WEBVTT - S4 – 1: In Search of a Friend 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:04.360 Welcomed unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:10.440 He was a peasant, born into a family of peasants, 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.280 but soon his fame would spread across the great empires 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.880 of the modern world. He would be known for his 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:21.120 mysterious power, a power gained in the shadows. He had 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.040 studied the butcher's trade. He had studied medicine, but he 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.160 abandoned both. Those would not be the pathway to immortality, 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:34.479 and he was after more than earthly things. Maybe you 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:36.920 see what he did gain was the power to heal, 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:41.800 a mystical power born of an invisible force. He studied 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:45.479 the occult and mysticism, and soon was treating patients with 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:49.640 psychic fluids and astral forces, and he had a potent 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.080 effect on women. When writers caught wind of him, they 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:57.240 called him the Cagliostro of our Age, after the Italian 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:01.160 magician and psychic healer of a century before. Are clearly 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.200 he was taking his place in history, and that was 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:08.880 all before he met the Romanovs. To anyone in the 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:12.000 court circles of Imperial Russia in those years, it would 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:15.760 have been no surprise that Melitsa made the introduction. She 0:01:15.880 --> 0:01:19.680 had married into the branching Romanov family tree and brought 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:23.360 her dark fascinations with her. Now she was taken with 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.000 this occult healer, and by all accounts she insisted that 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.640 her cousin, Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, meet the man, 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.600 And we know that in nineteen o one Nicholas did 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.399 just that. In fact, in his diary for that day, 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:42.040 Nicholas called him remarkable. The man's other worldly powers brought 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:44.600 him back to the powers of this world. After all, 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.080 for a peasant with mystical talents, it was the opportunity 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.880 of a lifetime. Soon Nicholas and Alexandra were meeting with 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:55.880 him together. Sometimes Melissa joined them, or even widened the 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.160 circle to other close relatives. In fact, it wouldn't be 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:01.640 long before you would say that the Imperial couple of 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:06.000 Russia were obsessed. They would gather around this occult teacher 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.400 and hang on his every word. They would listen for hours. 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.480 One historian even writes that the Czar and Czarina of 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:16.639 Russia reached the height of religious ecstasy in his presence. 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:20.200 In fact, in their private conversations, Nicholas and his wife 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.680 Alexandra started to refer to him secretly as our friend, 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.320 and then they introduced him to their daughters. He started 0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.600 to pray with them in their bedroom. By now you 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:34.079 can probably guess the man's identity. A royal favorite and 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:37.160 a cult healer in the court of the last Romanovs. 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.800 That's right, I mean Philippe Nazir Vakad. And if that 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:44.200 name is a surprise, it's because once we peel back 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.120 the layers of legend and myths around the history we think, 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.399 we know there's always something far more dark and far 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:54.040 more fascinating to reveal underneath. And if there's one time 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.920 in place to find hidden and destructive energies humming behind 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.560 a veil of lies, it's the doomed court of the 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:32.160 last Romanovs. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. They called 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.000 her Sunny. She was a bright spark in her family's life. 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.400 She was raised with tenderness and whimsy, and all of 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:41.800 that seemed to flow out from the little girl too. 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.200 She was also determined and independent. Before she was six, 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.600 little Alex was already driving horse drawn carriages. It was 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.320 like she was born to take the reins. After all, 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:57.120 she was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria she had her 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:02.360 mother's name, Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Alice, married into German nobility. 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.120 In the heart Alice became Alex when the name was 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.240 handed down to the newborn. Along with her dimpled cheeks 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:13.360 and radiant curls, the sunshine of her personality was needed 0:04:13.400 --> 0:04:16.280 in the family. When Alex was still an infant, her 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.560 older brother Fretty, had fallen out from a window. He 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:23.000 might have survived the bumps and bruises, but he had hemophilia. 