Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener Discretion advised. It was
Speaker 1: a cold September day in eighteen thirty six when the
Speaker 1: police arrested an enigmatic newcomer to the remote Russian town
Speaker 1: of Crossnufimsk. The man looked to be about fifty something.
Speaker 1: He was tall and handsome, regal in comportment, and although
Speaker 1: he was wearing a peasant's tunic, he had ridden into
Speaker 1: town on a towering.
Speaker 2: Horse of the purest white. Outside the cross Neufimsk police station,
Speaker 2: a cold wind blew inside. The Russian police questioned the
Speaker 2: stranger relentlessly, where was he from, who was his family?
Speaker 2: What did he do for a living. But the man
Speaker 2: only said that his name was Fyodor Kuzmitch, he was
Speaker 2: a believer in the Orthodox Church. And then he offered
Speaker 2: nothing more. No family members, names, no hometown, no home,
Speaker 2: no suggestion at all about what his past might have been.
Speaker 2: He carried no identification. Even on penalty of twenty lashings,
Speaker 2: he refused to provide any further information about himself. He
Speaker 2: held himself high and calm throughout the entire interrogation. And
Speaker 2: so the man calling himself Fyodor Kuzmich was lashed. Then
Speaker 2: he was exiled to Siberia as a convict in the
Speaker 2: forty third Exile settlement at Bogotolsk. He was sentenced to
Speaker 2: labor at a vodka distillery, but within a few months
Speaker 2: the director meekly said that Fyodor Kousmitch didn't need to
Speaker 2: work anymore. No one quite knew why. Rumors flew on
Speaker 2: the streets of Crossnufemsk, quickly spreading along the winding roads
Speaker 2: of Russia as winter settled in. There was no way
Speaker 2: this mysterious stranger was just some peasant or monk. He
Speaker 2: was too well spoken, too high minded in his bearing.
Speaker 2: He had to have noble blood. Perhaps he was an
Speaker 2: imperial criminal in disguise, running from a wicked past. At last,
Speaker 2: a Siberian girl who had had one audience with the
Speaker 2: Tsar Nicholas the First returned home, my dear father, Fyodor Kusmisch.
Speaker 2: She said, you look exactly like Nicholas's brother, the former
Speaker 2: Czar Alexander the First. But that was impossible, saw Alexander
Speaker 2: the First had died eleven years earlier. The holy man
Speaker 2: went white. Then the normally good natured Cousmich raised his
Speaker 2: voice in shocking anger.
Speaker 1: Why would you say.
Speaker 2: That to me, he said threateningly to the Siberian girl.
Speaker 2: He stormed out of the room and spoke no more,
Speaker 2: And so began the Imperial Russian legend that never dies
Speaker 2: was the orthodox Saint Fyodor Kusmitch actually Alexander the First,
Speaker 2: former Emperor of Russia. Did the Tsar Alexander fake his
Speaker 2: own death and live out the rest of his days
Speaker 2: as a holy peasant. Alexander the First had been the
Speaker 2: cherished grandson of Catherine the Great. He was a handsome
Speaker 2: heir to the powerful Romanov dynasty. He was the Emperor
Speaker 2: of Russia for a quarter of a century, the victor
Speaker 2: against Napoleon Bonaparte's doomed invasion of Russia, and the complicated
Speaker 2: emperor later described by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace.
Speaker 2: And he had been a hardy, healthy man all his
Speaker 2: life until he died suddenly in eighteen twenty five at
Speaker 2: the age of forty seven. His death could not have
Speaker 2: been under stranger circumstances. The place of his death was
Speaker 2: a remote outpost far from the Imperial court. The supposed
Speaker 2: illness had no reliable witnesses and led to endless contradictory
Speaker 2: medical reports. The autopsy was delayed, the embalming was rushed.
Speaker 2: The coffin at the funeral remained strangely closed. The CSAR
Speaker 2: had been becoming more religious four years he was wrecked
Speaker 2: with guilt over the assassinate of his father, which had
Speaker 2: brought him to the throne. He spoke of wanting to
Speaker 2: abdicate by the time he hit fifty, and then at
Speaker 2: forty seven death by mysterious illness, and later in eighteen
Speaker 2: thirty six, eleven years after his suspicious death, a man
Speaker 2: with no past showed up bearing a striking resemblance to
Speaker 2: the supposedly dead emperor. It would be almost impossible to
Speaker 2: fake one's own death and abandon the throne and its
Speaker 2: forty four million subjects. To pull off a scheme like that,
Speaker 2: it would take someone with absolute power, immense motivating guilt,
Speaker 2: and an iron will. In other words, someone exactly like
Speaker 2: the forty seven year old Alexander the First. I'm Danish
Speaker 2: war and this is noble blood. The futures are Alexander
Speaker 2: Pavlovitch was born on December twenty third, seventeen seventy seven
Speaker 2: in Saint Petersburg, during the reign of his famous grandmother,
Speaker 2: Katherine the Great. Catherine was so enamored of her young
Speaker 2: grandson that she wanted him to inherit the throne when
Speaker 2: she died instead of Alex's father, Katherine's son Paul, but
Speaker 2: it was not to be. Catherine died in seventeen ninety six.
