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Hello and welcome to revolutions.

Episode 10.50 the Holy Man.

Last time we talked about the Zarevich, his hemithelia and the effect it had on his parents and sisters. Because all through the tumult of the revolution of 1905, its aftermath and the reactionary turn that followed, the family labored under emotional stress that does not excuse or even fully explain their behavior, but does add a necessary dimension to the story.

I didn't mention this last week, but there is a kind of parallel to what happened with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in the late 1780s.

They too went years without producing a male heir and endured the stress and toll of not having secured the dynasty.

And then when a baby boy finally came along, he was constantly sick in his case, not hemithelia but tuberculosis. And then the beloved crown prince and heir to the throne entered his final illness and died in June 1789, like right in the middle of the crisis of the estate's general.

Now things like this don't explain everything, but they do matter. But the Zarevich did not die, despite many scary moments he kept living, he kept surviving.

And the need to explain this survival with some kind of cause and effect mechanism led particularly Alexandra further down the road towards mystic religiosity.

Now she was always devoutly religious, but after the birth of her son she became more devout and ever. And this is important not just on a personal level, but on a political and social level, especially in the aftermath of the revolution of 1905,

because Nicholas and Alexandra fervently believed in God, in divinity, in divine agency working in the world and responsive to prayer.

This tied directly into the health not just of their family, but of the empire, which they continued to believe had been given to Nicholas by God.

Their reactionary conservatism, the fight to undo 1905 and reclaim their rightful authority, was not just about jealous-ly guarding worldly power, but about defending divinity from blasphemy.

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