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:26.719 Any small injury could take his life. After the fall, 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.280 they lost him. It was the darkness in which Sonny 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:34.680 grew up. By all accounts, her parents weren't lavish people, 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.040 despite their social rank. In fact, one thing that is 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:40.120 often said about her mother is that she took a 0:04:40.160 --> 0:04:43.400 deep interest in nursing, and not just from the death 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:45.880 of her son. In fact, when she was still a girl, 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.159 she had been inspired by Florence Nightingale as Princess and Hessa. 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:53.839 She found a hospital and even worked with Nightingale herself 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:57.279 to train the nursing staff. Her daughters followed along on 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.560 the visits to patients. If young Alex had a strong will, 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:04.200 she also had a natural curiosity. No doubt those early 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.840 trips stuck with her. But if her earliest years were 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.880 a bright dance of childish curiosity and simple pleasures, even 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:16.279 greater tragedy would eclipse those years. A tragedy called diphtheria. 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:19.640 It burned through the Hessa household, and before its murderous 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.040 work was done, her mother and one of her sisters 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:26.359 were dead. Little Alex was just six years old. In 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:29.000 the years that followed, Alex went from one house of 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:32.200 grief to another. A royal life was a mobile one, 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.720 and Alex traveled frequently, not least because now that her 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.120 mother was gone, it was her grandmother who directed her upbringing. 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:42.840 Even when she was at home in Darmstadt. Every aspect 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:46.200 of her training and education was selected and overseen through 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:50.159 a massive string of letters from England. Under Queen Victoria's 0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:54.480 watchful eye. Alex was polished and pruned in the English style. 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.760 So it was no small thing when Queen Victoria cut 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.160 wind of a romance in her family which she did 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.359 not approve of. Alex's older sister Ella had fallen for 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.400 a cousin. That wasn't the problem, though. It's who the 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:11.200 cousin was. The Russian Grand Duke Sergey, Alexandrovitch. Nothing that 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.680 Victoria could do would stop the marriage, though, But the 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.599 match between Ella and Sergey wasn't the only one struck 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:20.240 at their wedding, because that's where twelve year old alex 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:24.839 first caught the eye of another Russian prince, Sergey's nephew Nicholas. 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.000 That only sixteen he had been seated with Alex and 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:31.440 her sister's over dinner, and if his diaries are anything 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.440 to go by, she made an impression. All it took 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.719 was one meeting for her to become his little darling. 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.200 It wasn't a secret though. Just a few days after 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.279 their meeting they exchanged letters, the first of many that 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:47.320 would follow. It would be a long five years before 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:49.839 the pair would see each other again, but a lifelong 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.040 passion had begun. Not that they had an easy road, 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.680 you see, if Queen Victoria objected to one granddaughter marrying 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.440 into Russia, there was no way she could be pleased 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:01.600 by her face of her returning in the same direction. 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:06.760 Here's historian Helen Rappaport to tell us more. Queen Victoria 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:11.120 was pretty adamant initially at the thought of her precious 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:17.680 granddaughter Alexandra Alicki, as they called her, marrying into the 0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:23.040 Russian throne. Queen Victoria was absolutely against the idea of 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:29.440 Alicki marrying Nikki young Nicholas at Saryevitch of Russia because 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:32.800 she felt that Russia was very unstable, very unsafe, I mean, 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:35.720 even then by the eighteen eighties and nineties there was 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:40.960 his history of political assassination and um, you know, Nicholas's 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:45.240 own grandfather had been murdered by revolutionaries, so they had 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.880 to overcome quite a lot of obstacles. Victoria was right, 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:52.960 of course, but her foresight about royal life in Russia 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:56.600 wasn't enough to change Alex's mind. After all, she was young, 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.920 bald end soon enough in love. Victor Maria did everything 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:04.000 she could, more and more often. She invited Alex to 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:07.040 visit England to stay with her there to spend time 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.520 with her British cousin Eddie. But Alex wouldn't be tempted 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:14.120 by Queen Victoria's throne or air. She followed her own 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:18.640 instincts wherever they would lead, like one visit when she 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:21.480 was traveling through Wales with Queen Victoria and they stopped 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:23.920 to survey the coal