Speaker 2: When Alexander was eighteen, and his father, Paul took over
Speaker 2: as emperor. He was as unpopular as everyone had expected.
Speaker 2: Sir Paul the First was despotic and censorous, punishing people
Speaker 2: for every minor infraction against whatever random rule he had decided,
Speaker 2: like inviting too many people to dinner. He was paranoid
Speaker 2: about a conspiracy against him, like the conspiracy his mother
Speaker 2: Catherine the Great had orchestrated to take the throne that
Speaker 2: had once belonged to his father. Paul would lock his
Speaker 2: bedroom door at night so his wife couldn't come in
Speaker 2: and kill him. Alexander hated his father's behavior as emperor,
Speaker 2: so when a plot to assassinate Paul took shape, it's
Speaker 2: almost certain that Alexander knew about it. He almost certainly
Speaker 2: approved it, at least tacitly, but how involved was he
Speaker 2: in it, that's a different story. Almost certainly, Alexander hadn't
Speaker 2: fully imagined the horror of his own father, dressed in
Speaker 2: a night shirt, cowering as assassins strangled him to death
Speaker 2: in his own bedroom. It was a horrifying image that
Speaker 2: would haunt Alexander for the rest of his life, regardless
Speaker 2: of whether that life ended at forty seven or not.
Speaker 2: Alexander rose to the Russian throne in eighteen oh one,
Speaker 2: a handsome twenty three year old seemingly blessed by God
Speaker 2: to rule Russia. Napoleon, then consul of France, found Alexander
Speaker 2: equivocal and insincere, noting quote, something is missing in his character,
Speaker 2: but I find it impossible to discover what Napoleon was
Speaker 2: sort of right, there would always be something a little
Speaker 2: uncertain about who alex was inside. Like plenty of people,
Speaker 2: he was liberal when he was young and powerless, and
Speaker 2: became more conservative once he gained power. Alexander became emperor
Speaker 2: in hopes of implementing a con institutional government. Twenty years
Speaker 2: into his reign, that was out the window. He originally
Speaker 2: wanted to give the serfs of Russia a little power.
Speaker 2: Later he undid any early reforms. We're talking, Can you
Speaker 2: banish a Serf to Siberia forever just for claiming they
Speaker 2: were insolent? Yes? Or no? And in the end alex
Speaker 2: said sure. Once allied with Napoleon and the French, he
Speaker 2: later claimed a heroic victory against the French invasion. Eventually
Speaker 2: his father's despotic rules came back. Alex even instituted a
Speaker 2: military colony that determined marriages by lot, a system that
Speaker 2: feels straight out of a dystopian young adult novel. As
Speaker 2: his reign continued, he became more and more religious in
Speaker 2: his own way. He kept company with self styled prophets
Speaker 2: and prophetesses, but most interesting, he spoke of an internal
Speaker 2: church full of mysticism, different from the external church of
Speaker 2: his Orthodox faith. Maybe that was his insincerity, again, evidence
Speaker 2: that his external self was different from his internal spiritual truths.
Speaker 2: Or maybe it was some desire growing inside of him
Speaker 2: for a simple spiritual life detached from the only life
Speaker 2: he could ever have as the ruler of Russia and
Speaker 2: territories of Finland and Poland. As Alexander's reign stretched into
Speaker 2: the eighteen twenties, he became paranoid reclusive and obsessively clean,
Speaker 2: and like his father before him, he became less and
Speaker 2: less popular. He feared a coup against him. In eighteen
Speaker 2: twenty four, his illegitimate daughter Sophie died of tuberculosis at
Speaker 2: only eighteen years old, and Alexander fell into a deep depression.
