Ever Dearest Cousin Nicky

King George V and Tsar Nicholas II were first cousins who looked so much alike that people often jokingly called them twins. When one cousin's crown came under threat, the other had a decision to make. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minky listener discretion advised. On July sixteenth,
nineteen eighteen, the Imperial Russian family was woken up by
guards in the middle of the night. The guards said
that enemy combatants were approaching the house where they were

(00:20):
being kept in a Katrinberg, and they needed to go
down to the cellar for their own protection. For sixteen months,
Szar Nicholas the second, his wife Alexandra, and their five
children had been in government custody. First, they were prisoners
in their palace at Sarko Cello outside Petrograd, the city

(00:41):
formerly known as the now much to German sounding St. Petersburg. Next,
the family was brought to Tobolsk in Siberia. Finally, in
the spring of nineteen eighteen, the family came to a
Katrinburg to live in a residence given the ominous name
the House of Special Purpose Is. The family assumed eventually

(01:03):
they would be brought somewhere else, somewhere farther away, more remote,
even more decrepit and depressing than the place Nakatchinburg, with
its windows all painted white so no one could see
in or out, and so when they were woken up
in the middle of the night, nobody panicked or feared.
They took their time getting dressed, lining the secret compartments

(01:25):
of their clothes and pillow cases with the jewels they
had managed to keep hidden in case they were leaving
the House of Special Purposes for the last time. As
it turns out they were. The seller was small and
very dark. The youngest child, their only son, Alexei, had
to be carried down the stairs by his father Nicholas.

(01:47):
As they all stood in the gloom, the former Serena
Alexandra asked the guards why there were no chairs, and
so two were brought, one for her and one for
the sickly young he Mulphila Air. When everyone was settled,
the captain of the guards cleared his throat and read
the written proclamation from the leaders of the new Russian government,

(02:10):
declaring that the former's are Nicholas, was to be executed.
Nicholas was in disbelief. Read that again he said, no, wait,
give it here, give it to me. That's when the
soldiers with guns came in from the next room. The
story of the Romanov family, their lightning fast slipped from

(02:32):
decadence to gruesome murder continues to invite a macab fascination
more than a century later. For many, the entree into
the story of the doomed Tsar and his children comes
from the legend of Anastasia, the rumor that the Tsar's
youngest daughter somehow managed to get away. Nothing is more
captivating than hope, even when that hope is doomed. Maybe

(02:55):
especially when that hope is doomed. It's a maccab. What
if Anastasia's possible survival is to imagine a tiny sliver
of the imperial glamor preserved through time, one daughter left
to continue the family tree, to transform the massacre into
an origin story, to give us a happy ending. Spoiler alert,

(03:18):
Anastasia didn't get away, But if you look to history,
there was another thread of hope, an alternate reality in
which the Romanov family was saved at the eleventh hour.
For a brief moment in time, it seemed that their
savior would be King George the fifth of England. Before

(03:40):
the Romanov execution, the provisional government in Russia asked King
George whether the Imperial family might be granted asylum in
the UK. The Czar was George's first cousin, and they
looked so much alike. People often joked that they were twins,
and their letters that called each other Georgie and Nikki.

(04:02):
But for a monarch, sometimes protecting your own crown means
being forced to make tough choices, right or wrong. George
the five had to make a decision. I'm Dani Schwartz
and this is noble blood. The King and Queen of

(04:26):
Denmark had two daughters, Dagmar and Alexandra. Dagmar married the
futures Are of Russia, and Alexandra married the oldest son
of Queen Victoria. Both Dagmar and Alexandra did their queenly
duties and had airs the way they were supposed to
in Russia Nicholas the Second in England the future King

(04:47):
George five. They called each other Nicki and Georgie. The
cousins Nicki and Georgie first became close on vacations at Fredensburg,
brought by their mothers to meet their grandparents, the King
and Queen of den Mark in eighteen eighty three. They
spent the summer there as teenagers. Nikki Georgie, Georgie's younger
sister Maud, who teased Nikki about his crush on the

(05:10):
beautiful Alexandra of Hess his future wife. Maud made fun
of Nikki for being shorter than Alexandra, who they all
called Alecki. Georgie in England was cousins with Nikki on
his mother's side and cousins with Nikki's bride to be, Alecki,
on his father's side. Both Georgie and Alecki were grandchildren
of Queen Victoria. While the match between futures are Nicholas

(05:33):
the Second and the German Princess made sense, Queen Victoria
wasn't too pleased about it. The state of Russia is
so bad, so rotten, that at any moment something dreadful
might happen, The Queen wrote to her eldest daughter, the
wife of the heir to the throne is in a
difficult and precarious position. And to Alecki's sister, Queen Victoria wrote,