mines. It was the place where 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.120 England's empire turned the earth into raw fuel of the 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.960 Industrial Revolution. It was, in a sense, the birthplace of 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:34.800 the empire's raw power. Alex's grandmother hoped the girl would 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:37.560 fill her head with thoughts of inheriting the English crown, 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:41.280 that all this power could be hers, But Alex was 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:46.439 intrigued by something else instead, the minds themselves. She insisted 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.560 on seeing more than the surface. On her demand, she 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.920 was taken down to walk grimy tunnels, to feel the 0:08:52.960 --> 0:09:04.760 cool air underground, to experience the darkness, or herself never 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.840 forget who you are. Those can be inspiring words. They 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:11.520 can lift us up in moments when we feel confused 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:13.839 or at a loss. They can be a reminder to 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.319 hold fast to what is good and true about our 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.640 place in the world. For Nicholas, they were a warning. 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:23.240 They came to him from his mother in the days 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.920 when he was finally becoming a man. But what she 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:28.800 meant was, do not forget that one day you will 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:31.720 be emperor. You see, his father had just become Czar 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.840 of Russia. Nicholas was now the tsar vich the crown prince, 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:39.200 the next in line. The problem was that Nicholas loved 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.800 nothing more than being just one of the guys. In particular, 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.240 he loved the closeness and camaraderie of the military. As 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:48.800 a colonel in the horse Guards, he loved the drills, 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.040 the meals together with his fellow officers, and not to 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:54.920 mention the after hours the knights out on the town. 0:09:55.400 --> 0:09:58.160 There was a comfort and a sense of belonging there, 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:01.200 belonging that he had never felt growing up in his 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:06.040 father's shadow, and that shadow was long. You see, Nicholas's father, 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:10.160 Alexander the Third, was an enormous man. His feats of 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:14.320 physical strength were his calling card. He was commanding and severe, 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:18.000 and unlike the Romanovs that came before him, he was pious, 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.160 strictly devoted to his marriage and family. In his huge 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:26.080 hands and by his huge personality, he bent Russia to 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:29.280 his will the way he bent iron pokers and toward 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:33.320 decks of cards for fun. Aggressive power was his style, 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:36.920 and that's where young Nicholas did not feel at home. 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:40.600 You see, he was an intelligent boy. With his tutors, 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:43.960 he learned French, German and spoke English so well some 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.480 historians have said that he could have fooled an Oxford professor. 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:50.400 He was witty and fun and not at all the 0:10:50.480 --> 0:10:53.720 kind of person his colossus of a father could respect. 0:10:54.960 --> 0:10:58.080 Maybe that's why Nicholas found some solace among the horse guards, 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.920 at least through military serve us. Maybe he could impress 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:04.400 his father, he could prove that he was more than 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.480 just the kind of person unsuitable for rule, an intellectual. 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.680 But when he was so drunk that the other officers 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.079 had to carry him home after a night of carousing, 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:18.280 that's where his mother's voice came in. Never forget who 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:22.120 you are. He might sit, probably atop his horse, shoulder 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:25.720 to shoulder with other cavalry officers, but one day he 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:27.880 would need to be ready to take the reins of 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.400 the Russian Empire. But it wasn't just his parents who 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.760 were hammering this message into Nicholas. He was getting that 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:38.240 message loud and clear from the tutors who cultivated his mind. 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.319 In fact, he was taught by the Church authorities who 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.160 had also instructed his father. And while Nicholas was given 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.480 to languages and writing and everything that came with it, 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:51.640 he was always pursued by the warnings that had steered 0:11:51.640 --> 0:11:55.400 his father's court away from an intellectual culture. You see. 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.880 In the late eighteen hundreds, the Church authorities were teaching 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:03.400 that reliance on human mind made Russia vulnerable to human delusion. 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:08.360 What wasn't delusional aristocratic rule that was real. In fact, 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:10.840 it was the command of God himself, and it was 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:14.080 God himself who chose the tsar's to do. Anything that 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.360 would limit the complete power of the Russian Empire's ruler 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:20.880 would be simply put the spit in the face of God. 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.679 You see, the Russian authorities believed that humans were so weak, selfish, 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.959 and vicious that they couldn't be trusted to rule themselves. 