Speaker 2: I receive punishment for all the errors of my ways,
Speaker 2: he said, and those around him exchanged glances. He must
Speaker 2: have been thinking of his murderous rise to the throne,
Speaker 2: the assassination of his father. He began talking more and
Speaker 2: more openly about wanting to resign the throne. In front
Speaker 2: of his younger brother Constantine and their youngest brother, Nicholas,
Speaker 2: alex said, I should tell you, my brother, that I
Speaker 2: want to abdicate. When the time has come, I will
Speaker 2: let you know. By eighteen twenty five, Alexander was forty
Speaker 2: seven and his wife Elizabeth was forty six. Elizabeth became ill,
Speaker 2: and alex became single mindedly obsessed with her health. She
Speaker 2: could not stay in the cold capital of Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 2: He decided she was coughing too terribly. His dear wife
Speaker 2: had to leave the capital, and he had to go
Speaker 2: with her. And here we find one more curious piece
Speaker 2: of instability in Czar Alexander's sphinx like character, the forty
Speaker 2: something man suddenly became so devoted to a wife that
Speaker 2: he had spent the past thirty years basically indifferent too.
Speaker 2: They'd gotten married when he was fifteen and she was fourteen,
Speaker 2: but they had always been distant with each other. They
Speaker 2: both had other lovers. Alexander had illegitimate children with at
Speaker 2: least four different women, and here he was forty seven
Speaker 2: years old, increasingly religious, openly wanting to abdicate, and committed
Speaker 2: to leaving the capital due to a brand new, deep
Speaker 2: and abiding love for his ailing wife. But whatever his reasons,
Speaker 2: the royal physicians agreed with his plan for Elizabeth. Winter
Speaker 2: in Saint Petersburg would be unacceptable for a woman in
Speaker 2: her condition. Perhaps the Emperor and Empress would enjoy the
Speaker 2: Crimean coast, or southern Italy or France. No, Alexander said
Speaker 2: they would go to Taganrouc, a small, unimpressive port city
Speaker 2: right on the shore of the Black Sea. The place
Speaker 2: made no sense to anyone but Alexander, but Alexander was
Speaker 2: the Emperor. What he said went so. In late summer
Speaker 2: eighteen twenty five. He kissed his mother goodbye and set
Speaker 2: off for to Gunroc, far from the prying eyes of
Speaker 2: the royal court. Perhaps he spared a glance back at
Speaker 2: the capital city as it receded in the distance. Maybe
Speaker 2: he was sorrowful or regretful, or maybe he only felt
Speaker 2: the steely grip of commitment to a decision that had
Speaker 2: already been made. Maybe he already knew when he departed
Speaker 2: that it was to be his final journey as Emperor
Speaker 2: of Russia. Here is where the story gets sticky. Interpret
Speaker 2: the following facts however you will. Are they evidence of
Speaker 2: an elaborate, planned fake death or simply of a tragic,
Speaker 2: sudden real one. Alexander and Elizabeth set off on the
Speaker 2: fourteen hundred mile journey south in separate coaches. On the way,
Speaker 2: Alexander stopped at a monastery where he visited a monk
Speaker 2: who slept no joke in an actual coffin. It's hard
Speaker 2: to imagine the Emperor of Russia could have seen that
Speaker 2: and thought it looked great, But who knows. Maybe he
Speaker 2: really was that sick of the throne. He reached to
Speaker 2: Ganrag when his wife met him there, they walked hand
Speaker 2: in hand like lovers on a honeymoon. Elizabeth wrote daily
Speaker 2: in her diary, and here are some facts about what
Speaker 2: Alexander was doing. Make of them what you will. One day,
Speaker 2: Alexander paid a strange visit to a hospital, where he
Speaker 2: asked a whole lot of questions about specifically the nature
Speaker 2: of malaria. Another day, he opened an oyster to find
Speaker 2: some kind of worm inside. Against all possible modern intuition
Speaker 2: and what feels like universal common sense, a doctor told
Speaker 2: him that it was fine, and Alexander ate the whole thing.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until November that the Czar went out riding
Speaker 2: and came back unable to stop shivering. Soon he was feverish,
Speaker 2: yellow skinned, tired, weak, and unquenchably thirsty. Elizabeth started writing
Speaker 2: fearful letters to her How could Alexander be the sick
Speaker 2: one now when he'd been so extremely healthy all his life.
Speaker 2: From here, listener, no one can get the story straight.
Speaker 2: The czar, who would later succeed Alexander, his younger brother Nicholas,
Speaker 2: destroyed many of the records of Alex's reign. So we
Speaker 2: have the testimony of a few doctors and attendants, plus
Speaker 2: Elizabeth's diary and letters to her mother. And here's what's
Speaker 2: really odd. They all give contradictory reports. Was Alexander refusing
Speaker 2: medication or was he obeying the doctors and improving. Did
Speaker 2: he pass a calm night or a scarily turbulent one.
