Moscow. July 17, 1918.
Doroteya Filippovna Lavrova.

Ivan the Terrible belonged to the Rurik dynasty, he was the first Russian monarch to call himself Tsar, establishing the Tsardom of Russia with Moscow at its center. Ivan was intelligent and capable, but as his name suggests, prone to anger and cruelty. His dark side became more noticeable after the death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanova, who was capable to an extent of controlling her husband´s impulsive and violent behavior.

Romanov means "son of Roman". "Roman" is a Russian given name that comes from "Romanus", a name original to the times of the Roman Empire.

Anastasia was the daughter of a boyar, a noble. Ivan met her in the traditional bride show, which was a method of choosing a bride from the eligible members of nobility by parading the candidates in front of the Tsar.

When Anastasia died, Ivan ordered to have a great number of boyar nobles tortured and murdered, because he suspected them of poisoning his wife. I have seen she was indeed poisoned, but many of the people Ivan ordered to be tortured were innocent.

Ivan also killed his son and heir in a fit of rage, as well as one of his unborn grandchildren by assaulting his daughter in law while the latter was pregnant.

When Ivan died in 1584, his son Feodor I took the throne, but he did not like ruling and spent most of his time praying. Feodor died with no male heirs, and his younger brother Dmitri had died years before at the tender age of 8, the poor boy had a seizure while he was playing with a knife. Many people later claimed Dmitri was murdered, something I know to be untrue.

With the deaths of Feodor and Dmitri came the Time of Troubles, a time of anarchy, war, foreign incursions, and impostors who claimed to be the diseased Dmitri.

For the Time of Troubles to end it was necessary to elect a new ruler. The Zemsky Sobor, which was a parliament, chose Michael Feodorovich Romanov. Michael was the grandson of Anastasia´s brother, something that made him a good candidate.

Michael lived in the Ipatiev Monastery for a time until the day he was convinced to accept the throne and leave for Moscow.

"Where are you taking me?" I heard someone cry in a vision the first time I focused on the beginning of Michael´s reign. The voice belonged to a scared three-year-old, who asked this question several times to the people who carried him to the place where he would be publicly hanged, his cries were silenced with a slap. His little body was too light, so it took hours for him to die, the poor baby struggled so much to breathe until his face finally became purple, and his body was left hanging for months so that everyone could see he was dead.

The boy hanged was the son of one of the fake Dimitris, and his mother was Marina Mnizech, a Polish noblewoman and religious fanatic that hoped to convert Russia from Eastern orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism. Marina married not one, but two false Dimitris in order to achieve this, and condoned the spread of terror and atrocities as well.

I think Marina was like me; I can see things that are happening, or happened, and occasionally things that will. I have had visions of Marina making the same facial expressions I am told by my husband I do whenever I see something.

Marina was not a good woman, but she loved her child as fiercely as most mothers do, something I can deeply empathize with now that I am a mother as well. While imprisoned, after she heard the new Tsar had murdered her son, Marina cried for hours until she had a vision, or a series of visions, in the course of a day. I could tell Marina was almost forcing herself to keep having visions, her face looked strained by the effort. I knew she was satisfied with what she had seen when her expression relaxed and she smiled sinisterly, looking way too content for a woman who just lost her son.

Before she was secretly strangled, she screamed to her jailers, to her would be killers, to anyone who would hear her: "Be damned, house Romanov! In Ipatiev monastery you started, in Ipatiev House you will finish! You began with the death of Tsesarevich, and you will end with Tsesarevich's death!" She screamed this every hour of every day the week before her death. And hear her they did, the new Tsar did not take her words seriously or even bother to have anyone write them down, but her curse became a legend among the common people.

To this day there are no documents that can confirm she even cursed the Romanovs, but I know what she said, and I know it sounds like a curse. She was called a witch; but I know she did not have the power to make anything happen. She had fragmented visions that showed her the future of the dynasty, and she tried to use them as a way to hurt the people that murdered her child the only way she could, with the truth.