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.040 In fact, they couldn't even be trusted to think. The 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.120 right thing to do. Couldn't be discovered by thinking through 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.520 your problems, like say, the problems that might arise if 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.360 you were governing a massive empire. No, Instead, the way 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.360 forward would be revealed by God. The only hope for 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:52.080 humanity was to obey the czar. Must obey God, of course, 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:55.360 and in political terms this meant that the people must 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:57.760 obey the czar. As he would later put it to 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:01.160 his Prime Minister, Nicholas believed that the heart of the 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.520 czar is in the hand of God. For the young 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.960 Nicholas growing up under this instruction. This meant that he 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.959 learned to mistrust the ideas and arguments of the people 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:15.280 around him. Instead, he taught himself to rely on mystical knowledge, 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:19.840 hunches and impulses, ideas that came to him through instinct, 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:22.840 ideas that he took to be the voice of God 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.080 in his life. It was one reason that over his 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:30.079 lifetime Nicholas would ignore the advice of his counselors over 0:13:30.280 --> 0:13:34.040 and over again. But of course, his heart wasn't just 0:13:34.200 --> 0:13:36.480 in the hands of God. It was also in the 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.960 hands of the German princess raised by the British Empress. 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:50.720 It was set on Alex. It was death that opened 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:55.240 the door. It was the fall of Nicholas returned home 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.199 to Russia. After a long visit with Alex, he found 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.640 that the colossus was brought low, his father was dying. 0:14:02.720 --> 0:14:05.320 They tried all sorts of things. First, they went to 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.880 the imperial hunting town of Spala in Poland, but when 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.520 the doctors insisted they moved him to the warmer climate 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:15.280 of Crimea. Nicholas sent for Alex immediately, and she was 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:18.400 on the next train. She met Nicholas's father in time 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.480 for the all important moment, he gave her his blessing. 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:27.200 The engagement between Nicholas and alex was official. It wasn't 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:30.520 just the Czar whose preferences had delayed the engagement, it 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:33.680 was alex herself because there was a major change that 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:35.680 she would have to make before she could join the 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:40.800 Russian Imperial family. Alex you see, was Lutheran. Here's Dr 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:45.120 Helen Rappaport again. There is no way she could have 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:50.120 retained her Lutheran German Lutheran faith and be a future 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:57.120 Sari Saris of Russia. So this was a hugely challenging 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.920 period for her because she loved Nikki Art, she did 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.520 not want to abandon her Lutheran faith. Alexandra had all 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:10.640 been always been pretty religious and pious and very observant. 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:16.200 So it was a really, really difficult period because eventually 0:15:16.240 --> 0:15:18.920 it was her sister Ella who helped the suade her 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:25.120 because Ella, too, like alex Alexandra, married a Russian. She 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:29.720 married granddukes so gay but without all the agonizing about 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:34.120 adopting the russtional thoughts faith. Ella embraced it pretty much 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:41.040 immediately and then persuaded Alexandra to also do likewise, without 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.960 her older sister Alex would never have taken the plunge. 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:46.920 It was at another family wedding that spring, with the 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.560 many branches of Queen Victoria's family tree drawn together, that 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:54.080 Nicholas had finally proposed to Alex, and with the gathering 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.400 family around her urging her aunt, she accepted. Whatever Alex 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.000 may have felt, we can imagine in Nicholas's relief. One 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.760 historian remarked that the Tsarovitch cried like a child. He 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:10.200 wrote to his mother that nature, mankind, everything all seemed 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:14.920 good and lovable. His tears were tears of joy. Of course, 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.240 the same camp be said on a deathbed. In that case, 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:22.200 the only thing to come is the grave. On November one, 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:25.640 the czar's illness took him. It was time for the 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:28.480 Tsarovitch to take up his mantle. It was time for 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:31.320 him to not just remember who he was, but to 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:35.600 become the next ruler of the Russian Empire, and Nicholas 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:40.520 was terrified. We even have his desperate questions. He asked 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.200 to his brother in law in the first desolate moments 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:46.800 after his father died, and they definitely don't ring with 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:50.000 the determination of a new leader. What am I going 0:16:50.080 --> 0:16:52.800 to do, He asked, what is going to happen to me, 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:57.560 to you, to alex to mother, to all Russia. I 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:00.560 am not prepared to be czarre. I never wanted to 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:04.040 become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling. 