stretching. On June 26th, 1718, the heir to the Romanov dynasty died from the stress of his injuries at the age of 28
But fate did have a sense of justice. Only a few years after he killed his own son, Peter the Great began having serious health issues himself and died on February 8th, 1725 at the age of 52.
His successor was a huge surprise. In his later years, Peter had fallen head over heels for the Polish Lithuanian commoner Marta Scronska,who converted to Russian Orthodoxy, renamed herself Catherine, and married the Sar. To the shock of some, it was Catherine who took the Romanov throne after Peter, becoming the first woman to rule the empire. Against all odds, Catherine became popular with the common people of Russia, who had spurned her when she was a mistress, but now embraced her as a ruler.
Tragically though, her reign was short. She was only in her early 40s when she took the throne. But just 2 years after Peter the Great passed, she herself died of tuberculosis. In a controversial move, some even say her final testament was forged, Catherine named Peter the Great’s unpopular and weak-willed grandson, Peter II, as her successor.
Peter II fell under the influence of a succession of power-hungry counselors, then died from smallpox at just 14 years old, long before he could have any heirs. With him went the last of the direct male line of the House of Romanov. It was Peter the Great’s niece, Anna, who came to the throne next. But where Peter II was ineffectual, Anna was terrifying.
As a child, she had horrible manners and a mean streak that led to the nickname Anna the Terrible. When she grew up, she took a vicious interest in hunting. In 1710, the teenage Anna married Frederick William, Duke of Corland,in a lavish ceremony. But during the wedding reception, Frederick drank himself into a stouper with Anna’s uncle, Peter the Great, fell seriously ill within just a few days,and then died, at least in part,because of his hangover.
Though Anna would try to find another husband, she never married again
As empress, Anna became intensely jealous of her cousin Elizabeth, who was not only her rival to the throne, but also incredibly beautiful. Anna let her jealousy out in horrific ways. Perhaps the most disturbing was when she cut out the tongue of one of Elizabeth’s lovers and exiled him to Siberia. For one reason or another, Anna especially hated her courtier, Prince Mikail Goliten.
As punishment for his very presence, she forced him to become a court jester and continually pretend to be a chicken. She forced him to marry her attendant, Avdatia Bjenova,likely because Avdatia was lowerass,older, and plain looking. After the ceremony ended, Anna dressed Mael and his bride as clowns, put them in a cage,and paraded them down the streets of St. Petersburg for people to jeer them.
After this ordeal, Anna brought the couple to an ice palace she had built for them, complete with frozen beds and chairs,and insisted they sleep there in the middle of the Russian winter. Though they emerged alive the next morning, Abdotia reportedly succumbed to pneumonia in the following days
In the last years of her life, Anna suffered through painful gout. Then in 1740, when she was 47, a fatal kidney stone tore through her, making her last moments agony. Anna had named her infant grandne nephew, Ivan V 6th,as her successor,with her closest adviser and lover, Duke Ernst Yan von Byron,serving as regent.
Like most of the things Anna did, this went terribly. With Byron deeply hated at court and Ivan V 6th unable to even speak yet, it was all too easy for Anna’s rival and cousin Elizabeth to take power for herself. Within a year, she had shunted Byron out of the way and thrown baby Ivan into a dungeon where he would stay for 20 years
Elizabeth was infamous for throwing debauched parties,often twice a week. At these private balls, Elizabeth would often throw masquerades,usually dressing as a man,partly because it suited her looks.
She was vain,and she didn’t handle aging well. By the end of her rule, she would reportedly throw a tantrum if she saw a woman more beautiful than her. On Christmas Eve of 1761, Elizabeth suffered a massive stroke,and slipped away on Christmas Day. This represented another ending for the House of Romanov.
Elizabeth had no children,and she was the last full-blooded Romanov to sit on the Russian throne
When her nephew Peter III took over,the rough streak for Romanov men continued. Peter III had grown up under the strict supervision of his aunt Elizabeth. But some might have said he needed the guidance. As a young boy, he was lazy,arrogant,and disturbingly cruel to animals.
He also exhibited signs of a strange emotional immaturity. He hated Latin so much that he banned Latin books from his personal library,and was reportedly obsessed with toy soldiers well into his adult life. It was perhaps fitting then that Peter spent most of his rule under the thumb of another woman. In 1745, he married Princess Sophia of Anhalt Zerst,best known by her future name Catherine the Great.
The couple detested each other,and had a deeply miserable antagonistic relationship. Peter once had his soldiers fire at Catherine’s nearby residence just to make her life a little more inconvenient. Catherine would deal him a much larger blow
Like so many Romanov men before him, Peter III was only a flash in the pan in the throne room. He reigned for only 186 days.
