by JG Hampton
a Wimpy Czarovitch
(The Life and Times of Alexei Romanov, the Last Czarovitch)
by
J.G. Hampton
Prologue
Prior to 1918, the year of the Russian Revolution, the largest country in the world with incredible natural resources was ruled by the Romanov family who had reigned over the dominion for over three hundred years. The kingdom was so vast that no czar had traveled through it at one time. Russia included the land of Poland, the Ukraine, the lands of the Tatars, the Mongols, the Huns, Finland, and Siberia. Few czars had ever set foot in the frozen world of Siberia, which remained a backwards country seemingly immune to progress.
The first Romanov family member to reign as czar was actually selected by the people because of his charisma, intelligence and good looks. The Romanov prince was anointed as Czar and he and his bride founded their dynasty. The humble people met him with salt and bread and the tradition was carried down through the ages as well as the family names of Mikhael, Alexei, Alexander and Nicholas.
The Romanovs were a privileged family, rich beyond belief with their many palaces and mansions: the old Kremlin in Moscow, The Annitchkov Palace, the Catharine Palace, the Grand Palace which was an imitation of Versailles, the Alexander Palace, the Winter Palace, Peterhoff, and the new summer palace in the Crimea, to name a few of their magnificent holdings.
Czar was a word derived from the word Caesar and the czar ruled supreme. His very shadow was worshipped by the superstitious peasants who considered him God's representative on earth. His touch was purported to heal scrofula, a nasty skin disease and other ailments. His word and edicts often determined whether one lived or died. Serfs lives contrasted sharply with the lives of the rich Russian nobility who spoke French at court. Peasants scratched out an existence by farming small plots and herding animals belonging to a wealthy aristocrat giving most of the fruits of their labors to the noble.
For them poverty was a way of life from birth to death and few were able to rise above this system of slavery. The Russian way of life seemed impermeable to change like the permafrost or an insect preserved in amber but in the mid 1800's Czar Alexander Romanov II did something remarkable: he liberated the serfs allowing them to own their own meager plots of land so that they could grow vegetables and food for their families. This remarkable gesture allowed them a chance to live lives as humans rather than beasts of burden. This forward thinking czar enabled the poorest of his subjects to accumulate a surplus of goods, a feat they'd never been able to achieve before. As a reward for his progressive thinking, he had his legs blown off by a bomb of nitroglycerine thrown at his coach by a peasant as he traveled from the Winter Palace. Czar Alexander II died shortly afterwards in his St. Petersburg palace, the Winter Palace, while his impressionable young grandson Nicholas II, his son Alexander and other loved ones watched in horror as he bled to death. No wonder his successor, son Czar Alexander III stalled the progress that his father had started. He and his family ensconced themselves behind fortresses and palace walls in attempts to foil assassins. Now that nitroglycerin was available having been developed by the inventor Nobel, czars and other world leaders were sitting ducks destined to become an endangered species as dynamite became easily accessible for the manufacture of bombs and projectiles.
It was almost as if open season was declared on these reformers of the dynasties. Dynasties began to topple as rulers were targeted by assassins and revolutionaries; they were replaced by democracies or repressive regimes ruled by an iron handed dictator. The French monarchs, the Capets and Bourbons, King Louis and his beautiful Austrian bride, Marie Antoinette, were the first to fall. Then the American colonies won their independence from Britain.
In England in the late fifteen hundreds, the English people recognized Mary I, or Mary Tudor, an illegitimate daughter, as formidable King Henry VIII's successor when his adolescent son King Edward, died well before his time and contrary to the young king's own edicts. His cousin, Lady Jane Gray had been designated as Edward's heir until she produced a son who would rule in her place. The English people knew whom they wanted as their lawful queen and rallied behind her. When Queen Mary I died without issue, her younger half sister, another female declared a bastard by her own father, Elizabeth I, ruled so successfully and long, that an era was named after her. Women were granted the right to reign as well as male sovereigns from that point forward in English history.
When Queen Victoria despite her German roots became the heiress apparent, her people didn't hesitate to crown her Queen of England. The Divine right of Kings and Queens, continued to be a sacred responsibility in the island kingdom. She married her first cousin, a German from Saxe-Coburg, who never shared her throne with her, but who performed his duties as a royal consort nevertheless. Her epoch was named after herself, the Victorian Era. Their romance was rumored to be a love match and produced nine children.
Russian law, in spite of Catharine the Great's tremendous success declared that male heirs had precedence as rulers throughout the three hundred year history of the Romanov dynasty and male heirs remained as sovereigns until the end of the dynasty with succession rights.
Unfortunately, Queen Victoria, the grandmother of Europe, due to intermingling of close bloodlines, passed along a flawed gene which caused a blood disorder in some of her male offspring called hemophilia to her daughters and granddaughters several which passed this gene to other royal houses spreading havoc throughout several dynasties. The Spanish dynasty, the Russian, and the tiny Hesse- Darmstadt Dynasty were affected when the heir to the throne was born with the illness. Three year old Fritz bled to death after falling out of a second story window of the palace. He was Queen Victoria's grandson and older brother of Alix. Although recent Windsor descendants claim that the hemophilia gene never affected their lineage much. Closer scrutiny of historical records proves otherwise. Perhaps they claim this only because those who had the abhorrent disease as well as their parents kept the information under wraps. One of Queen Victoria's four sons died shortly after reaching adulthood after producing two children. Not many knew that he had the bleeding disease, but the queen herself acknowledged that it had been a burden which had to be borne.
Czarina Alexandra of Russia, Queen Victoria's favorite granddaughter; was the former Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt whose own brother, Frederick or Fritz, was the tragic three year old who hemorrhaged. However, her other brother Ernest, never had the disease and he inherited the small throne of the principality. Irene, one of her sisters also had a son who died from hemophilia.
Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, turned down Britain's crown Prince Eddy's proposal of marriage because she was in love with another grander Russian royal. Her grandmother was quite upset that she had refused the throne of England. Eddy contracted influenza and died not long afterwards. Despite the objections of several royal houses, Queen Victoria's granddaughter, the beautiful Alix, wed Nicholas Romanov II and passed the tainted gene to her first born son, Alexei. Another earlier miscarriage of the couple was rumored to have been a male by the attending physician who might have had the flawed genetic code resulting in her first miscarriage. After many years of waiting and praying for a son, having delivered four exquisite daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, Alix, now known as Czarina Alexandra, was finally delivered of a handsome boy whom they named Alexei despite having discussed on their honeymoon naming their first son Mikhael. However, when this long awaited male was finally born after many prior disappointments they chose the name of Alexei for him. Czar Nicholas II rejoiced that their prayers had finally been answered and the kingdom celebrated with canon salutations and fireworks. When his son's navel started bleeding shortly after his birth, it was discovered that he had the dread
ed disease of hemophilia which had been inherited from his mother and great grandmother for which there was no treatment and no cure. This dire diagnosis was kept secret for years since their dynasty was at risk due to the popularity of the former czarina. This illness was painful and called the English bleeding disease. At the time, males with this flawed gene weren't expected to live to adulthood. One of Queen Victoria's own sons was an exception having lived to adulthood. Ironically, her other sons were not afflicted with the dire disease; somehow they escaped the dreaded DNA which caused a life of suffering. Now the illness is treated by