(05:55):
my blood runs cold when I think of her, so young,
her dear life and her husband's constantly threatened, and we'll
be unable to see her but so rarely. Oh how
I wish it was not to be that I should
lose my sweet Alecki. But Georgie was pleased with the match,
happy that after ten years of pining, his cousin Nikki
finally got the girl of his dreams to agree to

(06:17):
marry him. Georgie went to Russia for the wedding of
his two first cousins and wrote back to Queen Victoria
with nothing but praise for his hosts. Nikki has been
kindness itself to me. He is the same dear boy
he has always been to me. The letter said, Russia
was volatile, but at least Alecki was marrying a man
who was young and handsome, and he was kind. If anything,

(06:40):
he was too passive and malleable, too insecure, hesitant. Only
in retrospect are the red flags lit in neon, But
you know he was handsome. As a matter of fact,
Nikki and Georgie were almost identical, the same blue eyes,
same beard. They looked so much alike that when they

(07:01):
were at events together, people in relatives would come up
from behind with the wrong name. They were cousins who
looked more like twins. But as it turns out, Queen
Victoria was right about the volatility in Russia. After a

(07:21):
protest in nine five was brutally put down by the
Cossacks and the Imperial Guard. The Czar was given a nickname,
Nicolas the Bloody. The aristocracy represented indulgence and luxury so
completely removed from the daily life of the common people
that it might as well have been life on the moon.

(07:43):
Around the world, public sentiment had completely turned against the
Czar in nineteen o nine, when Nicholas and his family
came to visit the British royal family at their home
on the Isle of Wight. Security concerns were so high
that most of the as it took place at sea
on the Tsar's boat just off the coast, and the

(08:05):
outbreak of World War One gave people even more reason
to hate the Tsar's wife, Alecki, the German Princess Alexandra
of Hess. Anti German sentiment had led St. Petersburg to
become Petrograd and in England compelled George the Fifth to
change his family name from Sex, Coburg and Gotha to
the neutrally British sounding Windsor. According to the people in Russia,

(08:29):
Alexandra was almost certainly a German spy, and that's to
say nothing of the way she cavorted about with the
dubious character resputant. The two of them lovers, no doubt,
we're probably manipulating the Czar to their nefarious German loving ways.
On March thirteenth, nine seventeen, George the Five wrote in

(08:50):
his diary, bad news from Russia. Practically a revolution has
broken out in Petrograd and some of the guard regiments
have mutinied and killed their officer. Rising is against the government,
not the Czar. Two days later, the Tsar was forced
to abdicate. George was in despair for his cousin and friend,
but revolutions can be like dominoes, and threats to one

(09:14):
monarchy are threats to all monarchies. His own crown began
feeling a little loose. When George heard that the Tsar
had been forced to abdicate his throne, he wrote his

(09:35):
cousin a telegram. Events of last week had deeply distressed me.
My thoughts are constantly with you, and I shall always
remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I
have been in the past. The provisional government in Russia
never delivered it. After all, the telegram had been addressed
to the Tsar, and no person of that title existed anymore.

(09:59):
The Imperial family presented a massive problem for the provisional government.
On one hand, they wanted them out of the country
completely gone where they couldn't ignite mutiny or inspire loyalty.
But the more extremist revolutionaries didn't want the formers are
out of custody. They wanted his confinement to put him
on trial. They didn't want him to get away literally

(10:21):
or metaphorically. It was about this time when the Provisional
government's foreign minister, a man named Pavo Miliakov, approached the
British ambassador and requested that the Imperial family might be
allowed to come to England. The British ambassador Buchanan equivocated,
how about Denmark or Sweden, either of those places possible?

(10:44):
What if we just, you know, keep brainstorming. Miliakov, sensing
the tightening danger of the extremists, reiterated that he would
very much like to get the Emperor out of Russia
as soon as possible. Buchanan acquiesced. He asked the British
government for the authority to extend the Czar and his
family asylum in England at least for the duration of

(11:06):
the war. In London, a Cabinet meant to discuss it.
They didn't want to turn down a direct request from
the provisional government. They would need to stay in Russia's
good graces for trade and for continued support in World
War One, but there was no way around the fact
that bringing Bloody Nicholas and his German empress to England
would look bad. The family was massively unpopular with the

(11:29):
British public. News of the Russian Tsar being overthrown was
met in England with cheers, with celebrations in the street
for the common people who rose up to take down
an autocrat, and hatred for Alexandra, the German born former
z Arena was even more virulent in England. The popular

(11:49):
opinion was that there was no doubt she was double
crossing Russia in the war with German spycraft. King George
the Fifth had been the victim of a massive public
outcry after he received members of the supposedly pro German
Greek royal family. Hosting the Tsar and his wife would

