0:00

You're listening to Noble Blood, a production

0:02

of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky

0:04

listener discretion advised. On

0:09

July sixteenth, nineteen eighteen,

0:11

the Imperial Russian family was woken

0:14

up by guards in the middle of the night. The

0:17

guards said that enemy combatants were

0:19

approaching the house where they were being kept

0:21

in a Katrinberg, and they needed to

0:23

go down to the cellar for their own protection.

0:27

For sixteen months, Szar Nicholas

0:30

the second, his wife Alexandra, and

0:32

their five children had been in government

0:34

custody. First,

0:37

they were prisoners in their palace at Sarko

0:39

Cello outside Petrograd, the

0:41

city formerly known as the now much

0:43

to German sounding St. Petersburg.

0:46

Next, the family was brought to Tobolsk in

0:48

Siberia. Finally, in

0:50

the spring of nineteen eighteen, the

0:53

family came to a Katrinburg to

0:55

live in a residence given the ominous

0:57

name the House of Special

0:59

Purpose Is. The

1:02

family assumed eventually they would be brought

1:04

somewhere else, somewhere farther away,

1:06

more remote, even more decrepit

1:08

and depressing than the place Nakatchinburg,

1:11

with its windows all painted white so

1:13

no one could see in or out,

1:16

and so when they were woken up in the middle

1:18

of the night, nobody panicked or

1:21

feared. They took their time getting

1:23

dressed, lining the secret compartments

1:25

of their clothes and pillow cases with the

1:28

jewels they had managed to keep hidden

1:30

in case they were leaving the House of Special

1:32

Purposes for the last time. As

1:35

it turns out they were. The

1:39

seller was small and very dark.

1:41

The youngest child, their only son, Alexei,

1:44

had to be carried down the stairs by his father

1:46

Nicholas. As they all stood in

1:48

the gloom, the former Serena Alexandra

1:51

asked the guards why there were no chairs,

1:54

and so two were brought, one for her

1:57

and one for the sickly young he Mulphila

2:00

Air. When everyone

2:02

was settled, the captain of the guards

2:04

cleared his throat and read the

2:06

written proclamation from the leaders

2:08

of the new Russian government, declaring

2:11

that the former's are Nicholas, was

2:13

to be executed. Nicholas

2:16

was in disbelief. Read that again

2:18

he said, no, wait, give it here, give

2:20

it to me. That's

2:22

when the soldiers with guns came in from

2:25

the next room.

2:28

The story of the Romanov family, their

2:30

lightning fast slipped from decadence

2:32

to gruesome murder continues

2:35

to invite a macab fascination more

2:37

than a century later. For

2:39

many, the entree into the story

2:42

of the doomed Tsar and his children

2:44

comes from the legend of Anastasia, the

2:46

rumor that the Tsar's youngest daughter

2:48

somehow managed to get away. Nothing

2:51

is more captivating than hope, even

2:53

when that hope is doomed. Maybe

2:55

especially when that hope is doomed. It's

2:58

a maccab. What if Anastasia's

3:00

possible survival is to imagine

3:03

a tiny sliver of the imperial

3:05

glamor preserved through time, one

3:08

daughter left to continue the family tree,

3:11

to transform the massacre into an origin

3:14

story, to give us a happy ending.

3:17

Spoiler alert, Anastasia

3:19

didn't get away, But

3:22

if you look to history, there was

3:24

another thread of hope, an

3:26

alternate reality in which the Romanov

3:28

family was saved at the eleventh hour.