For me, the visions come at least once a week. I can see, hear, and sometimes feel or smell things. I can distinguish those divine messages from normal thoughts or daydreaming because I can´t control what happens in them, and I know I am not hallucinating because I have had other people confirm the things that happen in my visions.

I can somewhat control what I would like to know about by focusing my mind on it, but even then the visions are capricious; sometimes I get visions when I am not focusing on anything, about people I don't know or am interested in knowing; sometimes I am not able to get visions about things I am interested in seeing. One thing I am sure of is that Marina did indeed have at least one vision of the future, which makes her exceptional even for people like me. Seeing visions of the future is way more uncommon than seeing the past or present, I know this because I seldom have visions of the future, and when I do, they consist of mainly random nonsense.

The little voice asking, "where are you taking me?" has haunted my sleep since the first time I had the vision. As if the dreams wanted to tell me that if I want to know about the dynasty, I need to be willing to see everything, the beauty, and the horror. I am not allowed to walk away from the horror. The time of troubles did not end with the innocent boy´s death, and even a third false Dimitri followed, but he was quickly apprehended and executed.

After Michael I came his son Alexei I. It was said that Alexei was benevolent towards his subjects, but ruthless towards criminals.

Alexei´s son Feodor III followed his father, but he died without children.

Peter the Great was Alexei´s youngest son from a second marriage. Peter´s older half-brother Ivan was chronically ill and mentally challenged, so a council of Russian nobles chose 10-year-old Peter to be Tsar. This caused a dispute to break between the families of the first and second wives of Alexei I.

Sophia, one of Alexei´s daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy elite military corps, which made it possible for Ivan V and Peter I to be declared joint rulers with Sophia as regent.

After Sophia´s regency, and Peter continued to rule with his older brother Ivan V until the latter died.

Peter the Great was exceptionally tall, 203 cm, as many of his descendants would also be, and I think we was handsome, but he made really weird facial movements intermittently, not because of visions, they were possibly tics. Through many successful wars Peter expanded the empire and transformed it into a great European power. He led a cultural revolution that transformed Russia from a medieval society into a modern one by westernizing the political systems, he even traveled through Europe extensively.

Peter was quite fanatical when it came to modernizing, he seemed to deeply disregard the traditions of his own people, going as far as instituting a beard tax to implement his preferred fashion, which I find kind of amusing. His changes were so abrupt some common folk even believed him to be the anti-Christ. One of his changes was the abandonment of the traditional titles of Tsar, tsesarevich, tsarevich, tsarina, among others; from now on the Tsar was officially referred to as the Emperor. Most common people continued referring to the Emperors as Tsars though. Any male child of a Tsar is called "tsarevich", and the Tsar´s heir is still commonly referred to as the "tsesarevich" .

Peter was the one who started building St. Petersburg as a window to Europe; this city became the capital of Russia. Legend says Peter chose the spot to build the city because of an eagle hovering on top of it, then he announced that he would build the church of St. Peter and St. Paul there. Peter called St. Petersburg his new Rome, his paradise; he wanted to take the spiritual leadership of Russia away from Moscow, and he employed clerical publicists to identify the city with the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation in the Bible.
I am not spared the horror this city hides either; it was, both literally and metaphorically, built on the bodies of people longing for home; bodies of fathers, grandfathers, and boys just entering adulthood, whose hope for the future was taken away.

Like many great men often do, Peter the Great had a dark side; his St. Petersburg came to be by using forced labor, peasants were conscripted and taken by armed guards to the site, but so many of them escaped to go back to their families that only about half reached the place where thousands would die like flies from exhaustion, exposure or illness. For Peter, these deaths were a minor concern, they were easily replaced by the next draft. It was not much different than slavery.

Many peasants already lived like slaves under serfdom, which was the medieval practice of indentured servitude and debt bondage where serfs, just like slaves, could be bought, sold, abused, murdered, didn't have any right over their own bodies, were not allowed to leave the land they worked, and could marry only with their lord´s permission. Unlike slaves, the serfs could only be sold with the land they were attached to. This state of affairs would not change for a long time.