Speaker 2: Did he collapse while shaving in the morning, or did
Speaker 2: he collapse while getting up from the couch in the evening.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine an actual illness so elusive and
Speaker 2: difficult to document. But does that mean that every doctor,
Speaker 2: attendant and empress there had been asked to become a
Speaker 2: fiction writer instead, each making up their own version of
Speaker 2: the progression of an illness that didn't exist. As the
Speaker 2: illness progressed, According to our sources, Alexander would wake from
Speaker 2: a near stupor whenever his wife was near. He would
Speaker 2: hold her hand, and one day he called Elizabeth to
Speaker 2: his room. They closed the door and spent six hours together,
Speaker 2: something that had never happened before. We don't know what
Speaker 2: they said to each other. Maybe he instructed her as
Speaker 2: to how to fake his death, or maybe they exchanged
Speaker 2: tearful goodbyes because he was dying or because he was
Speaker 2: leaving her by choice. Either way, her husband was going
Speaker 2: away forever. It's hard to imagine which would be worse,
Speaker 2: whether he was dying or simply disappearing his own free will.
Speaker 2: Either way, Elizabeth came out of the six hour meeting
Speaker 2: and wrote nothing in her diary. Again. She had been
Speaker 2: keeping a daily log since arriving in Taganuk, and after
Speaker 2: that she stopped. So all we know is that on
Speaker 2: December one, eighteen twenty five, Czar Alexander the First of
Speaker 2: Russia died. Whether the man himself died or merely his
Speaker 2: identity as czar is a different question. The autopsy, as
Speaker 2: reported to us by History, did not commence for thirty
Speaker 2: six hours, an unusually long time. Alexander had been kicked
Speaker 2: by a horse earlier in his life and had discoloration
Speaker 2: on his left leg. The body allegedly had discoloration on
Speaker 2: the right. Alexander's body was so putrified by the time
Speaker 2: it got to the embalmers that they had to smoke
Speaker 2: cigars to bear the stench. The Imperial family was invited
Speaker 2: to view the body only at midnight, and priests were
Speaker 2: barred from the room. Alexander's mother loudly proclaimed, yes, this
Speaker 2: is my son, but others seemed disturbed by the extreme
Speaker 2: state of degradation of the body's face, which was discolored
Speaker 2: and looked very little like the Alexander they had known,
Speaker 2: and throughout the funerary procession and the funeral, despite Orthodox tradition,
Speaker 2: despite the calls of the public, and despite the whispers
Speaker 2: about a faked death that were already passing through the crowd,
Speaker 2: the casket remained closed. Eleven years later, Fyodor Kuzmitch turned
Speaker 2: up on a white horse in a remote Russian village,
Speaker 2: bearing a striking resemblance to the Emperor, bearing a regal comportment.
Speaker 2: Despite his lowly status, and refusing at all costs to
Speaker 2: share any information at all about his true identity. He
Speaker 2: was a Startz, a Russian holy man, a word that
Speaker 2: sounds to English ears pardon my pronunciation, but when correctly pronounced,
Speaker 2: sounds incredibly close to Tsar. Fyodor Kuzmitch gained a following
Speaker 2: as a good religious man, and even in his lifetime
Speaker 2: people suspected that he was secretly Tsar Alexander, the First
Speaker 2: disguised by the passage of time and by the peasant
Speaker 2: garb he wore. Not only did this man speak French,
Speaker 2: not only did the peasant girl under his care enjoy
Speaker 2: a visitation with Tsar Nicholas himself. Not only did he
Speaker 2: know intricate details of the war between Russia and France,
Speaker 2: not only did he hang an icon of the patron
Speaker 2: saint of Tsar Alexander the First, but more strange rumors
Speaker 2: abounded him once he was visited by a young man
Speaker 2: whom observers took to be Nicholas the First's son, Alexander
Speaker 2: the Second, who would have been the Tsar's nephew. Once
Speaker 2: the holy man was in another room as a family
Speaker 2: read aloud historical words that Alexander the First spoke to Napoleon.