3:32

For a brief moment in time, it

3:34

seemed that their savior would be King George

3:37

the fifth of England. Before

3:40

the Romanov execution, the provisional

3:43

government in Russia asked King

3:45

George whether the Imperial family

3:47

might be granted asylum in the UK. The

3:50

Czar was George's first cousin, and

3:53

they looked so much alike. People often joked

3:55

that they were twins, and their

3:58

letters that called each other Georgie and

4:00

Nikki. But

4:02

for a monarch, sometimes protecting

4:04

your own crown means being forced

4:06

to make tough choices, right

4:09

or wrong. George the five had

4:12

to make a decision. I'm

4:14

Dani Schwartz and this

4:17

is noble blood. The

4:25

King and Queen of Denmark had two daughters,

4:27

Dagmar and Alexandra. Dagmar

4:30

married the futures Are of Russia, and

4:33

Alexandra married the oldest son

4:35

of Queen Victoria. Both

4:37

Dagmar and Alexandra did their queenly

4:39

duties and had airs the way they were supposed

4:42

to in Russia Nicholas

4:44

the Second in England the

4:46

future King George five. They

4:49

called each other Nicki and Georgie. The

4:51

cousins Nicki and Georgie first became

4:54

close on vacations at Fredensburg,

4:56

brought by their mothers to meet their grandparents,

4:59

the King and Queen of den Mark in

5:01

eighteen eighty three. They spent the summer

5:03

there as teenagers. Nikki Georgie,

5:06

Georgie's younger sister Maud, who teased

5:08

Nikki about his crush on the beautiful

5:10

Alexandra of Hess his future

5:12

wife. Maud made fun

5:14

of Nikki for being shorter than Alexandra,

5:17

who they all called Alecki. Georgie

5:20

in England was cousins with Nikki on his mother's

5:22

side and cousins with Nikki's bride to

5:24

be, Alecki, on his father's side.

5:27

Both Georgie and Alecki were grandchildren

5:29

of Queen Victoria. While

5:31

the match between futures are Nicholas

5:33

the Second and the German Princess made

5:35

sense, Queen Victoria wasn't

5:38

too pleased about it. The state

5:40

of Russia is so bad, so rotten,

5:42

that at any moment something dreadful might

5:44

happen, The Queen wrote to her eldest daughter,

5:48

the wife of the heir to the throne is

5:50

in a difficult and precarious position.

5:52

And to Alecki's sister, Queen Victoria

5:55

wrote, my blood runs cold when

5:57

I think of her, so young, her dear

5:59

life and her husband's constantly threatened,

6:02

and we'll be unable to see her but so rarely.

6:05

Oh how I wish it was not to be that I should

6:07

lose my sweet Alecki. But

6:10

Georgie was pleased with the match, happy

6:12

that after ten years of pining, his cousin

6:14

Nikki finally got the girl of his dreams

6:16

to agree to marry him. Georgie

6:18

went to Russia for the wedding of his two first

6:21

cousins and wrote back to Queen Victoria

6:23

with nothing but praise for his hosts. Nikki

6:26

has been kindness itself to me. He

6:29

is the same dear boy he has always been

6:31

to me. The letter said, Russia

6:34

was volatile, but at least Alecki was marrying

6:36

a man who was young and handsome, and

6:38

he was kind. If anything,

6:40

he was too passive and malleable, too

6:43

insecure, hesitant. Only

6:46

in retrospect are the red flags

6:48

lit in neon, But

6:50

you know he was handsome. As

6:53

a matter of fact, Nikki and Georgie were

6:55

almost identical, the same

6:57

blue eyes, same beard. They

6:59

looked so much alike that when they were at

7:01

events together, people in relatives

7:03

would come up from behind with the wrong name.

7:06

They were cousins who looked more like twins.

7:13

But as it turns out, Queen Victoria

7:16

was right about the volatility in Russia.

7:21

After a protest in nine five

7:23

was brutally put down by the Cossacks

7:25

and the Imperial Guard. The Czar

7:28

was given a nickname, Nicolas

7:30

the Bloody. The

7:32

aristocracy represented indulgence

7:35

and luxury so completely removed

7:37

from the daily life of the common people

7:40

that it might as well have been life on the moon.

7:43

Around the world, public sentiment

7:45

had completely turned against the Czar

7:49

in nineteen o nine, when Nicholas

7:51

and his family came to visit the British

7:53

royal family at their home on the Isle

7:55

of Wight. Security concerns

7:57

were so high that most of the

8:00

as it took place at sea on the Tsar's

8:02

boat just off the coast, and

8:04

the outbreak of World War One gave

8:07

people even more reason to hate the Tsar's

8:09

wife, Alecki, the German Princess

8:11

Alexandra of Hess. Anti

8:14

German sentiment had led St. Petersburg

8:17

to become Petrograd and in

8:19

England compelled George the Fifth to change

8:21

his family name from Sex, Coburg

8:23

and Gotha to the neutrally British

8:25

sounding Windsor. According

8:28

to the people in Russia, Alexandra

8:30

was almost certainly a German spy,

8:33

and that's to say nothing of the way she cavorted

8:35

about with the dubious character resputant.