Because no one wanted to live in this strange new city, its population also had to be conscripted at first, just like the labor.

St. Petersburg eventually became one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and it is there that the Winter Palace, with its gorgeous blue-green walls, white columns, and elegant interiors decorated with gold, was built.

Peter had a son called Alexei, like Peter´s father. Alexei was nothing like Peter or his namesake Alexei I; he was surrounded by people who detested Peter´s western inclinations. He was also physically unimposing, a drinker, bookish, sickly, and uninterested in the military.

Peter wished for a different son many times, he considered Alexei unworthy of being Tsar.

Alexei knew how little his father thought of him, he was also deeply self-conscious about his own inadequacies and thus offered to give up his claim, running away with his mistress to Austria instead of becoming a monk like his father wanted him to.

Peter begged Alexei to come back, fearing that the Austrians, which were rivals of the Empire at that time, would try to use him. Peter promised his son he would not be punished for his escape, but this was a lie.

Upon his return, Alexei and many of his associates were tortured in search for information about a conspiracy that was really not as extended as Peter believed, there was no one in Russia involved in it. There was still a conspiracy though; Alexei had indeed, albeit reluctantly, come to an agreement with the Austrians to possibly lead a revolt in the future, and he easily cracked under torture, his fate was sealed. Alexei died from wounds his own father ordered to be inflicted upon him. I do not think having refused to help the Austrians would have made a huge difference.

Peter the Great changed the succession laws to make it so each sovereign had to choose their successor, but he died without naming one himself. What followed was a period of many palace coups mostly led by women, where the sovereigns had to get the support of the Imperial Guards for success.

After Peter died, his second wife Catherine I seized the throne, she was the first Romanov Empress. Catherine´s story is so amazing it seems taken out of a fairytale. She was born as Marta Helena Skowrońska, daughter of Roman Catholic peasants from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. She took the name Catherine after her conversion to Orthodoxy and marriage to Peter the Great. She and Peter had two daughters that survived childhood: Anna and Elizabeth.

Catherine I died soon after her ascension though, and Alexei´s son Peter II followed her. Young Peter had a short and sad life, his father was tortured to death when he was a baby and his mother died when he was 10 years old. Peter the Great was not interested in young Peter´s education or that of his older sister, he hated his son Alexei after all, both siblings were kept in seclusion.

Because of his young age and lack of proper education, Peter II showed disinterest in the business of ruling, leaving most of the job to other people. Russia was in total disorder during his reign. He was tragically trapped under the influence of older people as any child monarch is vulnerable to be. A powerful minister called Aleksandr Menshikov used to order him around and demean him, until Peter II sent him to Siberia when the man became ill.

As if that was not tragic enough, he was corrupted by so called friends, some of whom were interested in controlling his political decisions and thus encouraged this corruption. Peter was introduced into living a life of feasting, playing cards, and even becoming addicted to alcohol and women at an age when most boys and girls are only starting to become curious about the opposite gender. I can´t help but wonder why no one thought it was their duty to protect that boy.

I genuinely believe the only true friend Peter II had, with no ulterior motives, was his sister, but she tragically died from illness a year before he did.

The boy Tsar fell ill from smallpox, and in his delirium ordered to be brought to his late sister. Peter died in 1730, the day he was supposed to marry, he was only 14 and was the last male line descendant of Peter the Great.

Anna of Russia succeeded Peter II. Anna was the daughter of Ivan V, Peter the Great´s mentally challenged older half-brother, the one who ruled with him for a time. She chose the infant Ivan VI as her successor. Ivan VI was Anna´s nephew, a great grandson of her father Ivan V. Anna disbanded the council that tried to restrict her power and invited her Baltic German ally Ernst von Biron, to help her rule. Ernst´s corruption and the luxurious lifestyle of his German court angered people.