Speaker 2: According to the family's daughter's diary, a voice rang out
Speaker 2: from Fyodor Kuzmitch's quarters. I never said that the voice said,
Speaker 2: whoever he really was? Fyodor Kuzmich died in eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: If he was Alexander in disguise, he would have been
Speaker 2: eighty seven years old. On his deathbed, Theodor was asked
Speaker 2: one final time, who are you really, And, just as
Speaker 2: he had done when he was first questioned by police
Speaker 2: nearly thirty years earlier, he gave no answer. Instead, he
Speaker 2: pointed to a small bag. Here lies my secret, he said,
Speaker 2: and then he died. Inside the bag were six pieces
Speaker 2: of paper written in what seemed to be a secret code.
Speaker 2: Whatever the truth of the man's identity, Fyodor Kuzmich left
Speaker 2: it a cipher. He was as sphinx like as the
Speaker 2: Tsar before him. Fyodor Kusmitch was buried in a tomb
Speaker 2: inscribed with the words Blessed by God, the very same
Speaker 2: words that the Senate had used to decorate Tsar Alexander
Speaker 2: the first. This podcast has done several episodes about pretenders
Speaker 2: to the throne, but Fyodor Kusmitch was different. He wasn't
Speaker 2: claiming to be the Czar. If there was any pretending
Speaker 2: going on, it wasn't pretending to be the emperor. It
Speaker 2: was pretending not to be. But how could Czar Alexander
Speaker 2: have pulled off the switcheroo if he didn't really die
Speaker 2: in Taganrog at the age of forty seven, How could
Speaker 2: he have faked his own death, kept it a secret,
Speaker 2: disappeared for eleven years, and then reappeared to live out
Speaker 2: the rest of his long life as a reclusive monk.
Speaker 2: Believers in the legend have proposed some answers. The doctors
Speaker 2: and Empress at Taganrog would have been sworn to secrecy. Naturally,
Speaker 2: that would explain their inconsistent testimony about the Tsar's final days.
Speaker 2: Their testimony was all made up. The body in the
Speaker 2: coffee would have been someone else's, perhaps a servant who
Speaker 2: had died before Alexander's supposed death date. That would explain
Speaker 2: why the body was so discolored and decomposed, and why
Speaker 2: it smelled so bad for the embalmers, and perhaps why
Speaker 2: it had taken so long to arrange an autopsy in
Speaker 2: the first place. Where Alexander went for the eleven years
Speaker 2: before reappearing as Fyodor Cosmich is a harder question. One
Speaker 2: theory is that he boarded a British yacht. There was
Speaker 2: indeed one such ship in Taganrog, which set sail on
Speaker 2: the day of Alexander's supposed death. That would explain Alexander's
Speaker 2: choice of a port city, but one that was rarely
Speaker 2: used and thus less scrutinized. From there, the best that
Speaker 2: the historical rumor grapevine can speculate is that he may
Speaker 2: have gone to Jerusalem. After all, what more logical place
Speaker 2: would there be to spend eleven years in the kind
Speaker 2: of mystical, pious, and unbothered seclusion that he had wanted
Speaker 2: so desperately as Czar. Some rumors even say Elizabeth faked
Speaker 2: her death too, and became a nun called Vera the Silent.
Speaker 2: If you're hearing some skepticism from me, that's correct. As
Speaker 2: I was researching this episode, I was open to believing
Speaker 2: the legend, and I still am. But in the end,
Speaker 2: the whole thing seems to me like a lot of
Speaker 2: wanting to believe. The simplest explanation is that a depressed
Speaker 2: middle aged man in the early eighteen hundreds became ill,
Speaker 2: possibly after eating a bad oyster. But there's something kind
Speaker 2: of beautiful and sad about how people so deeply want
Speaker 2: the story of the deathless Monarch to be true. It's
Speaker 2: like cheating death yourself to believe that there's actually some
Speaker 2: divine power out there somewhere that isn't subject to the
Speaker 2: capriciousness of illness or injury. To believe that some people,
Speaker 2: even if they aren't you, even if they're only the
Speaker 2: rulers allegedly ordained by God, really are outside the grip
Speaker 2: of death. One person who believes in the Imperial legend
Speaker 2: was Alexis Tribetskoy, a minor Russian prince who wrote a
Speaker 2: book about the story. At the end of the book,
Speaker 2: he boldly states that he wrote it partially to drum
Speaker 2: up interest in a DNA analysis of the bodies in
Speaker 2: the tombs. It is the author's great hope. He wrote
Speaker 2: that an adventurous sponsor with an historical bent will come
Speaker 2: forward to finance the exploration. Tribetskoy died in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: never knowing the answer. Unfortunately, DNA analysis has been promised
Speaker 2: but never yet performed. But the pure strain of his belief,
Speaker 2: the boylike faith in the miraculous fairy tale, is almost
Speaker 2: painfully sweet, and it makes me want to believe too.