8:38

The two of them lovers, no doubt,

8:40

we're probably manipulating the Czar

8:42

to their nefarious German loving

8:44

ways. On

8:47

March thirteenth, nine seventeen,

8:49

George the Five wrote in his diary,

8:52

bad news from Russia. Practically a revolution

8:54

has broken out in Petrograd and

8:56

some of the guard regiments have mutinied

8:58

and killed their officer. Rising

9:01

is against the government, not the Czar.

9:04

Two days later, the Tsar was forced to

9:06

abdicate. George was in

9:08

despair for his cousin and friend, but revolutions

9:11

can be like dominoes, and

9:14

threats to one monarchy are threats to all

9:16

monarchies. His own crown

9:18

began feeling a little loose. When

9:30

George heard that the Tsar had been forced to

9:32

abdicate his throne, he wrote his

9:35

cousin a telegram.

9:37

Events of last week had deeply distressed

9:39

me. My thoughts are constantly with

9:42

you, and I shall always remain your true

9:44

and devoted friend, as you know I have

9:46

been in the past. The provisional

9:49

government in Russia never delivered it. After

9:52

all, the telegram had been addressed to the Tsar,

9:54

and no person of that title existed anymore.

9:59

The Imperial family presented a massive

10:01

problem for the provisional government. On

10:03

one hand, they wanted them out of the country

10:06

completely gone where they couldn't ignite mutiny

10:08

or inspire loyalty. But the

10:10

more extremist revolutionaries

10:12

didn't want the formers are out of custody.

10:15

They wanted his confinement to put him

10:17

on trial. They didn't want him to

10:19

get away literally or metaphorically.

10:23

It was about this time when the Provisional government's

10:26

foreign minister, a man named Pavo

10:28

Miliakov, approached the British

10:30

ambassador and requested that the Imperial

10:33

family might be allowed to come to England.

10:36

The British ambassador Buchanan equivocated,

10:40

how about Denmark or Sweden,

10:42

either of those places possible? What

10:45

if we just, you know, keep brainstorming. Miliakov,

10:48

sensing the tightening danger of the extremists,

10:51

reiterated that he would very much like to

10:53

get the Emperor out of Russia as soon as

10:56

possible. Buchanan

10:58

acquiesced. He asked the British government

11:00

for the authority to extend the Czar and his

11:02

family asylum in England at

11:04

least for the duration of the war. In

11:07

London, a Cabinet meant to discuss

11:09

it. They didn't want to turn down a

11:11

direct request from the provisional government.

11:14

They would need to stay in Russia's good graces

11:16

for trade and for continued support in

11:19

World War One, but there was

11:21

no way around the fact that bringing Bloody

11:23

Nicholas and his German empress to England

11:25

would look bad. The family

11:27

was massively unpopular with the British

11:29

public. News of

11:32

the Russian Tsar being overthrown

11:34

was met in England with cheers, with

11:36

celebrations in the street for the common

11:39

people who rose up to take down an

11:41

autocrat, and hatred for

11:43

Alexandra, the German born former

11:45

z Arena was even more virulent in

11:47

England. The popular opinion

11:50

was that there was no doubt she was double crossing

11:52

Russia in the war with German

11:54

spycraft. King

12:01

George the Fifth had been the victim of a

12:03

massive public outcry after he received

12:05

members of the supposedly pro German

12:07

Greek royal family. Hosting

12:10

the Tsar and his wife would be nothing short

12:12

of a pr nightmare. Plus,

12:15

there were logistics to consider. Where would

12:18

the Tsar's family even stay. The

12:20

Prime Minister Lloyd George suggested

12:22

one of the King's palaces. The

12:25

King's private secretary Stamford

12:27

and rejected that proposal outright.