When Anna died, baby Ivan VI´s mother became regent, she ruled with little support from the nobility. Peter the Great´s daughter Elizabeth, with the help of the Imperial Guard, arrested the baby and his mother.

The infant Tsar was separated from his mother and spent the rest of his days in prison, his mother gave birth to more children in captivity that also lived and died in strict seclusion, unable to learn how to socialize or live a normal life.

Elizabeth was crowned empress and her 21-year reign was successful, she continued modernizing the country and building St. Petersburg. Her court was as luxurious as that of Versailles.

Elizabeth chose her nephew, who would become Peter III, as her heir. Peter was the son of Anna, Elizabeth´s sister and the oldest daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I.
Elizabeth arranged a marriage for Peter with the German princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, who changed her name to Catherine when she converted to orthodoxy.

Peter and Catherine disliked each other almost instantly, theirs was not a happy marriage and both had affairs with other people, but they had a son, Paul.

Catherine had a lover at the time she became pregnant with Paul, so it is impossible to know whether Peter III was the father. Technically speaking, the Romanov dynasty could have actually ended with Peter III, but I do not think that is the case, because Marina´s words seem to be about to come to pass, which means Paul´s descendants were definitely Michael´s descendants.

Most of what people today know about Peter III comes from the descriptions of his much more successful and popular wife, who hated him, so he is remembered as one of the worst Tsars in history. Peter III was indeed mean at times, incredibly ugly after surviving smallpox, entitled due to his position, brutal with his jokes and a bit childish. He still played with toy soldiers as an adult and was obsessed with military order, he once court martialed a rat for chewing some of his toy soldiers, and needless to say, he hanged the rat.
Because he spent most of his life in Germany, he loved that country more than Russia.

When Elizabeth died during the Seven Years War, a war that involved most European powers, Peter made a peace treaty with Prussia and gave up the conquests Russia had achieved there, which understandably infuriated the army, that had bled and suffered for it.

Peter III decided instead to go to war with Denmark for no clear reason.

Despite this, there was more to Peter than that; during his short reign he passed many laws, some of them very enlightened in nature. He proclaimed religious freedom, fought corruption in the government and abolished the secret police, which he abhorred for its torture methods. He also made the murder of serfs by landowners punishable for the first time. One of his best received laws was allowing the nobility to travel abroad and exempting them from obligatory military service, the parliament offered to build him a gold statue when they heard about this, but Peter refused, saying it was a waste of gold.

Peter III was overthrown by his wife Catherine with the help of the palace guards, one of whom was one of Catherine´s lovers, Orlov. Peter was arrested, forced to abdicate, and died soon after in a drunken altercation with one of the officers guarding him. Catherine, who had already seized the throne for herself, becoming Catherine II, certainly benefited from her husband´s death. It was during her reign that the still imprisoned Ivan VI was murdered after a very tragic life because of an attempt to rescue him. I do not think Catherine wanted to allow his murder, but she rationalized that it was necessary and that his life was not worth living anyway after being a prisoner since infancy, she thought his death would simply take the "creature" out of his misery. I would disagree with that rationalization. Ivan VI had learned to read despite not being allowed to, and although a lifetime of imprisonment had indeed damaged his mental state, he had not gone insane or anything like that.

I have seen power desensitize the noblest of people to the loss of thousands of human lives if it serves a purpose, it is even easier to be desensitized to the loss of one, that is the real reason Catherine ordered the death of the prisoner if any attempt to rescue him was made.

It is no wonder though, that Catherine, who ruled for 34 years, is called the Great. She expanded Russia through two Russo-Turkish wars, and acquired bits of Poland. There were improvements in public health during her reign, she was the first in Russia to get a vaccine as an example to others. Trade was promoted and expanded; Alaska was discovered. Catherine encouraged education and philosophy, and established elected local governments. She also took measures to prosecute cruel treatment of serfs by landowners, and passed laws that forced landowners to help the serfs in times of famine.

