Romanov: Encyclopedia II - Romanov - Downfall

Romanov - Downfall

All these emperors (except Alexander III) had German-born consorts, a circumstance that cost the Romanovs their popularity during World War I. Nicholas's wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, although devoutly Orthodox, was particularly hated by the populace.

Alexandra Fyodorovna brought to the Romanov family a mutated gene of her grandmother, Queen Victoria, which was responsible for her son's (the long-awaited heir to the throne, Alexei) hemophilia. Nikolai and Alexandra had 4 daughters (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia).

When the Romanov family celebrated the tercentenary of its rule, in 1913, the solemnities were clouded by numerous bad omens. Our Lady of St Feodor, a patron icon of the family, blackened so badly that the image has been hardly visible ever since. Grigory Rasputin proclaimed that the Romanovs' power wouldn't last for a year after his death, and he was murdered by one of the Romanov Grand Dukes several months before the February Revolution of 1917, which actually dethroned Nikolai II.

Bolshevik authorities killed the last Romanov monarch, Nicholas II of Russia, and his immediate family in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918. Ironically, the Ipatiev House has the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, where Mikhail Romanov had been offered the Russian crown in 1613. The spot where the Ipatiev House once stood has recently been commemorated by a magnificent cathedral "on the blood". After years of controversy, Nikolai II and his family were proclaimed saints by the Russian Orthodox church in 2000.

In 1991, the bodies of Nicholas II and his wife, along with three of their five children, were exhumed from their graves of over 70 years. The fact that two bodies were not there leads many people to believe two Romanov children escaped the killings. Ever since there has been great debate as to which two children's bodies are missing. A Russian scientist made photographic superimpositions and determined that Maria and Alexei weren't accounted for. Later, an American determined from dental and other remnants that it was Anastasia and Alexei that were missing. A great mystery surrounds Anastasia, and a 1997 full length film by Twentieth Century Fox has even been made suggesting she lived.

After the bodies were exhumed in 1991, they sat in labratories for years while Russians fought over where they should be buried, Yekaterinburg or St. Petersburg. A Russian commission eventually chose St. Petersburg and the last known direct Romanovs were buried alongside their ancestors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Downfall", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki