Noble Blood - Ever Dearest Cousin Nicky

Episode Date: August 20, 2019

King George V and Tsar Nicholas II were first cousins who looked so much alike that people often jokingly called them twins. When one cousin's crown came under threat, the other had a decision to make.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised. On July 16, 1918, the Imperial Russian family was woken up by guards in the middle of the night. The guards said that enemy combatants were approaching. the house where they were being kept in Echranburg, and they needed to go down to the cellar for their own protection. For 16 months, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children, had been in government custody. First, they were prisoners in their palace at Sarcocello

outside Petrograd, the city formerly known as the now much too German-sounding St. Petersburg. Next, the family was brought to Tobolsk in Siberia. Finally, in the spring, of 1918, the family came to Etatrenburg to live in a residence given the ominous name, the House of Special Purposes. The family assumed eventually they would be brought somewhere else, somewhere farther away, more remote, even more decrepit and depressing than the place in Echatrenburg, with its windows all painted white so no one could see in or out. And so when they were woken up in the middle of the night, nobody panicked or

feared. They took their time getting dressed, lining the secret compartments of their clothes and pillowcases with the jewels they had managed to keep hidden in case they were leaving the house of special purposes for the last time. As it turns out, they were. The cellar was small and very dark. The youngest child, their only son, Alexi, had to be carried down the stairs by his father, Nicholas. As they all stood in the gloom, the former Sarina, Alexandra, asked the guards why there were no chairs, and so two were brought, one for her, and one for the sickly, young, hemophilic heir. When everyone was settled, the captain of the guards cleared his throat and read the written proclamation from the leaders of the new Russian government, declaring that

the former Tsar, Nicholas, was to be executed. Nicholas was in disbelief. Read that again, he said. No, wait, give it here, give it to me. That's when the soldiers with guns came in from the next room. The story of the Romanov family, their lightning fast slip from decadence to gruesome murder, continues to invite a macabre fascination more than a century later. For many, the entree into the story of the doomed Tsar and his children comes from the legend of Anastasia,

the rumor that the Tsar's youngest daughter somehow managed to get away. Nothing is more captivating than hope, even when that hope is doomed. Maybe especially when that hope is doomed. It's a macabre what if. Anastasia's possible survival is to imagine a tiny sliver of the imperial glamour preserved through time. One daughter left to continue the family tree

to transform the massacre into an origin story to give us a happy ending. Spoiler alert, Anastasia didn't get away. But if you look to history, there was another threat of hope, an alternate reality in which the Romanov family was saved at the 11th hour. For a brief moment in time, it seemed that their savior would be King George V of England. Before the Romanov execution, the provisional government in Russia asked King George whether the imperial family might be granted asylum in the UK. The Tsar was George's first cousin,

and they looked so much alike, people often joked that they were twins. In their letters, they called each other Georgie and Nikki. But for a monarch, sometimes protecting your own crown means being forced to make tough choices. Right or wrong, George V had to make a decision. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The king and queen of Denmark had two daughters, Dagmar and Alexandra. Dagmar married the future Tsar of Russia, and Alexandra married the oldest son of Queen Victoria. Both Dagmar and Alexandra did their queenly duties and had heirs the way they were supposed to.

In Russia, Nicholas II. In England, the future King George V. They called each other Nikki and Georgie. The cousins Nikki and Georgie first became close on vacations at Friedensburg brought by their mothers to meet their grandparents, the King's. and Queen of Denmark. In 1883, they spent the summer there as teenagers. Nicky, Georgie's younger sister, Maude, who tease Nikki about his crush on the beautiful Alexandra of Hess, his future wife. Maude made fun of Nikki for being shorter than Alexandra, who they all called Aliki.

Georgie in England was cousins with Nikki on his mother's side and cousins with Nikki's bride to be, Aliki, on his father's side. Both Georgie and Aliki were grandchildren of Queen Victoria. While the match between future Tsar Nicholas II and the German princess made sense, Queen Victoria wasn't too pleased about it. The state of Russia is so bad, so rotten that at any moment something dreadful might happen, the queen wrote to her eldest daughter. The wife of the heir to the throne is in a difficult and precarious position.