12:30

He was there at that meeting representing the

12:32

King, and he was fully aware how damaging

12:34

the association between the Tsar and

12:36

King George could be. All

12:39

of the palaces were occupied. Stamford And asserted,

12:42

well, except for Balmoral in Scotland.

12:44

But that's a summer palace and it would be totally

12:46

unsuitable for the Tsar and his family

12:48

to stay at at this time of year. Yes,

12:52

of course, we can all see now, totally

12:54

unsuitable for the Imperial family to

12:56

stay in a summer palace when they would soon

12:58

be imprisoned in Siberia. Suitable

13:02

palace available or not, it seemed

13:04

impossible for the British government to turn

13:06

down a direct request from the Russian

13:08

provisional government, and

13:10

so reluctantly Britain agreed

13:13

that in theory, the Czar and

13:15

his family could stay in the country just

13:17

temporarily, just until the end

13:20

of the war. But fortunately

13:22

for the British government, as they fiddled with

13:24

their cuff links and received urgent imaginary

13:26

phone calls, now it was the Russian

13:29

government who delayed the extremist

13:31

Bolshevik faction was consolidating

13:34

its power, even as Miliakov

13:36

wanted to get the Imperial family out of

13:38

the country that was becoming more

13:40

and more challenging. Any

13:43

actual attempt to extradite the Czar

13:45

would infuriate the extremists.

13:48

In the meantime, King George the Fifth

13:50

reconsidered his own position. Britain

13:53

was weary from the war and its many sacrifices,

13:56

and socialism was becoming more and more

13:58

appealing to the popular elation. Anti

14:01

royal sentiment was on the rise, and even

14:03

George changing his family name to Windsor

14:06

didn't quite convince the country of his patriotism

14:09

or of his necessity. A guy

14:12

living in a palace wearing a golden crown

14:14

is never a popular image when a nation

14:16

is barely struggling to make it through an

14:18

endless war. YEA

14:25

bringing Nicholas and his family over

14:27

to England would indelibly associate

14:30

King George the Fifth with the hated Russian

14:32

autocracy. After all,

14:34

everyone knew that King George was close with

14:36

his beloved cousin, regardless

14:39

of what the political situation actually

14:41

was. The truth is it would look like a

14:43

move of family loyalty and not diplomacy,

14:47

and so on. The King's behalf Stamfordham

14:50

wrote to bal for the British Foreign Secretary,

14:54

the King desires me to ask you whether

14:56

the ambassador should not be communicated

14:58

with to make some other plans

15:00

for the future residents of their imperial

15:02

majesties. King

15:05

George was already receiving letters

15:07

of outrage from working men and Labor

15:09

Party members of Parliament in the House of Commons,

15:12

all with the assumption that he was the one making

15:14

the decision about whether or not to invite

15:16

the Czar into the country. Britain

15:19

was a constitutional monarchy, of course,

15:21

and George had no direct powers to do

15:23

anything, really, but it was his

15:25

head on the line. An

15:27

article in the weekly journal Justice

15:30

protesting asylum of the Czar suggested

15:33

that the invitation had already come from the

15:35

British King and Queen, but

15:37

it was probably the words from an editorial

15:39

in the Evening Globe that stuck in the

15:41

King's mind. We most

15:44

sincerely hope that if there really

15:46

is any idea of inviting the XR

15:48

and his consort to make their home in England,

15:51

it will be abandoned. We speak

15:53

plainly because we must, and because

15:55

the danger is great and imminent,

15:58

the British throne itself would be perild

16:00

if this thing were done. And

16:03

so, in a fit of panic and determination,

16:05

the King had Stamford Him right yet another

16:07

note to the Foreign Secretary just six

16:10

hours after the first, making things

16:12

very very clear. The

16:14

King Stamford Him wrote, must

16:17

beg you to represent to the Prime Minister

16:19

that from all he hears and reads in the press,

16:22

the residents in this country of the ex

16:24

Emperor and Empress would be strongly

16:27

resented by the public, and would

16:29

undoubtedly compromise the position of

16:31

the King and Queen, from whom it would

16:33

generally be assumed the invitation had

16:35

emanated. Stamford

16:38

um included the article from Justice in

16:40

the note. The King loved

16:42

his cousin, but the idea of Britain welcoming

16:44

Nicholas the bloody let alone, mounting

16:46

and elaborate rescue to save him once

16:49

the Russian government custody closed in

16:51

had shifted from merely awkward to insurmountable.