(12:11):
be nothing short of a pr nightmare. Plus, there were
logistics to consider. Where would the Tsar's family even stay.
The Prime Minister Lloyd George suggested one of the King's palaces.
The King's private secretary Stamford and rejected that proposal outright.
He was there at that meeting representing the King, and

(12:32):
he was fully aware how damaging the association between the
Tsar and King George could be. All of the palaces
were occupied. Stamford And asserted, well, except for Balmoral in Scotland.
But that's a summer palace and it would be totally
unsuitable for the Tsar and his family to stay at
at this time of year. Yes, of course, we can
all see now, totally unsuitable for the Imperial family to

(12:56):
stay in a summer palace when they would soon be
imprisoned in Siberia. Suitable palace available or not, it seemed
impossible for the British government to turn down a direct
request from the Russian provisional government, and so reluctantly Britain
agreed that in theory, the Czar and his family could
stay in the country just temporarily, just until the end

(13:20):
of the war. But fortunately for the British government, as
they fiddled with their cuff links and received urgent imaginary
phone calls, now it was the Russian government who delayed
the extremist Bolshevik faction was consolidating its power, even as
Miliakov wanted to get the Imperial family out of the
country that was becoming more and more challenging. Any actual

(13:43):
attempt to extradite the Czar would infuriate the extremists. In
the meantime, King George the Fifth reconsidered his own position.
Britain was weary from the war and its many sacrifices,
and socialism was becoming more and more appealing to the
popular elation. Anti royal sentiment was on the rise, and
even George changing his family name to Windsor didn't quite

(14:07):
convince the country of his patriotism or of his necessity.
A guy living in a palace wearing a golden crown
is never a popular image when a nation is barely
struggling to make it through an endless war. YEA bringing
Nicholas and his family over to England would indelibly associate

(14:30):
King George the Fifth with the hated Russian autocracy. After all,
everyone knew that King George was close with his beloved cousin,
regardless of what the political situation actually was. The truth
is it would look like a move of family loyalty
and not diplomacy, and so on. The King's behalf Stamfordham

(14:50):
wrote to bal for the British Foreign Secretary, the King
desires me to ask you whether the ambassador should not
be communicated with to make some other plans for the
future residents of their imperial majesties. King George was already
receiving letters of outrage from working men and Labor Party
members of Parliament in the House of Commons, all with

(15:12):
the assumption that he was the one making the decision
about whether or not to invite the Czar into the country.
Britain was a constitutional monarchy, of course, and George had
no direct powers to do anything, really, but it was
his head on the line. An article in the weekly
journal Justice protesting asylum of the Czar suggested that the

(15:33):
invitation had already come from the British King and Queen,
but it was probably the words from an editorial in
the Evening Globe that stuck in the King's mind. We
most sincerely hope that if there really is any idea
of inviting the XR and his consort to make their
home in England, it will be abandoned. We speak plainly

(15:54):
because we must, and because the danger is great and imminent,
the British throne itself would be perild if this thing
were done. And so, in a fit of panic and determination,
the King had Stamford Him right yet another note to
the Foreign Secretary just six hours after the first, making
things very very clear. The King Stamford Him wrote, must

(16:17):
beg you to represent to the Prime Minister that from
all he hears and reads in the press, the residents
in this country of the ex Emperor and Empress would
be strongly resented by the public, and would undoubtedly compromise
the position of the King and Queen, from whom it
would generally be assumed the invitation had emanated. Stamford um

(16:38):
included the article from Justice in the note. The King
loved his cousin, but the idea of Britain welcoming Nicholas
the bloody let alone, mounting and elaborate rescue to save
him once the Russian government custody closed in had shifted
from merely awkward to insurmountable. It's ironic in a sense.
The only reason a king is a king at all

(16:59):
is because if who his family is. But in a
constitutional monarchy, a king's power is at the mercy of
the people. Nicholas the Second was radioactive, and George needed
to protect himself. He wasn't Georgie. He was King George
the Five, and he put England and himself first. When

(17:23):
the Bolshevik soldiers entered the cellar on that night in
July in nine eighteen, each had been assigned a member
of the family to shoot. There were eleven of them
that needed to be killed altogether, three loyal servants that
had stayed with the imperial family, their doctor Nicholas, Alexandra,
their young son Alexei, and their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana,

(17:46):
Maria and Anastasia. Some of the soldiers had refused to
shoot the girls and had been replaced, but even so,
when the Captain of the guard gave the orders to fire,
the majority of soldiers turned their gun to Nicholas. They
were loyal Bolsheviks, and they all wanted to be the
one who had killed the Tsar himself, not a man

(18:07):
who had shot a teenage girl. The result, though, was chaos.
The hated Tsar died quickly, but the girls were left alive,
screaming and hiding in corners of the cellar. Splattered with blood.
While the soldiers attempted to finish their gruesome execution, their
Russian made guns, jamming soldiers kept missing their targets in