And to Aleki's sister, Queen Victoria wrote, My blood runs cold when I think of her so young, her dear life and her husbands constantly threatened, and we'll be unable to see her but so rarely. Oh, how I wish it was not to be that I should lose my sweet aliki. But Georgie was pleased with the match, happy that after ten years of pining, his cousin Nikki finally got the girl of his dreams to agree to marry him. Georgie went to Russia for the wedding of his two first cousins and wrote back to Queen Victoria with nothing but praise for his host.

Nikki has been kindness itself to me. He is the same dear boy he has always been to me, the letter said. Russia was volatile, but at least Aliki was marrying a man who was young and handsome, and he was kind. If anything, he was too passive and malleable, too insecure and hesitant. Only in retrospect are the red flags lit in neon. But, you know, he was handsome. As a matter of fact, Nikki and Georgie were almost,

identical. The same blue eyes, same beard. They looked so much alike that when they were at events together, people and relatives would come up from behind with the wrong name. They were cousins who looked more like twins. But as it turns out, Queen Victoria was right about the volatility in Russia. After a protest in 1905 was brutally put down by the Cossacks and the Imperial Guard, the Tsar was given a nickname, Nicholas the Bloody. The aristocracy represented indulgence and luxury so completely removed from the daily life of the common people that it might as well have been life on the moon. Around the world, public sentiment had completely turned against the Tsar. In 1909, when Nicholas and his family came to visit the British royal family at their home on the Isle of White,

security concerns were so high that most of the visit took place at sea on the Tsar's boat just off the coast. And the outbreak of World War I gave people even more reason to hate the Tsar's wife, Aliki, the German princess Alexandra of Hess. Anti-German sentiment had led St. Petersburg to become peters. and in England compelled George V to change his family name from Sax, Coburg, and Gotha, to the neutrally British-sounding, Windsor. According to the people in Russia, Alexandra was almost certainly a German spy, and that's to say nothing of the way she cavorted about with the dubious character, Rasputin.

The two of them, lovers, no doubt, were probably manipulating the Tsar to their nefarious German-loving ways. On March 13, 1917, George V wrote in his diary. Bad news from Russia, practically a revolution has broken out in Petrograd, and some of the guard regiments have mutinied and killed their officers. Rising is against the government, not the Tsar. Two days later, the Tsar was forced to abdicate. George was in despair for his cousin and friend, but revolutions can be like dominoes,

and threats to one monarchy are threats to all monarchies. His own crown began feeling a little loose. When George heard that the Tsar had been forced to abdicate his throne, he wrote his cousin a telegram. Events of last week have deeply distressed me. My thoughts are constantly with you, and I shall always remain your true and devoted friend, as you know I have been in the past.

The provisional government in Russia never delivered it. After all, the telegram had been addressed to the Tsar, and no person of that title existed anymore. The Imperial family presented a massive problem for the provisional government. On one hand, they wanted them out of the country, completely gone where they couldn't ignite mutiny or inspire loyalty. But the more extremist revolutionaries didn't want the former czar out of custody. They wanted his confinement to put him on trial. They didn't want him to get away, literally or metaphorically.

It was about this time when the provisional government's foreign minister, a man named Pavel Milikov, approached the British ambassador and requested that the imperial family might be allowed to come to England. The British ambassador, Buchanan, equivocated. How about Denmark or Sweden? Either of those places possible? What if we just, you know, keep brainstorming? Milyakov, sensing the tightening danger of the extremists, reiterated, that he would very much like to get the emperor out of Russia as soon as possible.

Buchanan acquiesced, he asked the British government for the authority to extend the Tsar and his family, asylum in England, at least for the duration of the war. In London, a cabinet meant to discuss it. They didn't want to turn down a direct request from the provisional government. They would need to stay in Russia's good graces for trade and for continued support in World War I. But there was no way around the fact that, bringing bloody Nicholas and his German empress to England who would look bad.

The family was massively unpopular with the British public. News of the Russian Tsar being overthrown was met in England with cheers, with celebrations in the street for the common people who rose up to take down an autocrat. And hatred for Alexandra, the German-born former Tsarina, was even more virulent in England. The popular opinion was that there was no doubt she was double-crossing Russia in the war with German spycraft.

