01 — Foundations
Who the last imperial family were, and how we know it. This section establishes the biographical ground — Nicholas and Alexandra, the four grand duchesses, the hemophiliac heir Alexei — and, before any narrative is built on it, takes stock of the sources: the diaries and letters the family themselves left, the White-army investigation that first documented the killing, the perpetrators’ own later accounts, and the forensic record. The source inventory comes first on purpose: in a subject this contested, the reliability of every later claim depends on knowing which artifact it rests on.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox / ROCOR
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Last Imperial Family | Emperor Nicholas II (1868–1918), Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (née Alix of Hesse), and their five children: Olga (1895), Tatiana (1897), Maria (1899), Anastasia (1901), and Tsarevich Alexei (1904), the hemophiliac heir. Who they were as persons, drawn from the documentary record. |
| Sources and How We Know | A dated source inventory in the spirit of METHODOLOGY §3.5: the family’s diaries and letters; the Sokolov investigation (1919); the Yurovsky Note and other perpetrator accounts; the forensic and genetic literature; and what each kind of source can and cannot bear. |
See Also
- Nicholas II as Ruler — the reign built on this biography
- The Inner Spiritual Life — the family’s faith as attested in the same diaries and letters
- St. Elizabeth the New Martyr — the Empress Alexandra’s elder sister
References
- Maylunas, Andrei, and Sergei Mironenko, eds. A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra, Their Own Story. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996.
- Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra. New York: Atheneum, 1967.
- Steinberg, Mark D., and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv. The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.