In July of 1762, Catherine shocked the world when she convinced the Russian court over to her side,and then forced her own husband to abdicate. On July 9th, she threw Peter behind bars,then declared herself Empress of all Russia. A week later, attendants found Peter’s lifeless body in his cell. Today, most experts posit that Peter’s death was no accident,and that someone orchestrated his demise
Catherine didn’t just depose her husband.
She also dragged out an old ghost from the palace. Decades earlier, Empress Elizabeth had thrown Ivan V 6th in a cell,and left him there. Catherine insisted there would be no rival claimant to her still precarious throne,so she let out the now 23-year-old,who was by then quite insane,and executed him. Catherine never took a liking to her eldest son, Paul,who was neglected from a young age.
Indeed, when Paul had his own son, Alexander,Catherine planned to name the child as her heir,and skip Paul completely in the line of succession. In November of 1796, Catherine’s servants found her lying on the floor,her face purple,and she quickly fell into a coma,and died. Though the reason for Catherine’s end is the biggest source of rumor about her life,with the most notorious whisper claiming she had died after having relations with a horse. The truth is she had a stroke
Despite Catherine’s attempts to disinherit him,her son Paul finally came to the throne.
But it turned out Catherine had a point. Paul wasn’t just largely ineffectual,and increasingly mentally unstable. His reforms were also deeply unpopular. Eventually, a group of disgruntled Russian aristocrats assassinated him just a few years into his reign in 1801.
Paul’s successor was Alexander I,the boy Catherine the Great had wanted to succeed her all along. He was also likely complicit in his father’s death. It was Alexander I who ruled when Napoleon performed his infamous and ill-fated invasion of Russia. Indeed, Alexander began the fire of Moscow to styy Napoleon’s military plans,and watched with satisfaction as Napoleon’s men succumbed to the harsh realities of Russian winter.
Alexander’s guilty conscience over his father’s death grew over time,and it now began to eat away at him. To soothe himself, he dove into mysticism,taking instruction from the religious adventuress Baroness Decrudiner,who was soon performing spiritual prayer circles that had the power to make national policy. By the 1820s, Alexander’s mental health began to suffer,and he became paranoid,and withdrawn. In 1825, he traveled to the south of Russia for his wife’s health,but ended up catching a bout of typhus himself.
After hours in bed raging with a fever, he died on December 1st at the age of 47
Alexander’s successor,his younger brother Nicholas,was a tried-and-rue military man who led Russia with an iron fist. The country was now riddled with rebellions,beginning with the Decemberist revolt in 1825. Although the Russian Empire had expanded massively by Nicholas I’s death from pneumonia at the age of 58,one historian claimed his reign was a catastrophic failure. And it would only get worse
Nicholas I’s son,and successor Alexander II was a devoted libertine.
He once romanced a young Queen Victoria,and fell in love with his eventual wife Maria of Hess when she was just 14. But for all his merry making,Alexander continued the inexurable march towards revolution. Although he was initially devoted to his wife in middle age,he fell in love with the 16-year-old Catherine Dolureova,a girl he had known since she was 11. When his wife died in 1880,he immediately,and scandalously married Catherine.
The uprisings that had always plagued Russia now went into overdrive during Alexander II’s reign,and he survived multiple assassination attempts. In 1881, fate finally caught up with him,and a well-timed explosive from a radical brought him to his deathbed
Somehow Alexander’s son,Alexander III,managed to hold Russia together for the next 13 years,even becoming known as the peacemaker for declining to start any new wars. In 1894, at the age of 49,he succumbed to Nefritis,and the throne passed to his 26-year-old son,Nicholas II. When people hear the name Romanov today,it’s usually Nicholas II,and his family they’re thinking of.
After all,it was with Nicholas II that the centuries old reign of the Romanovs came to its bloody end. When Nicholas,and his wife Alexandra discovered their only son,Alexei,suffered from the often fatal blood disorder,hemophilia,they searched desperately for a cure. Like Alexander I before them,they found comfort in a mystic,Rasbutin. Soon,and much to the horror of the Russian public,this holy man became a fixture in court,seeming to exert a dark control over the royal family.
This,coupled with the effects of World War I on Russia,pushed the populace to the brink. Rasputin was assassinated in 1916. Then the people came for Nicholas. In early 1917,the February revolution brought armed clashes,and mass demonstrations.
Nicholas II abdicated his throne just days later. Then he,his wife,and their five children were imprisoned in a house in Yucatarenburg. In July of 1918,barely more than a year after the revolution,the Bolevixs dragged the Imperial family into the house’s basement,and began shooting. It was only when the smoke cleared that they realized something had gone horribly wrong.
Nicholas,his wife,and his son lay unmoving,but their four daughters were still alive. Each of them wore several pounds worth of diamonds sewn into their clothing. The stones had somewhat protected the girls from the bullets,but it only delayed the inevitable.
It had been a long,winding path,but now in the blink of an eye,the Romanovs were gone