Catherine loved philosophy, French philosopher Voltaire called her the "star of the north", for she was what some called an "enlightened despot". Despite this, Catherine wanted to keep the revolutionary ideas that had spread at that time throughout France and America out of Russia, but she did not like the idea of going to war with France, now a republic, to achieve this.

Catherine died in 1796, and his son Paul succeeded her. Now, Paul didn't like his mother very much, he blamed her for his father´s death even if he barely knew his father, so that might be a reason why his new succession laws, called the Pauline laws, excluded women from succession unless the entire male line disappeared. Paul had 4 male children: Alexander, Konstantin, Nicholas, and Michael.

Catherine the Great had named Konstantin after Constantine the Great, the founder of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire had been conquered by the Turks centuries after its founding, and was now the Ottoman Empire. Catherine II hoped to restore the Eastern Roman Empire, retake Constantinople, now Istanbul, from the Turks, and make her grandson, Konstantin, Emperor of these reborn lands. None of these plans ever came to pass.

Paul, like his father, was considered harsh, militaristic, moody, traditional, and was referred to by some as the "mad Tsar". He was loyal despite disliking his mother though, and refused to participate in any coup to remove her from power while she was alive, not even when the would-be conspirators offered to spare her life. Paul and his wife were also interested in learning subjects that could help their people.

Paul forbid the separation of serf families by landowners, made it so nobles received the same corporal punishments for crimes as those given to the common people, and put a box of letters in the Winter Palace, where any Russian could come and write him suggestions, he read and answered as many as he could. He was no liberal though, he also cut off the import of books coming from France to stop the spread of revolutionary ideas, and joined the second coalition against revolutionary France.

Paul was murdered during a coup that his son and heir, Alexander, knew about; the Tsar fought back fiercely but was eventually strangled.

Alexander I succeeded his father, he did not know the coup included murder and was guilt ridden for the rest of his life.

Alexander I is famous for ruling Russia during the period of the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon´s invasion of Russia in 1812 was a disaster, and as part of the winning coalition against Napoleon, Russia gained territory in Finland and Poland.

Alexander was said to have died without legitimate children, so his brother Nicholas I succeeded him. I say he was said to have died because it is known he actually faked his own death and became a starets out of guilt for not stopping the murder of his father. Starets are holy men who live a life of prayer and wander from place to place living humbly out of charity, it may have been a perfect penitence in Alexander´s eyes.

Not everyone was happy about Nicholas ascending the throne tough, because he had an older brother named Konstantin. Konstantin, however, had given up his claim to the throne.
Liberal army officers used Nicholas´s ascension as an opportunity to revolt, hoping to get Konstantin, who did not wish to rule, on the throne, and thus control him. Because the revolts took place in December, they would be called the Decembrist revolts.

The Decembrist officers wanted changes in society, like a constitution and more say in the government, these desires were caused in part by their experiences during the Napoleonic wars and exposure to French liberal ideas, as well as seeing the hardships that average people endured.

The United States Declaration of Independence inspired the Decembrists to some extent, but the Decembrists were against the slavery still prevalent in America, and in consequence, they were also against serfdom.

There was no constitution or abolition of serfdom under Nicholas I though, and most Decembrists were sentenced to a life of hard labor in Siberia.

A war broke out between Persia and Russia during the reign of Nicholas I, for the Persians wanted to regain land lost to Russia in previous conflicts. Russia was victorious again.
A rebellion on Poland also broke out, the Poles were not happy their country had been previously split between various European powers, one of them Russia. The rebellion failed, and Nicholas decided to close down Polish universities, and abolish the Polish parliament.

Nicholas started to encourage the Poles to speak Russian. Not only the Poles, but also the Ukrainians, Belarusians, and other minorities within the Empire were pushed to talk Russian in what would be called a "Russification" campaign. Nicholas I wanted to unite all his lands in "orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality". This obviously did not sit well with said minorities, especially the ones that practiced different religions like Catholicism.