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:09.400 Helen Rappaport agrees now that the problem from for Nicholas 0:17:09.560 --> 0:17:13.800 right from day one was that he should probably had 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:18.840 another twenty years to prepare for becoming zare. So he 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.840 hadn't learned the tools of the trade. He hadn't learned 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:26.560 state's craft, state craft. He was timid and frightened and 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:33.120 terrified of the enormous responsibility of becoming Zar in his trenches, when, 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:35.800 of course he would have expected becomes are maybe in 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:40.400 his forties. But in the end Nicholas's on rushing destiny 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.800 was unavoidable, and he marched into it like a soldier 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:48.600 marching to war. He took it very, very seriously, and 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:53.560 in a very kind of dogmatic and rather narrow way, 0:17:53.680 --> 0:18:00.000 in that he simply decided or declared rather from them 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.359 and when she became czar, but he would preserved the 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:06.359 autok Chrissy handed to him by his father, Alexander the 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:11.520 Third exactly has passed down to him. The future before 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:15.240 him wasn't all terrible destiny, though, because it also had 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.919 alex It was on the first of November that the 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:21.200 Tsar died. The very next day, alex took her first 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.960 communion in the Russian Orthodox Church. She was now consecrated 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.320 to her new faith, and it was at the end 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.240 of the same month that Nicholas and alex were married. 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.879 But if it was a transformation for Nicholas from Tsarevich 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.080 to tsar, the transformations for alex were all the greater. 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:41.280 Not only did she leave her childhood faith to embrace 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.000 the church of her new empire, but she left her 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:47.639 name behind as well. The German name alex was gone, 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:53.440 the Russian Alexandra Fyodorovna took its place. She was a Romanov. Now. 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.080 During the wedding itself, something dire and morose hung over 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.720 the day. Alexander would later called that the sacred rituals 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.680 joining her to Nicholas seemed to be just one more 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:08.400 day in church after a month of funeral ceremonies. There 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.359 was just one difference, she said, now her dress was 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:15.520 white instead of black. Still, all her wedding day felt 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.520 like just one more mass for the dead. It took 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.320 time for things to change. The coronation of the news 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:23.960 Are would not come until the spring of eighteen six, 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.600 but the responsibilities of rule didn't wait for that day. 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.960 It fell to the couple swiftly and severely, And when 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.480 the day of coronation did arrive, it brought burdens of 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.399 its own, burdens like the heavy chain of the Order 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.879 of Saint Andrew that Nicholas wore into the cathedral, and 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.480 that was meant to be passed from him to Alexandra 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.040 during the ceremony. But as Nicholas climbed toward the altar, 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:51.040 the clasp holding this symbol of sacred power gave way. 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:54.520 The chain fell from Nicholas when it thundered to his feet. 0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:58.880 The fall reverberated across the gathered crowd and down through time. 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.159 In the silence that followed, the whispers began where the 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:06.399 news Ours shoulders broad enough to bear the burden of 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:10.000 an empire. But that wasn't the only burden carried out 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:13.359 of the capital. The other was far more gruesome, because 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:15.600 the thing that Nicholas meant to be his crowning act 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:20.400 of generosity turned into a maccab dance of death. You see. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.760 He had advertised that every peasant in St. Petersburg would 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.480 get a gift from the news are a kerchief of 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.600 gingerbread and a mug, and for that mug there would 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.639 be free beer. The posters went up everywhere, and the 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:35.280 crowds came in. And when I say crowds, I mean 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:38.440 half a million people. And when they were called forward, 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:42.119 they all pressed forward at once. It became a stampede. 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:44.920 Thousands who came for a gift from the Czar were 0:20:44.920 --> 0:20:48.240 caught in the crush, and hundreds were trampled and killed. 