From Rasputin’s rural origins, Beevor turns to the stultifying atmosphere of the imperial court, where Nicholas, a small-built man, was towered over by his father, Tsar Alexander III, literally and metaphorically. The father had been driven to repress revolutionaries because they had assassinated his own father, Alexander II, who had emancipated Russia’s serfs and sought to introduce reforms that would preserve the monarchy as an institution. Thus, the seeds of distrust between the sovereign and his people were already present. As heir apparent, Nicholas’s lack of self-confidence foreshadowed the “disastrous mix of obstinacy and indecision” that became a hallmark of his reign. A reign that began with tragedy: On Nicholas’s coronation, there was a stampede that killed over 2,000 people. That evening, misled about the scale of the tragedy, the Tsar and his newly-wedded wife, Alexandra, attended a ball. Beevor writes, “He was dubbed ‘Nicholas the Bloody’ before his reign had scarcely begun.”
Optics mattered. “The Romanov priority was display.” As Empress of All Russias, when Alexandra visited England, her grandmother, Queen Victoria, who had brought her up, seeing her display “some stupendous Romanov jewels”, murmured, “Now Alix, don’t get too proud.” Haughtiness coupled with an insistence on such formalities as “married ladies should always kiss her hand” ensured Alexandra’s unpopularity. In private, however, the desperation to bear a son after four daughters plagued the Tsaritsa. Her anxiety deepened with the birth of a boy, Alexei, who was born with a genetic illness, haemophilia, that caused sudden and potentially fatal bleeding repeatedly. The imperial family were terrified that if Alexei were to die, the dynasty would collapse. His illness thus became one of the biggest state secrets of that era.
