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Welcome everyone to the most notorious podcast, I'm Eric Rivenes. While I'm excited to announce

that all my prior episodes of Most Notorious have been uploaded onto Patreon, all interruption-free.

Bonus content will soon be coming. Subscribe at patreon.com slash Most Notorious.

Help out the show and get the inside scoop on all the interviews and episodes.

Look forward to seeing you there. Now onto the show.

I'm so pleased to have as my guest Helen Rappaport, prolific British author, who has written numerous books on both the Victorian era and the Russian monarchy.

She's here to chat about her latest called The Race to Save the Romanovs, the truth behind the secret plans to rescue the Russian imperial family. So great to have you here.

Thank you for inviting me.

So I did an episode on Rasputin quite a while ago, but we didn't get into the history of the Romano family at all. So that's where I'd like to start.

Can you talk about Alexandra and Nicholas, who they were and how they came to power?

Well, Nicholas and Alexandra were the last S.R. and S.R. it's a Russia, the Russian Empire.

Nicholas II unexpectedly became monarch in November 1894, when his father died after a very serious illness of kidney disease.

And he was rather propelled onto the throne much sooner than he had been prepared for.

And he had only just a few months earlier become engaged to Alexandra of Hessa, a princess of Hessa and D'A-Hessa by Ryan.

And because of his father's death, they married quite soon after in Petersburg. So they came to the throne at the end of 1894.

And of course, Alexandra as the wife of the Tsar of Russia, her primary duty was to produce an heir as all royal wives.

You know, that was their role in life then.

And the story that most people know, something of course, the tragedy that she had one daughter and another daughter and another daughter and another daughter.

And after four daughters, she finally produced a son and heir only for it to be discovered quite soon after Alexei, the little boy was born, that he had the one thing they had been dreading, that he had hemophilia and that, therefore, his health was severely compromised and his prospects of living into adulthood were pretty poor.

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