King George V had been victim of a massive public outcry after he received members of the supposedly pro-German Greek royal family. Hosting the Tsar and his wife would be nothing short of a PR nightmare. Plus, there were logistics to consider. Where would the Tsar's family even stay? The Prime Minister, Lloyd George, suggested one of the king's palaces. The king's private secretary, Stamfordham, rejected that proposal outright. He was there at that meeting representing the king,

and he was fully aware how damaging the association between the Tsar and King George could be. All of the palaces were occupied, Stamfordham asserted. Well, except for Belmoral in Scotland, but that's a summer palace, and it would be totally unsuitable for the Tsar and his family to stay at at this time of year. Yes, of course, we can all see now, totally unsold. unsuitable for the imperial family to stay in a summer palace when they would soon be imprisoned in Siberia. Suitable palace available or not, it seemed impossible for the British government to turn down a

direct request from the Russian provisional government. And so reluctantly, Britain agreed that, in theory, the Tsar and his family could stay in the country, just temporarily, just until the end of the war. But fortunately for the British government, as they fiddled with, they were. with their cufflinks and received urgent imaginary phone calls, now it was the Russian government who delayed. The extremist Bolshevik faction was consolidating its power. Even as Milikov wanted to get the imperial family out of the country,

that was becoming more and more challenging. Any actual attempt to extradite the Tsar would infuriate the extremists. In the meantime, King George V reconsidered his own position. Britain was weary from the war in its many sacrifices, and socialism was becoming more and more appealing to the population. Anti-royal sentiment was on the rise, and even George changing his family name to Windsor didn't quite convince the country of his patriotism or of his necessity. A guy living in a palace wearing a golden crown is never a popular image when a nation is barely struggling to make it through an endless war. bringing Nicholas and his family over to England would indelibly associate King George V with the hated Russian autocracy. After all, everyone knew that King George was close with his beloved cousin.

Regardless of what the political situation actually was, the truth is it would look like a move of family loyalty and not diplomacy. And so, on the king's behalf, Stamfordham wrote to Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary. the king desires me to ask you whether the ambassador should not be communicated with to make some other plans for the future residents of their imperial majesties. King George was already receiving letters of outrage from working men and Labor Party members of Parliament in the House of Commons, all with the assumption that he was the one making the decision about whether or not to invite the Tsar into the country.

Britain was a constitutional monarchy, of course, and George had no direct power to do anything really, but it was his head on the line. An article in the weekly journal, Justice, protesting asylum of the Tsar, suggested that the invitation had already come from the British King and Queen. But it was probably the words from an editorial in the evening globe that stuck in the king's mind. We most sincerely hope that if there really is any idea of inviting the Ex-Zar and his consort to make their home in England, it will be abandoned.

We speak plainly because we must and because the danger is great and imminent. The British throne itself would be imperiled if this thing were done. And so, in a fit of panic and determination, the kinghead Stamfordham write yet another note to the Foreign Secretary, just six hours after the first, making things very, very clear. The king, Stamfordham wrote, must beg you to represent to the Prime Minister that from all he hears and reads in the press, the residents in this country of the ex-emperor and empress

would be strongly resented by the public and would undoubtedly compromise the position of the king and queen from whom it would generally be assumed the invitation had emanated. Samfordham included the article from Justice in the note. The king loved his cousin, but the idea of Britain welcoming Nicholas the bloody, let alone mounting an elaborate rescue to save him once the Russian government custody closed in,

had shifted from merely awkward to insurmountable. It's ironic, in a sense. The only reason a king is a king at all is because of who his family is. But in a constitutional monarchy, a king's power is at the mercy of the people. Nicholas II was radioactive, and George needed to protect himself. He wasn't Georgie. He was King George V, and he put England and himself first. When the Bolshevik soldiers entered the cellar on that night in July in 1918, each had been assigned a member of the family to shoot.

There were 11 of them that needed to be killed altogether. Three loyal servants that had stayed with the imperial family, their doctor, Nicholas, Alexandra, their young son Alexi, and their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. Some of the soldiers had refused to shoot the girls and had been replaced. But even so, when the captain of the guard gave the orders to fire, the majority of soldiers turned their gun to Nicholas. They were loyal Bolsheviks, and they all wanted to be the one who had killed the Tsar himself,

not a man who had shot a teenage girl. The result, though, was chaos. The hated Tsar died quickly, but the girls were left alive, screaming and hiding in corners of the cellar, splattered with blood while the soldiers attempted to finish their gruesome execution. Their Russian-made guns jamming. Soldiers kept missing their targets in the dark.