Nicholas I did not like serfdom, but he felt that if he abolished it, all the nobility would turn against him. Instead, Nicholas ordered the general in charge of the Crown Estates, which were lands that belonged to the Tsar, to enact changes to improve the lives of the serfs that lived and worked there. Poorer serfs were given more lands, and schools were built for the children, for example. Nicholas hoped other landowners would follow his lead.

During his reign, the Crimean war also started, which was a conflict Russia lost to an alliance made up of the Ottoman Empire, France, United Kingdom and Sardinia. The immediate cause of the war was the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, that belonged to the Ottoman Empire. Britain and France feared Russia would gain even more territory and power at the expense of the already declining Ottoman Empire.

Nicholas I had 7 children, 4 of whom were boys eligible for the throne; he died in 1855, and his son Alexander II succeeded him.

Alexander II came to the throne when Russia had just lost the Crimean war, so it fell on him to agree to the terms imposed by the allies. Russia would take a lot of time to recover from this defeat.

Alexander II is best known for abolishing serfdom, and because of that, he is called "Alexander the Liberator", but it was not an easy transition. Many of the freed peasants did not enjoy any improved standards of living after obtaining their freedom; the prices of land were too high. Alexander tried to help those peasants as well as he could, but he was only human, and only managed to make them become indebted to the government.

Curiously, Alexander II was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln, the president of America during their Civil War, that ended in the emancipation of their slaves.

During the American Civil war, the Russian Navy wintered in New York to help the union in the event that Britain or France were to help the confederacy, because they were Russia´s rivals at the time and there was suspicion that they sympathized with the south. Alexander II also sold Alaska to the Americans so that the British did not take control over it.
Alexander II made other liberal reforms, like abolishing corporal punishment, setting up elected local judges, promoting local self-government, ending some of the privileges of the nobility and promoting university education.

He fought a brief war against the Ottoman empire after a Serbian uprising against the Turks that had ruled over them for many years. As a result, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro achieved their independence and Russia annexed some territories in the Caucasus.

During this reign there was another Polish rebellion that included some terrorist attacks. Initially, Alexander II wanted to tackle the problem with a conciliatory approach, so he offered the Poles more autonomy; this did not work, the Poles were tired of foreign rule and the rebellion spread to Lithuania, Belorussia, and Ukraine. Alexander then crushed the rebellion by force. He substituted Polish officials for Russian ones, Russian language in schools became compulsory, and he banned the printings of anything written in Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, or Belarusian. He remained benevolent with Finland though, and even encouraged its nationalism and autonomy, maybe because it remained loyal during the uprisings. Even today, many people in Finland consider him a good Tsar.

Alexander II had 8 legitimate children with his first wife, Maria Alexandrovna: Alexandra, Nicholas, Alexander, Vladimir, Alexei, Maria, Sergei, and Paul.

He later had three more children with his last mistress, who he married after his wife´s death. He caused her wife a lot of pain with his numerous affairs, and Maria did not have anyone to talk to about it, because the haughtier ladies ridiculed her at court for being bothered by her husband´s antics.

Alexander´s daughter Alexandra died at a young age, but Maria grew up to marry. All of his sons had a good claim to the throne, and many came to have male children that were themselves eligible.

The heir, Nicholas, became engaged to a Danish princess in a love match, her name was Dagmar. Dagmar became popular in Russia the moment she arrived, she was loved by the people for being sociable and graceful, and Nicholas noticed this. Very regretfully, Tsesarevich Nicholas died in 1865 of meningitis before he could marry Dagmar, but knowing what a great empress she would make one day and worried about her future happiness, he expressed in his deathbed the wish for his bride to marry his younger brother, Alexander.

Alexander, now the Tsesarevich, married Dagmar in 1866, after she had changed her name to Maria Feodorovna and converted to Russian Orthodoxy, in her family she was referred to as "Minnie".