16:55

It's ironic in a sense. The only

16:57

reason a king is a king at all is because

16:59

if who his family is. But

17:02

in a constitutional monarchy, a

17:04

king's power is at the mercy of the people.

17:07

Nicholas the Second was radioactive,

17:09

and George needed to protect himself. He

17:12

wasn't Georgie. He was King George

17:14

the Five, and he put England and

17:17

himself first. When

17:23

the Bolshevik soldiers entered the cellar

17:26

on that night in July in nine eighteen,

17:29

each had been assigned a member of the family

17:31

to shoot. There were eleven

17:33

of them that needed to be killed altogether, three

17:36

loyal servants that had stayed with the imperial

17:38

family, their doctor Nicholas,

17:41

Alexandra, their young son Alexei,

17:44

and their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana,

17:46

Maria and Anastasia.

17:50

Some of the soldiers had refused to shoot the

17:52

girls and had been replaced, but

17:54

even so, when the Captain of the guard

17:56

gave the orders to fire, the majority

17:59

of soldiers turned their gun to Nicholas. They

18:02

were loyal Bolsheviks, and they all wanted to

18:05

be the one who had killed the Tsar himself, not

18:07

a man who had shot a teenage girl. The

18:11

result, though, was chaos. The

18:13

hated Tsar died quickly, but the

18:15

girls were left alive, screaming

18:18

and hiding in corners of the cellar. Splattered

18:21

with blood. While the soldiers attempted to

18:23

finish their gruesome execution, their

18:26

Russian made guns, jamming soldiers

18:29

kept missing their targets in the dark. Their

18:31

boots were drenched in blood and brain

18:34

matter. To ultimately

18:36

kill the four princesses, the soldiers

18:38

had to repeatedly stab them with their bayonets.

18:43

At first, the Russian government only acknowledged

18:46

that the czar had been killed. The girls,

18:48

they said, had been put on a train to somewhere

18:51

for their own safety, and they had lost

18:53

touch with them. The plan

18:56

was to make evidence of the massacre literally

18:58

disappear. Two days

19:00

after the shooting, their bodies were

19:02

clumsily doused and sulfuric acid,

19:04

set on fire and tossed into

19:06

a pair of shallow graves. People

19:10

had imagined the likelihood that the czar was

19:12

going to be killed, it was possible

19:14

that the Czarina was going to be killed as well,

19:17

but no one had imagined that their five

19:19

children would also be executed, and

19:21

no one could have envisioned it happening in the

19:23

most chaotic, disturbing

19:26

and gruesome way imaginable. When

19:29

word of Nicholas's death crossed Europe,

19:31

King George attended a memorial service

19:33

in England. I attended

19:36

a service at the Russian Church in memory

19:38

of dear Nikki, who I fear was

19:40

shot last month by the Bolsheviks.

