by Staton Rabin
Queen Victoria’s daughter Beatrice was indeed Alexei’s great-aunt on his mother’s side, and she was also a carrier of hemophilia. But the Russian-Jewish painter with whom she had a “forbidden romance” is purely my invention, so that there would be a reasonable explanation for how Varda, a Jewish girl, could be related to Alexei’s Russian Orthodox family. There were in fact rumors in Alexei’s family that one of his Russian Orthodox uncles, a grand duke, had an affair with a Jewish woman, so royal affairs across boundaries of social class, religion, or ethnicity did sometimes happen during this time.
Before his marriage to Alix, the future Nicholas II did indeed have a lengthy affair with a ballerina, Mathilde Kschessinska, as Alexei’s sister mentions in my book. Mathilde later wrote a book about her romance with Nicky and its sad ending. She died in 1971.
St. Petersburg is considered one of the world’s most beautiful cities (“The Venice of the North”) and is home to over five million people. Of all the world’s cities that have a population of over one million, it is the farthest north. The famous “White Nights” of St. Petersburg, during which the sun never sets, normally last from June eleventh to July second each year. In my story I continued this period to July tenth, so that Alexei and Varda could experience the Beliye Noche.
In real life, Rasputin did not survive Felix’s final attempt to kill him by tossing him into the Neva. He died in December 1916. And of course Alexei Romanov did not travel to the future between then and July 1918, when his family was murdered. He was with his family the entire time they were in exile following Tsar Nicholas’s abdication—except during a few weeks in the spring of 1918, when Alexei and three of his sisters remained captive at Tobolsk while his parents and Grand Duchess Marie were sent on to their final imprisonment at Ipatiev House in the Ural Mountains.
What caused this temporary family separation? Alexei was too ill to travel. He had injured himself sledding down the stairs inside the house at Tobolsk. This started internal bleeding that threatened his life. Nicky said that it was as if Alexei had hurt himself on purpose. During the worst of this crisis, Alexei told the tsarina, “Mama, I would like to die. I am not afraid of death, but I am so afraid of what they will do to us here.”
The family’s captors insisted that the tsar must be moved to another location immediately. The tsarina had a terrible decision to make. Did she stay with her ailing son, or go on to Ekaterinburg with her husband? She agonized over the problem.
At last Alix made her decision: “You know what my son is to me,” she said to her staff, “and I must choose between him and my husband. But I have made up my mind. I must be firm. I must leave my child and share my husband’s life or death.”
The family was reunited at Ipatiev House in late May 1918, and remained together until their deaths. It is for me at least some consolation to know that this very close and loving family was together during their final moments.
In the spring and summer of 1918, at seven o’clock every morning, Sisters Antonina and Maria of the Novotikhvinsky Convent in Ekaterinburg were permitted to bring extra food in baskets to Ipatiev House for the imprisoned Romanovs, right up until the day of the royal family’s murder.
Tsar Nicholas II did read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories to Alexei and the rest of his family, so it is likely that Alexei was familiar with the first short story featuring the Great Detective, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” which describes Holmes’s and Watson’s use of a “smoke-rocket.”
Ipatiev House did have a parlor downstairs, but for my story I placed the only couch on the upper floor, so that Alexei could be sure that Varda would be brought there after “fainting.” Only the attic windows of the house would have been fully visible from the street, over the top of the high wooden fence surrounding it. Even though some of the guards got drunk at times, the house was so well guarded—especially after Yurovksy took over as commandant—that no intruder would have been able to get as close to it as Alexei did.
Some of Ipatiev House’s windows were whitewashed so that the family couldn’t see outside their quarters except through a very small upper unpainted portion of one window. The windows on the upper floor were only rarely opened while the Romanovs were held captive there, so the summer heat inside could be stifling. At least one window had metal bars placed over it, at Yurovsky’s orders. Prior to this, the tsarina used to wave a handkerchief out the window, hoping to be seen by passersby on the street.