Alexander and Minnie made a strange but loving pair. He was tall and robust, about 190 cm, and had a big beard. He lacked any elegance, his manners were rough, and he possessed incredible strength. Alexander was proud of his roughness and simple tastes, thinking it made him similar to the humblest people of Russia, because a true Russian should have some roughness in him. Minnie was a pretty small brunette with big brown eyes and hair, polite, delicate, and comfortable in high society. Alexander was strong enough to bend spoons, and he liked to show visitors his ability, but not in front of his petite wife, who did not like him ruining them. There was no adultery in their marriage, something rare for Russian aristocracy. Minnie immediately made it her duty to learn the language and customs of her new country.

Alexander and Maria had 6 children: Nicholas, Alexander, George, Xenia, Michael, and Olga.

Nicholas was born the 6th of May according to the old calendar, in the Alexander Palace, a smaller and simpler residence than the Winter Palace. His birth came in the feast of St. Job the long suffering, a saint known for being an extremely wealthy man with lots of children who abruptly lost all of his wealth and his family, all of his children died and he was later afflicted with a terrible illness that disfigured his face. In spite of this, Job never complained or cursed God. As a reward for Job´s devotion to him, God cured him, restored all of his wealth, giving him even more than he had before, and also blessed him with more children.

When a nurse took notice of the date Nicholas was born, and said that maybe it was an omen, Minnie looked shocked and concerned, she took baby Nicholas from his crib to cuddle him and told the nurse not to say such things.

Alexander, the second son of Alexander and Minnie, died in infancy, which caused a lot of pain to his parents, that loved all of their children.

Alexander had become estranged with his father, Alexander II, because of the latter´s way of breaking his mother´s heart and because of differences in political opinions, but Alexander II was close to his grandchildren, he called Nicholas "sun-ray". Nicholas and his brother George used to play in his study while Alexander II worked. One time, during a thunderstorm, Nicholas was surprised by the way his grandfather remained calm and crossed himself piously. From that day on Nicholas was not scared of thunderstorms, he knew he had to believe in the mercy of God.

Young Nicholas loved history and birds, once, when a bird fell from its nest, he prayed for it not to die, for God had enough of them. He was by nature quick tempered, but possessed a huge self-control, barely anyone ever saw him angry.

At this time, revolutionary ideas had already started to take root in Russia, and many underground revolutionary groups had formed, some of which condoned the use of terrorism. Alexander II suffered many assassinations attempts despite his many liberal concessions, which understandably made him more paranoid and reactionary at the end of his reign. Even then, Alexander II planned to create a consultative commission made up of elected representatives to advise the monarch, and toyed with the idea of giving the people a constitution.

On 1881, before he could go ahead with any of those plans, the Tsar´s carriage was bombed by members of an organization called People´s Will. Alexander II survived and was unhurt, but he wanted to check on the wounded Cossacks that were accompanying him when the explosion occurred; as he was approaching them, the terrorists threw another bomb, and he was fatally wounded.

"To the palace… to die", is what the Tsar Liberator said, and he was carried to the Winter Palace.

Nicholas, 13 at the time, and his brother George were having breakfast, when a servant ran in and informed them that an accident had occurred, and the heir, Alexander, had ordered for them to go immediately to the Winter Palace. They got in a carriage.

When they arrived, they saw everyone had pale faces, and there were spots of blood in the carpets. All of the members of the emperor´s family that were close at the time of the incident were in the study. Alexander II was laying in a camp bed, the one where he always slept, and was covered with a military coat.

"Papa", Alexander said as he led his son Nicholas to see his wounded grandfather, "your sun ray is here". Alexander II opened his eyes, tried to smile, and pointed a finger at his grandson, he recognized him but was unable to say anything. The dying man was given communion for the last time and all of his family fell to their knees. The Tsar liberator died quietly. His son, Alexander III, succeeded him.

I was born in 1894, during the final year of the reign of Alexander III.

I had my first vision when I was four years old. It was that of my mother arguing with a man about the price of a cow, I was at home when that happened, and my mother was in the market trying to sell our cow. I told my mother I agreed with her, that cow was worth a lot more, I loved that cow as if she were my dog. My mother opened her eyes widely, she could not believe her ears. I did not understand at that time what was so strange.

