Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs

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When Russia's Dowager Empress was pregnant with the future Tsar Nicholas II in 1868, she dreamed that a peasant would one day kill her son. The idea terrified her, and for the rest of her days she lived under the fear of this prophecy. It may have come true with the arrival at court of a mysterious, barely literate wandering monk from Siberia, Grigori Rasputin. He had a pale face, long hair and penetrating eyes gave him an almost hypnotic quality. Though he had no official position at court, Rasputin’s hold over the Romanovs became the stuff of legend. Exaggerated accounts of political and financial corruption swirled around him, to say nothing of the stories of his debauchery with…