(18:30):
the dark. Their boots were drenched in blood and brain matter.
To ultimately kill the four princesses, the soldiers had to
repeatedly stab them with their bayonets. At first, the Russian
government only acknowledged that the czar had been killed. The girls,
they said, had been put on a train to somewhere

(18:51):
for their own safety, and they had lost touch with them.
The plan was to make evidence of the massacre literally disappear.
Two days after the shooting, their bodies were clumsily doused
and sulfuric acid, set on fire and tossed into a
pair of shallow graves. People had imagined the likelihood that
the czar was going to be killed, it was possible

(19:14):
that the Czarina was going to be killed as well,
but no one had imagined that their five children would
also be executed, and no one could have envisioned it
happening in the most chaotic, disturbing and gruesome way imaginable.
When word of Nicholas's death crossed Europe, King George attended
a memorial service in England. I attended a service at

(19:36):
the Russian Church in memory of dear Nikki, who I
fear was shot last month by the Bolsheviks. George wrote
in his diary, we can get no details. It was
a foul murder. I was devoted to Nikki, who was
the kindest of men and a thorough gentleman, loved his
country and his people. Ever protective of the King's reputation Asian,

(20:00):
stamford Um had floated the possibility that the King might
want to sit the memorial service out so that the
public wouldn't see George as too sympathetic to the fallen Zar.
It seems to me, stamford Um wrote, we could decline
to join in on the service on the grounds that
the government has no official news of the emperor's death.
If you're looking for a villain in this story, Stamford

(20:22):
m might be as close as any. Just three days
after he advised the king not to attend the memorial,
stamford Um wrote a letter in response to an announcement
of the Czar's death in the Paper. The letter said,
was there ever a crueler murder? And has this country
ever before displayed such callous indifference to a tragedy of
this magnitude. What does it all mean? I am so

(20:45):
thankful that the King and Queen attended the memorial service.
Did King George have flood on his hands? The anti
climactic truth is, even if he had been completely support
of Britain granting asylum to the Imperial family, it might
not have made a difference at all. By the time

(21:06):
it became clear that the Czar and his family were
in danger, it was probably already too late. Miliakov and
the provisional government might not have been strong enough to
defy the extremists that wanted blood, and even from a
logistical perspective, a British ship would have needed to cut
through the still frozen ports of Russia and then through
a stronghold of Bolshevik extremists, and the imperial children had

(21:30):
measles that spring. The Tsar and Sarina may very well
have chosen to delay their traveling until their children were better.
After all, no one could have possibly imagined how limited
the window for escape would be, or imagine the horrifying,
bloody future that was to come. As it is, George's
diaries filled with woe and sorrow for his cousin Nikki,

(21:51):
and genuine horror that his children were murdered, but not guilt.
Maybe George understood the futility of feeling remorse for some
thing you never would have been able to do differently.
But it's also possible that maybe George did feel guilt.
Maybe he was kept awake, pacing the floors of his palace,
hearing screams in the dark. Maybe he looked in the

(22:14):
mirror and saw his twin cousin Nikki, staring back at him.
But maybe he knew that as a king sometimes guilt,
like family love, is one of the many things that
you're forced to push down and push away in order
to do your duty. In the end, George the fifth

(22:39):
didn't completely abandon his Russian family, stick around after a
brief sponsor break to find out what happened next. Even
after Nicholas the Second abdicated the throne, his mother, the

(22:59):
Dowager and Breath and his sister, the Grand Duchess Zenia
Alexandrovna still lived in the relative security of a family
house in Crimea. When they heard that the former's are
and his family had been murdered, they refused to believe it,
it was probably just Bolshevik propaganda. In the spring of
nineteen nineteen, King George the Fifth sent the British warship

(23:21):
h M. S. Marlborough to evacuate the remaining Romanovs. As
the Red Army continued to creep closer to Crimea. The Marlborough,
Tuxania and the Dowager Empress across the Black Sea to
Malta and then finally to safety in England. With the
Dowager Empress, who had been renamed Maria Federovna but was

(23:41):
born the Danish Princess dagmar reunited with her sister Alexandra,
King George the Fifth mother, and eventually even the doomed
Arena Alexandra's family made it to England. Remember Alki's sister.
She was the one to whom Queen Victoria had written
with an eerie clairvoyant about how our blood rained cold

(24:01):
and thought of Alecki going to Russia. Well. Alecki's sister
had a grandchild, a baby boy born as a Prince
of Greece and Denmark. He would go on to marry
King George the Fifth granddaughter and become Prince Philip Consort
to Queen Elizabeth the Second. Noble Blood is a co

(24:25):
production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. The show
is written and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by
Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble
Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and
you can learn more about the show over at Noble
blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,

(24:46):
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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