19:42

George wrote in his diary, we

19:44

can get no details. It was

19:47

a foul murder. I was devoted

19:49

to Nikki, who was the kindest of men

19:51

and a thorough gentleman, loved

19:54

his country and his people. Ever

19:58

protective of the King's reputation Asian, stamford

20:01

Um had floated the possibility that the King

20:03

might want to sit the memorial service out

20:05

so that the public wouldn't see George as too

20:08

sympathetic to the fallen Zar. It

20:10

seems to me, stamford Um wrote, we

20:12

could decline to join in on the service on

20:15

the grounds that the government has no official

20:17

news of the emperor's death. If

20:20

you're looking for a villain in this story, Stamford

20:22

m might be as close as any. Just

20:24

three days after he advised the king not

20:27

to attend the memorial, stamford

20:29

Um wrote a letter in response to an announcement

20:31

of the Czar's death in the Paper. The

20:34

letter said, was there ever a crueler

20:36

murder? And has this country ever before

20:39

displayed such callous indifference to a

20:41

tragedy of this magnitude. What does

20:43

it all mean? I am so thankful

20:46

that the King and Queen attended the memorial

20:48

service. Did

20:53

King George have flood on his hands? The

20:56

anti climactic truth is, even if

20:58

he had been completely support of

21:00

Britain granting asylum to the Imperial

21:02

family, it might not have made a difference

21:04

at all. By the time it became

21:06

clear that the Czar and his family were in danger,

21:09

it was probably already too late. Miliakov

21:12

and the provisional government might not have been

21:14

strong enough to defy the extremists that

21:17

wanted blood, and even from

21:19

a logistical perspective, a British

21:21

ship would have needed to cut through the still

21:23

frozen ports of Russia and then

21:25

through a stronghold of Bolshevik extremists,

21:29

and the imperial children had measles that spring.

21:32

The Tsar and Sarina may very well have chosen

21:34

to delay their traveling until their children

21:36

were better. After all, no

21:38

one could have possibly imagined how limited

21:41

the window for escape would be, or

21:43

imagine the horrifying, bloody future

21:45

that was to come. As

21:47

it is, George's diaries filled with

21:49

woe and sorrow for his cousin Nikki,

21:51

and genuine horror that his children

21:53

were murdered, but not guilt.

21:56

Maybe George understood the futility of

21:58

feeling remorse for some thing you never would

22:01

have been able to do differently. But

22:04

it's also possible that maybe George did

22:06

feel guilt. Maybe he was kept

22:08

awake, pacing the floors of his palace,

22:11

hearing screams in the dark. Maybe

22:14

he looked in the mirror and saw his twin cousin

22:16

Nikki, staring back at him.

22:19

But maybe he knew that as a king sometimes

22:21

guilt, like family love, is

22:24

one of the many things that you're forced to push

22:26

down and push away in

22:28

order to do your duty.

22:37

In the end, George the fifth didn't completely

22:40

abandon his Russian family, stick

22:42

around after a brief sponsor break to find

22:44

out what happened next. Even

22:55

after Nicholas the Second abdicated the

22:57

throne, his mother, the Dowager

22:59

and Breath and his sister, the Grand Duchess

23:02

Zenia Alexandrovna still

23:04

lived in the relative security of a family

23:06

house in Crimea. When they

23:08

heard that the former's are and his family had

23:10

been murdered, they refused to believe

23:13

it, it was probably just Bolshevik

23:15

propaganda. In the spring

23:17

of nineteen nineteen, King George the Fifth

23:20

sent the British warship h M. S. Marlborough

23:22

to evacuate the remaining Romanovs.

23:25

As the Red Army continued to creep

23:27

closer to Crimea. The

23:30

Marlborough, Tuxania and the Dowager

23:32

Empress across the Black Sea to Malta

23:35

and then finally to safety in England.

23:37

With the Dowager Empress, who had been

23:39

renamed Maria Federovna but was

23:41

born the Danish Princess dagmar reunited

23:44

with her sister Alexandra, King

23:46

George the Fifth mother, and

23:49

eventually even the doomed Arena

23:51

Alexandra's family made it to England.

23:54

Remember Alki's sister. She was

23:56

the one to whom Queen Victoria had written with

23:58

an eerie clairvoyant about how

24:00

our blood rained cold and thought of Alecki

24:02

going to Russia. Well. Alecki's

24:05

sister had a grandchild, a baby

24:07

boy born as a Prince of Greece and

24:09

Denmark. He would go on to marry

24:11

King George the Fifth granddaughter and

24:14

become Prince Philip Consort to

24:16

Queen Elizabeth the Second. Noble

24:25

Blood is a co production of I Heart Radio

24:27

and Aaron Minky. The show is written

24:29

and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced

24:31

by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex

24:34

Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble

24:37

Blood is on social media at Noble

24:39

Blood Tales, and you can learn more about

24:41

the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com.

24:44

For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit

24:46

the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

24:49

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.