Introducing Rasputin to the Czar and the Czarina was probably the idea of the Grand Duchess Militsa, though it seems to have been her brother-in-law the Grand Duke Nicholas who made the actual arrangements. It was the first of numerous attempts by various schemers to build up Rasputin’s influence in order to extend their own. The Imperial couple’s in-grown family life constituted a kind of magic palisade that sheltered them from the normal intrigues of an autocratic Court, but their tragic obsession with the little Czarevitch’s health — along with their ignorance and superstition — rendered
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