Speaker 2: It's a much better story. But when I look at
Speaker 2: the totality of the evidence, I can't quite believe it.
Speaker 2: I can't shake the fact that the whole legend rests
Speaker 2: on how odd it is that a healthy forty seven
Speaker 2: year old suddenly died during a historical period when no
Speaker 2: one questioned the death of his daughter at eighteen or
Speaker 2: the extreme illness of his wife the same age as him.
Speaker 2: Fyodor Kusmitch was almost certainly not low born. He was
Speaker 2: probably covering up someone that he had been, possibly a nobleman,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't necessarily mean he was Alexander. If Alexander
Speaker 2: didn't fake his own death, then his final weeks in
Speaker 2: retrospect are heartbreaking. There's something very sad about a man
Speaker 2: deeply in love with his wife at long last dying
Speaker 2: just as their love was kindling. He was open to
Speaker 2: abdicating the throne, ready to live the life he wanted.
Speaker 2: I think stories and fairy tales and hopes often come
Speaker 2: out of what is just too sad to be allowed
Speaker 2: to be real. But hey, what do I know. Tsar
Speaker 2: Alexander the Third, our Alexander's great nephew, supposedly hung a
Speaker 2: portrait of Fyodor Kusmich alongside a portrait of Alexander the First.
Speaker 2: Alexis Trebetskoy swears that the sister of Tsar Nicholas the
Speaker 2: Second personally told him that her family had no doubt
Speaker 2: that Alexander and Theodor were the same man. Leo Tolstoy
Speaker 2: wrote an unfinished story from the perspective of Fyodor Kusmich,
Speaker 2: confessing his true identity was Alexander and it's Russia. Don't
Speaker 2: forget Russian leaders are no strangers to censoring inconvenient truths.
Speaker 2: The Tsars that followed Alexander had every reason to suppress
Speaker 2: evidence that Theodor Kusmich was the czar. If Alexander was
Speaker 2: still living for another forty years, it would have thrown
Speaker 2: the entire reign of Nicholas the First into question, and
Speaker 2: then the reign of his son Alexander the Second, who
Speaker 2: became Tsar while Fyodor Kusmich was still alive. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: the president of the Russian Graphicological Society, a handwriting expert,
Speaker 2: compared the writing of the tsar and the monk, and
Speaker 2: she came to a stunn conclusion. The Emperor, Alexander the
Speaker 2: First and Fyodor Kusmitch, she said, were one and the
Speaker 2: same man. So who knows? I think maybe I just
Speaker 2: convinced myself that's the story of Alexander the First and
Speaker 2: the legend of his reappearance as a monk. But stick
Speaker 2: around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little
Speaker 2: bit more about other possibilities for who Fyodor Cousmich might
Speaker 2: have been. Whoever Fyodor Cousmich was, he was almost certainly
Speaker 2: not low born. Whether or not he was the Czar
Speaker 2: Alexander the First in disguise, He was probably covering up
Speaker 2: someone that he had been in a past life, probably
Speaker 2: a nobleman.
Speaker 1: But who.
Speaker 2: One option is a a nobleman named Fyodor Uvov, a
Speaker 2: cavalry officer in the Russian Wars against a Napoleon, which
Speaker 2: would explain the monks knowledge of the war. Fyodor Uvarov
Speaker 2: disappeared without a trace in eighteen twenty seven, along with
Speaker 2: all known portraits of him. Police always suspected that his
Speaker 2: wife knew something she wasn't telling, and she never fully
Speaker 2: committed to calling herself a widow. But the more tantalizing
Speaker 2: possibility is that Fyodor Kusmich was Alexander's own half brother, Simeon,
Speaker 2: the illegitimate son of Paul the First. Fyodor Kusmitch had
Speaker 2: been known to correspond with a count who had married
Speaker 2: into Simeon's family. There was even a member of that
Speaker 2: family who had been named Fyodor Cousmitch. Simeon the half
Speaker 2: brother supposedly died at sea, but there are no naval
Speaker 2: records of his life death. If he reappeared as the Monk,
Speaker 2: then Theodor Cousmitt would have been Alexander's half brother, which
Speaker 2: would explain his noble bearing and his undeniable resemblance to
Speaker 2: the enigmatic lost Czar.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grimm
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is created and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching
Speaker 1: by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and
Speaker 1: Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi
Speaker 1: Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain
Speaker 1: and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.