Their boots were drenched in blood and brain matter. To ultimately kill the four princesses, the soldiers had to repeatedly stab them with their bayonets. At first, the Russian government only acknowledged that the Tsar had been killed. The girls, they said, had been put on a train to somewhere, for their own safety, and they had lost touch with them. The plan was to make evidence of the matter, massacre literally disappear. Two days after the shooting, their bodies were clumsily doused in

sulfuric acid, sat on fire, and tossed into a pair of shallow graves. People had imagined the likelihood that the Tsar was going to be killed. It was possible that the Tsarina was going to be killed as well, but no one had imagined that their five children would also be executed, and no one could have envisioned it happening in the most chaotic, disturbing, and gruesome way imaginable. When word of Nicholas's death crossed Europe, King George attended a memorial service in England. I attended a service at the Russian church in memory of dear Nikki, who I fear was shot last month by the Bolsheviks, George wrote in his diary. We can get no details. It was a foul murder. I was devoted to Nikki, who was the kindest of men and a thorough gentleman, loved his country and his people.

Ever protective of the king's reputation, Stamfordham had floated the possibility that the king might want to sit the memorial service out so that the public wouldn't see George as too sympathetic to the fallen czar. It seems to me, Stamfordham wrote, we could decline to join in on the service on the grounds that the government has no official news of the emperor's death. If you're looking for a villain in this story,

Stamfordham might be as close as any. Just three days after he advised the king not to, to attend the memorial. Stanford wrote a letter in response to an announcement of the Tsar's death in the paper. The letter said, was there ever a crueler murder and has this country ever before displayed such callous indifference to a tragedy of this magnitude? What does it all mean? I am so thankful that the king and queen attended the memorial service.

Did King George have blood on his hands? The anticlimactic truth is, even if he had been completely supportive of the memorial service, Britain granting asylum to the imperial family, it might not have made a difference at all. By the time it became clear that the Tsar and his family were in danger, it was probably already too late. Milyakov and the provisional government might not have been strong enough to defy the extremists that wanted blood. And even from a logistical perspective, a British ship would have needed to cut through the still-frozen ports of Russia and then through a stronghold of Bolshevik extremists. And the imperial children had measles that spring. The Tsar and Sarina may very well have chosen

to delay their traveling until their children were better. After all, no one could have possibly imagined how limited the window for escape would be, or imagine the horrifying, bloody future that was to come. As it is, George's diaries filled with woe and sorrow for his cousin Nikki and genuine horror that his children were murdered, but not guilt. Maybe George understood. Maybe George understood. the futility of feeling remorse for something you never would have been able to do differently. But it's also possible that maybe George did feel guilt. Maybe he was kept awake, pacing the floors of his palace, hearing screams in the dark. Maybe he looked in the mirror and saw his twin cousin, Nikki, staring back at him.

But maybe he knew that, as a king, sometimes guilt, like family love, is one of the many things that you're forced to push down and push. away in order to do your duty. In the end, George V didn't completely abandon his Russian family. Stick around after a brief sponsor break to find out what happened next. Everyone, I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.

I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance.

And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist. and hosts of the podcast a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation.

There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Even after Nicholas II abdicated the throne, his mother, the Dowager Empress, and his sister,

the Grand Duchess Zinia Alexandrovna, still lived in the relative security of a family house in Crimea. When they heard that the former Tsar and his family had been murdered, they refused to believe it. It was probably just Bolshevik propaganda. In the spring of 1919, King George V sent the British warship, HMS Marlborough, to evacuate the remaining Romanovs as the Red Army continued to creep closer to Crimea. The Marlborough, to Xania and the Dowager Empress across the Black Sea, to Malta, and then finally to safety in England, with a Dowager Empress, who had been renamed Maria Fedorovna, but was born the Danish Princess Dead. Agmar, reunited with her sister Alexandra, King George V's mother.

And eventually, even the doomed Zarina Alexandra's family made it to England. Remember Aliki's sister? She was the one to whom Queen Victoria had written with an eerie clairvoyance about how her blood ran cold and thought of Aliki going to Russia. Well, Aliki's sister had a grandchild, a baby boy born as a prince of Greece and Denmark. He would go on to marry King George V's granddaughter and become Prince Philip, consort to Queen Elizabeth II. Noble Blood is a co-production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Manky.

The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, Visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Ago Wode. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be.

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.