Young Writers Society

I'm beginning a story about the murder of the last czar of Russia; Nickolas Romanov and his family. As well as Grigory (let me know if I spelled that incorrectly) Rasputin, his prediction and possible involvement the slaughter (though he was dead for nearly two years, I know), and his hypnotic powers--mainly--over Alexei Romanov, if he had any. Please give me your opinion on whether he did or not.

I know basic background information, but could use some more in depth details...but simple facts are okay as well. Okay, so i just need any facts.
Whatever you guys can give me is fine...

OMG I totally did a huge report on this in tenth grade.

I don't think it really matters how you spell his name, because he's Russian. I've usually seen Grigory or Grigori.

Basically Rasputin's beginnings in Siberia are unclear. Siberia is sort of a wild place, and he was apparently a bit of a wild kid, especially as a teenager. They drink a lot in Siberia. He liked his vodka.

Anyway, at some point he shows up in St. Petersburg, where he's somewhat of a hit with the local women. The royal family has issues, and here they are. Basically they had four girls at first, and were getting kind of anxious for a male heir. Then, hallelujah, Alexei is born. But it turns out he has hemophilia, a condition where his blood has difficulty clotting. This means if he gets cut or bruised, he might bleed way too much or bleed internally. It was very painful for him, and scary for his family. He had a bodyguard with him at all times to try to keep him out of harm's way.

It's especially hard for his mother, Alexandra, who was never all that happy in Russia to begin with. But then she meets Rasputin. There were rumors that she and Rasputin had an affair, but I don't think most historians believe it. She was pretty devoted to her husband. Anyway, one day Alexei starts to bleed, and he's in a lot of pain, everybody's worried. Rasputin comes in and speaks to the boy and calms him, and the bleeding starts to stop. A lot of people believed it was because he was a holy man or a magic man. He did pray a lot and was apparently very religious, for all his lewd behavior.

In truth it was probably just that he had a very soothing voice and was able to calm the boy and his mother down. The more relaxing atmosphere helped Alexei's heart rate go down, which in turn helped the bleeding slow and eventually stop. I don't know about being hypnotic, but he had an effect on Alexei that no one else had. Whatever the reason, Alexandra always depended on Rasputin from then on. He became very close to the royal family, to the point that a lot of their royal relatives and friends became kind of suspicious about his influence.

So then some of them decided to kill him! Felix Yusupov and friends invited him over and fed him enough poisoned wine and biscuits to kill about twelve people, and he was totally okay. So then they shot him. And he got up and started running. They kept shooting at him. Finally he went down, and they tied him up and put him in a bag and threw him in the river. When his body floated up the next morning and all the townspeople went to get some of the water the corpse had been floating in (gross), it was found that he finally died from drowning.

MAD SKETCHY.

I have a good novel on it (that I've yet to actually read -_-). It's kind of big, but it looked great when I got it. I should actually read it. The Rasputin File by Edvard Radzinsky.

I read part of The Rasputin File for my project. It's probably the most accurate research, but half of it is totally boring, probably because Radzinsky spends about forty pages talking about how he's awesome and his research is awesome and his other book is awesome.

There's a series I like called The Royal Diaries, which are fictional diaries by famous princesses from history. I have one about Anastasia, who was one of the sisters. There's some background information and he's mentioned quite a bit. It's also a good read, but it's not all about it.

Just thought I'd let you know, if you want to take a look at it. It's not long, you can knock it over in one or two days easy.

I don't think Rasputin could have had much to do with the death of the Romanov family. He was killed in, uh... 1917 or 1918, if I remember correctly. Sometime before the 19201, anyway. The Romanov family was killed later, as you say - hence, I seriously doubt, despite all the myths surrounding Rasputin, that he'd be accused of having anything to do with the murder. The suspects were Bolshevik supporters... again, I think.

pegasi_quill, i was simply going off of information i got off of a website that said that rasputin left a letter for the romanov family saying that he would die before January 1.
and that if he was murdered by relatives of the romanovs, the family would be killed by the people within the next two years.

i was mainly wondering about that. i'm pretty sure it's true, but i'm not sure what all the letter said, etc.

-GC10

Ooh, interesting. Ok, well, I'd never heard of that letter before.

Hmm, well, it could have happened, it does seem probable.

umm...yeah...