What if the romanovs

The egg was adorned with diamonds and sapphires, and it opened to reveal a clock. Intending to sell the object to a buyer In the early morning hours of July 17, , Czar Nicholas II—the last monarch of the Romanov dynasty, which ruled Russia for years—was reportedly executed along with his wife, Alexandra, and their five children by their Bolshevik captors in the basement of a house in On July 16, , imprisoned Czar Nicholas II, his wife, and their five children were awoken in the middle of the night and led down to a basement room.

Bolshevik secret police stormed in, an order of execution was read aloud, and a storm of bullets fired toward the family. When Nicholas Romanov was crowned czar of Russia in , he seemed bewildered. I never even wanted to become one. Czar Nicholas and his family waited patiently in the basement. For much of , the Romanov family had been the captives of the Bolsheviks who overthrew Nicholas II in the bloody Russian Revolution, and they were used to moving from place to place.

They had no idea they had The Russian Revolution of was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century. The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist From early Mongol invasions to tsarist regimes to ages of enlightenment and industrialization to revolutions and wars, Russia is known not just for its political rises of world power and upheaval, but for its cultural contributions think ballet, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, caviar and After overthrowing the centuries-old Romanov monarchy, Russia emerged from a civil war in as the newly formed Soviet Union.

Although estimates vary, most experts believe at least , Live TV. This Day In History. His two-part Romanov connection means that his son Prince Charles and his grandsons, Princes William and Harry, are all Romanov relatives. In , after the unmarked graves believed to contain the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra and three of their daughters were exhumed, Prince Philip even offered a blood sample to scientists seeking to identify the remains.

His mitochondrial DNA matched that of the bodies believed to be those of Alexandra and the three girls, helping to confirm their identity. Born in , she is the only child from his second marriage and a half-sister to Prince Andrew. In , she became president of the Romanov Family Association, founded in to unite descendants.

Prince Michael of Kent at the United Nations, Two more bodies, uncovered in and identified through DNA comparison with living Romanov relatives as two of the murdered children, Alexei and Maria, have not been buried , as some within the Russian Orthodox Church have refused to accept the identification. Unusually among Romanov descendants, he has also lived and worked extensively in Russia. An accomplished artist , he also works with the Raketa Watch Factory in St.

Petersburg, founded by his ancestor Peter the Great. In —the th anniversary of the Russian Revolution—he designed a special watch stained with a drop of his own blood to commemorate the bloodshed and sacrifice of the revolution and the violent end of Romanov rule in Russia.

In , he fled from a military junta in Greece and lived in exile in London until , when he moved back to Greece with his Danish-born wife, Anne-Marie. For example, the Romanov family collectively ruled the Russian Empire for more than three centuries, transforming it from a tsardom into an empire that once controlled about 15 percent of all the land on Earth. That right there is quite a bit of influence. But despite their dizzying success and power, the Romanov family's story ended in when Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, and their five children as well as the servants who'd accompanied them into imprisonment after the February Revolution were executed by their Bolshevik captors.

But that was just the final, brutal act for a family with a history of heartbreak and loss. From health issues and troubled romances to con artists and assassinations, here's the tragic real-life story of the Romanovs, the last imperial rulers of Russia. Russian political history — heck, Russian history in general — has been marked by exceptional violence, but by the 19th century, things seemed to have stabilized somewhat.

Emperor Alexander II ascended to the throne in and recognized the need for change in a country that was crippled by its aging political structure and outdated economy.

Alexander's greatest move was the emancipation of the serfs peasants who were locked to a specific piece of land for life in , and he made other moves in an attempt to modernize his empire. As Alexander grew older, however, he grew more conservative and reacted to any attempts to limit his power with brutal repression, giving rise to a lot of anti-imperial sentiment.

According to the New York Daily News , there were three attempts to assassinate Alexander before , which all failed A new revolutionary group, the People's Will, formed in and hit on a brilliant idea — suicide bombing using the relatively new invention called dynamite. It took two bombs, but the plan worked.

Perovskaya, a descendant of Russia's first emperor, Peter the Great. Perovskaya was hanged for the crime along with her co-conspirators, and she later became a hero to the Bolsheviks. Nicholas II, destined to be emperor of all Russia, met his future wife when she was just 12 years old he was As historian and author Lisa Waller Rogers notes , their love letters were the stuff of romantic legend, and Nicholas wrote in his diary at one point, "It is my dream to one day marry Alix H.

I have loved her for a long time. If Nicholas and Alix had been regular folks, this might've been an easy match, but as high-ranking royals, both their families opposed the relationship. Nicholas' father, Alexander III, disliked his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm and was angry about what he saw as Germany's machinations against the Russians, and Alix's family considered Russia to be a backwater empire.

In fact, Alix herself refused to contemplate converting to the Russian Orthodox Church, insulting future subjects. For years the two families worked hard to keep the two apart, and it wasn't until Alexander III was on his deathbed that he finally gave his permission to Nicholas to ask Alix to marry him, which they finally did in Alix compromised and converted, becoming Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, but the Russian people never quite accepted her, and the distrust of her German roots continued to fester throughout her life.

Although he'd been a loyal and supportive heir while his father lived, he held much more conservative beliefs, and once he became emperor himself, he immediately began working to reverse many of his father's liberal moves.

At the same time, Alexander stood out as emperor by not embroiling Russia in any major conflicts during his decade-plus on the throne, and he proved to be a masterful ruler in terms of building up his country and developing it economically. There was even hope that Russia would soon rival Western countries in terms of stability and influence.

Alexandra refused to leave without Nicholas, who was at the front fighting against the revolutionaries. He eventually succumbed to pressure and abdicated. The week Nicholas spent traveling back to his family was likely the last window for the family to escape Russia.

Great Britain also needed to tread lightly with the new Provisional Government in Russia; it would be a disaster for the Allies if Russia succumbed to internal pressure and withdrew from World War I. That new Russian government, however, faced its own looming threat: what if pro-monarchist groups try to restore Nicholas to the throne?

Because of this, they wanted to Romanovs out of Russia—and fast. They asked other Governments to grant the Romanovs asylum. The British agreed. Britain regretted the offer almost immediately.