Though hemophilia occurred as a spontaneous mutation in Queen Victoria’s family, inbreeding made the disease rife among the royals. This incurable blood disorder was particularly cruel because it was carried by females, who would remain blissfully unaware of their genetic predilection until a son was born suffering from the disease; most hemophiliacs were male. In those pre–DNA test days, there was no way to know who carried the mutation. Its effects were also unpredictable—a simple bruise could bring on a near-fatal hemorrhage.
Three days after Alexei’s birth, what remained of his umbilical cord began to seep blood. This was the first of many near-death episodes for the young tsarevich. His disease transformed the Romanov family into a closely knit unit whose defining modus operandi was to protect Alexei from harm. They surrounded him with a cushy blanket of secrecy—no one wanted the world to know that the next tsar of Russia was a hemophiliac.
It was Alexandra’s desperate search for a cure that led her to Rasputin, the Elmer Gantry on steroids of tsarist Russia.
Rasputin has been called the mad monk, a miracle worker, a charlatan, a devil, and a lothario. All of these allegations are true—he was a hornet’s nest of contradictions. He styled himself a starets, or spiritual healer of peasant origin, yet he had a superhuman thirst for alcohol and a talent for getting under the ladies’ petticoats. He stank like a goat, had pockmarked skin, yet dressed luxuriously. Rasputin’s most noted feature was his intense gray eyes, which he used to hypnotize his subjects. Prince Felix Yussupov wrote of a healing session, “I gradually slipped into a drowsy state, as though a powerful narcotic had been administered to me. All I could see was Rasputin’s glittering eyes.” Many women who came to him for spiritual advice soon found themselves in his putrid embrace; he whispered to them, “You think I am polluting you, but I am not. I am purifying you.”
Rasputin arrived in Alexandra’s life during Alexei’s most severe bleeding episode. Though doctors had written the boy off as worm food, the starets said a few prayers and assured the tsarina that her son would survive. And he did—everyone considered it a miracle. After this, it was a matter of time before Alexandra convinced herself that Alexei would die without Rasputin. The starets soon insinuated himself into every aspect of royal life.
When Russia was forced into war with Germany, Tsar Nicholas was called to the front. Alexandra remained at home with Alexei—and Rasputin. Desperate to help her husband, she consulted the starets for political advice. Government officials were hired and fired willy-nilly, based on whether Rasputin liked them. Unaware of Alexei’s disease, people could not comprehend why Rasputin was accorded so much power. Believing the worst, they gossiped that the tsarina had wild orgies with him, that she was using him to destroy Russia. When Alexandra’s interference led to governmental chaos, they brought up her German heritage and accused her of spying for the enemy. Pained by these charges, the tsarina protested, “Twenty years have I spent in Russia…. All my heart is bound to this country….”
Rasputin’s influence could not continue. To save Russia—so they thought—several of the tsar’s relatives, one of whom was Prince Yussupov, lured Rasputin to dinner on New Year’s Eve, 1916. The starets was as tenacious in death as he was in life. To kill him, the aristocrats poisoned and shot him—still he lived. Finally, they threw Rasputin into the Neva to drown.
Rasputin must have had intimations of his death. He wrote Nicholas several days before his murder, “I feel that I shall leave life before January 1…. if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people.”
Rasputin’s prediction proved to be all too accurate. Despite the best intentions of Rasputin’s assassins, peasants viewed the mad monk’s murder as an attack upon one of their own. It inflamed class tensions to revolutionary levels, encouraged by food shortages due to the war and a harsh winter. Hoping to protect his country and family, Nicholas abdicated in 1917. But it mattered little—Alexandra and the rest of her family were imprisoned and executed by firing squad in 1918.
~~Doomed Queens -by- Kris Waldherr
No comments:
Post a Comment