There were originally ten guard posts inside and outside the house. But when Yurovsky took over as commandant, he added two more guard posts, because he was worried that somebody might try to rescue the family. He also believed that several of the guards were becoming too friendly with the Romanovs—and some of Alexei’s sisters, especially Marie, had been flirting with the guards. So Yurovksy fired and replaced some of the guards, and moved others to posts farther away from the family’s section of the house. Still, he had difficulty finding enough men willing to shoot the family. Several were especially reluctant to kill Alexei’s sisters. And, after the murder, some who participated in the firing squad or who had guarded the family before their deaths seemed to feel guilty and tormented about what they had done.
Coincidentally, at least one of the guards at the House of Special Purpose, Kabanov, had known Alexei’s family before the tsar abdicated. Olga recognized the man as one of their former grenadier guards, and reintroduced him to the tsar, who also remembered having met him before.
Alexei was not able to walk in the final few days of his life. On July 13 he bumped himself in the bathtub at Ipatiev House. A few days later his father carried the pale and sickly boy into the room in which the family was to meet their tragic fate.
The Bolsheviks were slow to admit that the royal family had been murdered. Even when they announced to the public on July 20 that the tsar had been killed, they falsely claimed that Alexei, his mother, and his sisters were alive and had been taken to a safe location.
Alexei’s tutor Pierre Gilliard had bravely chosen to stay with him while the boy and his family were being held captive by the Bolsheviks. Although Gilliard traveled with Alexei when the Romanovs were moved from Tsarskoye SeIo to Tobolsk and from there to Ipatiev House, the Bolsheviks separated Gilliard from Alexei on May 22.
For reasons that even Gilliard himself didn’t understand, the Bolsheviks spared the tutor’s life and set him free. He caught a quick glimpse of Alexei on May 23, when Nagorny carried the ailing boy past Gilliard’s train car window at Ekaterinburg. But after that, Gilliard never saw Alexei and his family again. In my story, I chose to keep Gilliard with the Romanov family till the last full day of their lives, so that Alexei could have a chance to say the final good-bye to him that he never got in real life.
Just days after the murders, with Ekaterinburg now in the White Army’s hands, Gilliard and Alexei’s English tutor, Mr. Gibbes, returned to Ipatiev House on a desperate search for the boy and his family. They even inspected the room in which the family had been killed, still hoping against hope that perhaps somehow the children might have escaped the horrific bloody murder scene. But within months, traces of the Romanov family’s bodies and belongings were found in the nearby forest, and it was clear that all hope for their survival was lost.
Alexei and his immediate family were not the only Romanovs killed by the Bolsheviks in this era. Among the dozens of other family members killed were Alexei’s uncle Misha (Nicholas II’s younger brother Michael Romanov, who, briefly, was his designated replacement as tsar after Nicholas abdicated), and Alexei’s aunt Ella, his mother’s sister.
‡ Gilliard, who was Swiss, survived the Russian Revolution and wrote a sympathetic book about his experiences with Alexei and his family, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court He died in 1962.
‡ “Grishka” is a diminutive for “Grigory” and means something like “little Grigory” So calling the adult Rasputin “Grishka” would be treating him like a child or servant: in other words, as a social inferior.
‡ A New York Times article from November 1912 reported: CZAR’S HEIR HAS BLEEDING DISEASE, claiming the Russians “announced” this. But Pulitzer Prize-winning Russia historian Robert Massie contends (in his classic book, Nicholas and Alexandra,) that Alexei’s parents had always wanted the boy’s illness kept secret and, despite rumors the heir was ill, during Alexei’s lifetime “… Russia did not know. Most people in Moscow or Kiev or St. Petersburg did not know that the tsarevich had hemophilia, and the few who had some inkling had only hazy ideas about the nature of the disease”
‡ Felix Yusupov and his coconspirators were convinced that the only way to save Russia ’s monarchy was to get the disreputable Rasputin out of the way. This is why they plotted to murder him—though some historians say that Felix also had a personal vendetta against Rasputin.