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:52.760 This was no small matter. In fact, Nicholas was sick 0:20:52.880 --> 0:20:55.880 that such a horrible tragedy was caused by his desire 0:20:55.920 --> 0:20:58.840 to make a good impression. For a moment, he thought 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:01.560 about calling off the cell librations. But the rest of 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:05.080 his family, oh, they wouldn't hear of it. While they 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:07.959 danced at the coronation ball, the police picked through the 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.840 field of bloated bodies wearing their festival clothes, smashed together 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.480 under the weight of desperate neighbors. And when the Romanovs 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:18.679 traveled home after the festivities, they were passed by a 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:24.160 procession of wagons, wagons that were filled with mangled corpses. 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.440 Ella was deeply disturbed. Her sister Alexandra had married Nicholas 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:36.120 under the shadow of the old Czar's death, and more 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:39.480 tragedies had followed close on their heels. But it wasn't 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:42.600 the depths of a few thousand peasants that upset Ella. No, 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:46.240 all of that was in the past. Stranger things had 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.639 crept into the court at St. Petersburg, things that terrified 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.560 Ella far more than the deaths of the St. Petersburg poor, 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:55.120 although maybe she should have thought quite a bit more 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:57.880 about what drove people to climb over their neighbor's dead 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:01.359 bodies for a gift basket of in your bread. But 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:04.000 Ella was like the rest of the Romanovs. She had 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:06.240 been in Russia long enough to care about only a 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.760 very small circle of aristocratic issues. And this is where 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:14.520 we come back to the spiritualist mystic Monsignor Philippe. He 0:22:14.680 --> 0:22:17.080 was the twenty nine of August of nineteen o two. 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:20.560 Ella was writing to Nicholas's mother. She knew all about 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.280 this mystical healer, she said, the man who was glued 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:26.840 to her younger sister's side. In fact, this occult counselor 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:31.720 Horror of horrors. Wasn't even Russian, he was French, and 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:35.520 in Ella's eyes, he was influencing Nicholas and Alexandra to 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:39.679 a terrifying extent. Ella knew why too. She credited his 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.600 place at court to the women she called the cockroaches, 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:48.040 Nicholas and Alexandra's closest friends, the sisters Stana and Melitza. 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.520 Those weren't the only nicknames they had, though. Whispers of spiders, 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:56.720 crows and worse followed them through the St. Petersburg salons. 0:22:57.119 --> 0:22:59.560 But it wasn't enough to separate them from the Empress. 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:04.040 You See, like Ella and Alexandra, Stana and Melitza had 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:08.160 married into Russian nobility, and sure they had made some enemies, 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:10.760 but they had also gotten cozy with some important people 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:14.960 at court. For instance, the Tsar's cousin and confidante, Nikolasha. 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:19.119 Six ft five and brimming with violence, Nikolasha shared the 0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:23.080 Tsar's desperate devotion to the army. But where Nicolas was meek, 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:27.720 Nikolasha was all ferocity. He loved lording his position and 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:31.600 his physical might over the soldiers under his command. The 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:34.240 old Tsar had torn packs of cards to show his 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:38.040 strength Nikolasha went further. When he wanted to show off 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:40.359 the sharpness of a sword, he cut one of his 0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:42.800 dogs in half. If there was a Roman off in 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:46.120 the mold of the old Tsar, it was Nikolasha. Maybe 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:50.800 that's why Nicholas held him so close. Soon enough, Stana 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:54.600 held Nikolasha close as well. So when Alexandra was first 0:23:54.640 --> 0:23:56.760 coming to grips with what it meant to rule her 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:01.520 new empire and embrace her new faith, it was Nikolasha, Stana, 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:05.760 and Melizza who were speaking into her ear. Now, maybe 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:08.359 it was natural for Alexandra to follow the lead of 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:10.720 friends who knew what it was like to sail into 0:24:10.760 --> 0:24:13.960 the Russian nobility as an outsider. But here's the thing. 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:18.600 Melissa's Russian Christianity was far more orthodox, and her sister 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:21.600 Stana followed in her wake. So in the days when 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.199 they put their heads together, one of the things Stana 0:24:24.280 --> 0:24:27.119 and Melissa managed to pass on to Alexandra was a 0:24:27.200 --> 0:24:30.960 deep interest in the crossroads of Orthodoxy and the occult, 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:35.520 especially the teachings of mystics and holy men. Here's historian 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:39.760 Douglas Smith to tell us more. These two sisters, who 0:24:39.800 --> 0:24:43.080 were the King of Montenegro, who had married into the 0:24:43.080 --> 0:24:46.280 extended Romana family, and they were utterly obsessed with the 0:24:46.320 --> 0:24:50.680 occult and Rosicrucianism and mysticism. And they learned about this 0:24:50.880 --> 0:24:55.000 Messieur Philippe through travels to France, and they helped introduce 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.399 him to Nicholas and Alexandra Um and he made his 0:24:58.400 --> 0:25:00.680 way to the court in St. Peter's and they were 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:04.560