The love affair between Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra was one of the greatest royal loves in history, but they were also responsible for the outbreak of the Russian Revolution.
In 1844 they met at the wedding of Alex's sister Elizabeth and Grand Duke Sergey —"We love each other." Nikolai recorded the childish feelings of the time in this way; 5 years later, in 1889, when Alex and his sister were spending the winter in St. Petersburg, they met again, and a whimsical flirtation developed into a sincere love. In the autumn of 1894, Nikolai's father, Tsar Alexander III, died prematurely, and Nikolai, 26, inherited the throne at the age of 26. Only a week after burying her father, Nikolai married Alex, who converted to Orthodoxy and changed her name to Alexandra. After their marriage, they conceived four daughters in succession, until 1904, when the Tsar and Empress finally got their wish and welcomed their only son, Alexei. However, Alexei developed early symptoms of hemophilia in less than 6 weeks, and Alexandra kept searching for miracles that would change her son's fate. In 1905 she discovered the miracle-maker, the infamous Grigory Rasputin, who believed that the Siberian peasant's prayers would keep her son alive. In the years that followed, the uneducated peasant openly intervened in politics, frustrating the royal couple's loyal supporters, who drank endlessly in the capital, causing incalculable damage to the emperor's prestige.
Nikolai was controlled by his wife at the end of his reign and was almost unrecognizable
Contradictions were provoked during the First World War. Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, the Tsar's cousin, was the supreme commander of the Russian army. The Grand Duke made no secret of his disgust for Rasputin, which infuriated the Empress. In her letter to her husband, she repeatedly stressed that the grand duke had been plotting behind his back in an attempt to elevate himself and weaken the prestige of the Tsar. She urged her husband to remove her from office as Grand Duke and also recommended that she personally serve as supreme commander. She repeatedly reminded her husband that the grand duke was "an enemy of our friend (Rasputin) and would bring bad luck."
Nikolai had no military combat or command experience at all, and his decision to revoke Nikolaevich's command was shocking. 10 of the 13 members of the cabinet offered to resign in protest, but an enraged Nikolai ignored them. The King's mother, Empress Maria Fyodorovna, was even more utterly desperate, crying, "It's not like Nikki at all!" He is lovely, honest and kind. Instead, she rebuked her daughter-in-law, Alexandra: "She instigated everything." ”
Nikolai went to the front to fight, and Alexandra soon became the face of imperial power, and the tsar's decisions were often influenced and coerced by his wife. Alexandra promised Nikolai that "she would wear trousers in her long skirt" and was ready to run the country in his place. She always showed sincerity and was convinced of her intellectual prowess, and she worked hard to devote herself to politics in order to use her "abilities".
She rejected the fact that her husband was forced to end his dictatorship in 1905, and kept saying that a constitutional government that was responsible to the people rather than to the throne would "become the bane of Russia", that the Tsar should be "more decisive and assertive" and "assertive", that he should crush them all like "Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, And Emperor Paul!" However, whenever Nikolai expressed a different point of view than hers, she protested. In fact, she didn't want him to be more authoritarian, she just wanted him to be more obedient to her. She bluntly stated that Nikolai was "cowardly, but I am not".
Group photo of the Tsar and his family in 1913
For more than 20 years, the Tsar has endured this blame. Alexandra always made no secret of the Tsar's character flaws and always urged him to be the man she wanted. Despite her well-intentioned intentions, she actually hurt her husband's fragile self-esteem. In his last weeks in power, Nikolai wrote to his wife with the phrase "your weak-willed husband." In order to reinvent her husband according to her own wishes, Alexandra forced Nikolai to obey her completely.
Thus began the suicide of covering one's ears and stealing bells. Alexandra often mentions Rasputin in her letters, but she is the protagonist of the relationship between the two, how can the Siberian peasants dominate the hysterical queen and influence the government's decision-making? Rasputin was cunning, he could guess what Alexandra wanted, and when questioned by politicians and authorities, he was merely parroting and repeating the queen's views. Alexandra put on a sacred cloak of her ideas in the name of Rasputin and passed them on to Nikolai. Alexandra's practices are all tied to feelings, and she believes that her marriage has some kind of religious mission, but in fact it is just a mixture of spurious beliefs and abuses of power. Sadly, Alexandra had been living in dreams, and no one was strong enough to stop her.
On the surface, it appears that Rasputin is behind the scenes, but in fact Alexandra is the one in charge of the situation
Ministers were constantly changing heads, governments were reorganized for no reason, and these shocking and infamous farces led to a shutdown of the country. In the 18 months from September 1915 to the outbreak of the revolution, Russia replaced four prime ministers, five interior ministers, four ministers of agriculture, four ministers of religion, three ministers of war, and three foreign ministers. Nikolai seemed unable to deny any of his wife's demands, even though he knew it would have disastrous consequences.
All kinds of rumors have emerged in Russia. Before her marriage, Alexandra was a German princess, and many Russians openly questioned her loyalty and spread rumors that she was secretly negotiating peace with her cousin, Emperor Wilhelm II. There were also rumors that the Empress thought she would become the second Catherine the Great— another German princess who had come to Russia — and would murder her husband and usurp the throne as she did. Gradually, the revolt began.
It is said that the Royal Guard will soon arrest Alexandra, depose Nikolai and declare the young Alexei to succeed the Russian Tsar, and government officials are plotting how to hijack the Tsar's train and force him to take the throne to his son. When Empress Maria Fyodorovna begged her son to distribute Alexandra so that she would not continue her politics, Nikolai rudely let the Empress go away, and the Empress fled to Kiev. The grand dukes sat in the café and declared openly that if they wanted to save the dying dynasty, they would have to sacrifice the Tsar.
In 1917, a few weeks after his abdication, the haggard Nicholas II was in Alexander's Palace
On 23 February, Nikolai left the capital and returned to the front command. Food and fuel were scarce throughout the country, and desperate subjects lined up the streets of Petrograd, standing in the bitter winter waiting to receive a bag of flour or a bucket of fuel oil. Nearly 100,000 workers went on strike, shouting: "No war! Down with tyranny! A week later, the mood of anger triggered the revolution. By the time Nikolai returned to his palace, he had become a prisoner; more than a year later, the Nikolai family had died a silent and tragic death in a basement in Siberia.
(Source: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Empire)