The last tsar was a first cousin of both Britain's king and Germany's kaiser
When Europe went to war in 1914, three of its rulers were family. Nicholas II of Russia, his wife Alexandra and Kaiser Wilhelm II were all first cousins of Britain's George V. Within four years the war had cost Nicholas his throne, ending 304 years of Romanov rule, and then his life.
Tsarskoye Selo, near Saint Petersburg, was where Nicholas arrived in 1868, the eldest son of the future Alexander III and his Danish wife, Maria Feodorovna. His name honoured his father's elder brother, who had died in 1865 and had been engaged to his mother. Informally he was Nicky all his life, and within the family he was Nicholas the Short, to tell him apart from his towering cousin Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich.
Mostly of German and Danish ancestry, he was tied by blood to much of royal Europe. His mother's siblings included the kings of Denmark and Greece and Britain's Queen Alexandra. He was also a first cousin of Norway's Haakon VII and Denmark's Christian X, and he and Wilhelm II shared descent from Tsar Paul I.
Educated privately and trained for the army, he was widely thought unprepared to govern a vast empire. Although Russia nominally became a constitutional monarchy with a parliament, the Duma, he clung to autocratic control. His reign saw strong industrial growth but also unrest and defeat: the loss to Japan and the 1905 Revolution damaged him badly, and the First World War, with its military losses and economic hardship, destroyed what confidence remained. The February Revolution forced him to abdicate in March 1917. Held first by the Provisional Government and then the Bolsheviks, he and his family were killed at Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.
Soviet propaganda cast him as a callous tyrant. Views have softened in recent years, but most historians see him as well-meaning yet unequal to his country's challenges. After the family's remains were found and reburied in 1998, the Russian Orthodox Church canonised them as passion bearers in 2000.
Source: Nicholas II