‡ They gave a lastminute reprieve to Leonid (“Leonka”) Sednev, the kitchen boy who had followed the Romanovs into exile and had befriended Alexei. Leonid was taken from Ipatiev House (which the worried family almost immediately protested) just hours before the murders and was later released unharmed.
‡ Although most scientists and historians familiar with the evidence accept the conclusion that these are the bones of the Romanovs, the subject remains controversial. As Harvard professor and Russia historian Donald Ostrowski says, “The case is by no means closed”
CALENDAR NOTES
Starting on February 1, 1918, the Russian system of keeping track of days and months changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar—a difference of thirteen days. The Russians were in fact behind most of the rest of the world in adopting the modern, Gregorian calendar, which is still used today. Alexei was born on July 30 under the Julian calendar (“old style”) and on August 12 according to the Gregorian system (“new style”). Beginning in 1918 the tsar and tsarina used two dates for each day listed in their diaries, representing the old and new systems. Some modern books about Russian history don’t say whether they are using dates from the Julian or Gregorian calendar. To avoid confusion on this issue in my own book, I identify pre-1918 events by their month, season, or year rather than their precise day, so that the dates would be correct regardless of whether one uses the old or new calendar System. Dates for events from early 1918 on follow the modern (Gregorian) calendar.‡
To compress time, I combined into a single meeting on July 13 several key meetings of the Ural Soviet and the Cheka that took place in late June and early July 1918 in room number 3 at the Hotel Amerika in Ekaterinburg. During these meetings the presidium replaced Avdeyev with Yurovsky as commandant of Ipatiev House (July), and passed a resolution to murder the Romanovs (June 29). Their resolution calling for the liquidation of Nicholas II and his family required that the family be killed no later than July 15, 1918—which the Ural Soviet believed was the last possible date before the Czech and White armies would invade Ekaterinburg. In my story, to avoid confusing the reader, I moved this target date forward by twenty-four hours, to the actual day that the Romanovs were murdered: the night of July 16-17, 1918. The counterrevolutionary forces that might have rescued Alexei and his family took over Ekaterinburg on July 25, just eight days after they were killed.
FAMILY TREE OF ALEXEI ROMANOV AND HEMOPHILIA INHERITANCE
Alexei’s parents, Nicky and Alix (Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra), were cousins. Here’s how they were related:
Nicky’s aunt, Alexandra of Denmark, had married Edward VII, the son of Queen Victoria of England. So from then on, Nicky was related by marriage to the British royal family. When Nicky married Alix, he was marrying a granddaughter of Queen Victoria who was also Edward VII’s niece. Alix’s mother was Princess Alice, one of Queen Victoria’s daughters.
However, Princess Alice died when her daughter Alix was only six years old. After Princess Alice died, Queen Victoria of England took a personal interest in raising her granddaughter, Alix. This is why Alexei’s mother spoke English fairly well, adopted many English customs, and considered herself more British than German. When she married the future Tsar Nicholas II, she considered herself Russian as well.
Hemophilia is inherited in families through females. Alexei’s grandmother Princess Alice inherited the defective gene that causes the disease from her mother, Queen Victoria. Princess Alice passed it down to her daughter Alix—who in turn “gave” it to her son, Alexei Romanov. Alix’s sister Irene passed the disease into another royal family when she married and had children with Prince Henry of Prussia.
Since Alexei’s father Nicholas II was related to Queen Victoria only by marriage, his side of the family did not carry the disease of hemophilia.
Alexei’s mother and father knew that there was hemophilia in the tsarina’s family. In addition to Alix’s mother, Princess Alice, two of Queen Victoria’s other daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Victoria, were also carriers of the disease, and one of her sons, Leopold, had hemophilia. Alix’s brother, Frittie, died at age three due to excessive bleeding following a fall.
It will never be known whether Alexei’s sisters, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, might have been carriers of hemophilia. They died before having any children, and in those days there were no blood or genetic tests to determine whether a female was a “silent” carrier of the disease. But since their mother Tsarina Alexandra was a carrier, the odds are that about half of Alexei’s sisters were also carriers of hemophilia.
When Nicky’s and Alix’s family were murdered, this ended not only the Russian monarchy but also the further transmission of the “hemophilia gene” on that branch of the family tree—which might have occurred had their children lived to have children of their own.
The current Queen of England, Elizabeth II, and her husband Prince Philip are related to Queen Victoria and the Romanovs. However, through a stroke of good fortune, the British royal couple’s branches of the family tree were spared from this terrible disease, because their more recent ancestors did not carry it. Queen Elizabeth II is descended from Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII, who did not have hemophilia.
When scientists today do DNA tests to determine whether certain individuals or their bones might really be from the Romanov family, they sometimes compare these DNA patterns to DNA samples taken from England’s Prince Philip, who is a blood relative of Alexei’s mother, Tsarina Alexandra, and has cooperated in these experiments.
FACTS ABOUT HEMOPHILIA
There is currently no cure for hemophilia, which affects about 18,000 people in the United Statest‡ and is just one of a number of diseases that can reduce the clotting of the blood. The disease is much more common in boys, since (as Varda explains in The Curse of the Romanovs) a girl would usually have to inherit the defective gene from both parents in order to have symptoms of hemophilia. Females, however, are the “silent” carriers of the disease, and sometimes even carriers can need treatment for excessive bleeding.
Although hemophilia is mainly an inherited illness, 30 percent of hemophiliacs have no known family history of the disease.
Males who inherit hemophilia had a mother who carried the defective gene, since this gene is never carried on the Y chromosome that boys inherit from their fathers. This means that, paradoxically, the son of a hemophiliac can never be a hemophiliac—unless the boys mother also carries the disease (or unless the son was born with hemophilia purely by coincidence, through a spontaneous gene mutation)! However, all the daughters of a hemophiliac male will be carriers of the illness, since his only X chromosome has the defective gene.
Hemophilia not only results in excessive bleeding when the hemophiliac is injured, but may sometimes even cause dangerous episodes of spontaneous bleeding—in the brain, for example—without any obvious cause. Repeated or severe episodes of bleeding can cause permanent damage to joints, vision loss, chronic anemia, neurological or psychiatric problems, and, of course, death.
Contrary to popular belief, a superficial cut is not dangerous to a hemophiliac—applying pressure to the injury can stop the bleeding. B
ut bumps or spontaneous internal bleeding are far more serious, since they can cause a buildup of pressure in a confined space.
People today who have hemophilia are mainly treated with infusions of genetically engineered blood clotting factors, factor VIII and factor IX‡ to prevent or control excessive bleeding. Hemophiliacs are often taught how to give themselves this treatment at home, but sometimes it must be done by medical staff at hospitals or treatment centers. There are several different types of hemophilia, and Alexei probably had the most common type, known today as hemophilia A (but Alexei’s exact diagnosis is, like almost everything else about the Romanovs, a hot topic of debate). Some people have milder forms of hemophilia without even being aware of it; their illness may become noticeable only if they bleed excessively during major surgery.
Gene therapy may soon offer hope in curing this terrible illness. If this treatment succeeds in raising levels of clotting factors in the blood of hemophiliacs by even only 2 percent, this will be enough to prevent spontaneous bleeding episodes in organs and joints, which can kill. Since hemophilia is the result of a defect on only one gene, scientists consider it a promising candidate for potential treatment through gene therapy.
You can find out more information about hemophilia, or donate money toward finding a cure, by contacting the National Hemophilia Foundation at www.hemophilia.org.
PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES FOR THE CURSE OF THE ROMANOVS:
The Russian Revolution, 1917, Rex A. Wade. Cambridge University Press. 2005.
Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, Pierre Gilliard. Trans, by F. Appleby Holt. London: Hutchinson & Co. 1921.
The Flight of the Romanovs, John Curtís Perry and Constantine Pleshakov. New York: Basic Books. 1999.
The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II, Edvard Radzinsky. Trans, by Marian Schwartz. New York: Doubleday. 1992.
The Fate of the Romanovs, Greg King and Penny Wilson. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. 2003.