My family loved me even with my peculiar ability, but they tried to hide it away, they said people would not understand. Sometimes I felt lonely because I could not talk to anyone about it, I felt there was something wrong with me. Whenever I could not help myself and talked about my visions, my neighbors accused me of spying, or getting into other people´s business, because most of my visions were about people I knew, people close to me. Whenever I discovered someone lying I felt it was my duty to talk about it, I hate lies, but that would only get me into more trouble.

I could not keep having visions about my neighbors, so I learned to control my visions by focusing on famous people whose pictures I saw in the newspapers whenever me and my siblings traveled to bigger villages. I surprised them by knowing a lot about those people, even though I could not read the newspapers. My two younger sisters and older brother would find out I was right about everything when someone who knew how to read and write offered to read the newspaper for us, it was very common for kind people to do that. Sometimes they read something that contradicted what I said, my siblings took that as proof I was bluffing, but for me it is just proof people lie all the time, that is how much I trust my visions. My visions about people close to me gradually decreased until they were so uncommon they did not bother me anymore. Around that time, I started focusing on the Romanovs, like a very nosy newspaper reporter, only I know for sure what I have seen is true.

Me and my family were just typical peasants, my sisters and brother still are. We lived in a typical small hut with a stove, table and chairs, and candles to illuminate our evenings. We all slept on the floor or on top of the stove; me, my parents, grandparents, and siblings. I used to have more than three siblings; I predicted the deaths of the ones who left us too soon. My sisters and I worked as hard in the fields as my brother, and once a week we worked for someone else in exchange for our piece of land. I loved more than anything to do needlework while chatting with my sisters near the stove after a hard day.

We venerated the Tsar as the father of our people, we had a picture of Nicholas II that we placed next to our many religious icons. My brother said that the Tsar met with God once a week to discuss what was best for the country, but thanks to my visions I learned that is not true. The veneration my family had for the Tsar is one of the reasons I started focusing so much on him and his relatives. I used to tell my loved ones stories about him, his wife, and children.

The taunts and the gossip did not stop when I learned to relatively control my visions though, many people called me a witch. I did not have any friends, the other children from the village made terrible jokes and songs about me, which they said and sung out loud so I could hear, and their parents did not allow them to play with me.

Everything changed when I became friends with the priest of our nearest church, I talked to him about my visions during confession. His name is Gerasim.

Gerasim said many priests would think my ability came from the devil, but that he knew it was a gift from God. How did Gerasim know my ability was a gift from God? He told me he knew because of my name, Doroteya, which means "gift of God", he said my sight must be so then. Gerasim taught me that given names have prophetic meanings when parents pray to God for guidance before naming their children, he said he knew my parents did pray before naming me, because he was friends with them.

The name Gerasim means "respectable", or "honorable elder"; I think Gerasim´s parents also prayed before naming him.

Church became my favorite place; I would travel there every week. After mass I would talk with Gerasim about God and history as if he were my grandfather. He taught me how to read and write, and then taught me most of what I know about Russian history, the visions are a nice addition sometimes, but I almost never know what is happening in them or who it is that I am seeing, especially when the visions are from older times. Gerasim made me put into context many of the visions that I did have and even gave me a history book to borrow.

I still have trouble understanding most of the things that happen in my visions, especially those about the older Romanovs, since I know little French, which was the main language of the Russian court. I told Gerasim I would learn French one day, I started learning soon after I got married.

I still go with my husband and daughter to visit Gerasim whenever we have free time, but the poor man is so old now he can barely see.

Men of God were respected in my village, so Anna became my first friend my age when her parents allowed her to play with me, they trusted Gerasim. I was 10 years old by then. Anna and I played a lot together, even games that were too childish for our ages; I was making up for the lost time I was not able to play with anyone. She also defended me from all of my bullies, I really loved her.

The visions I have about my contemporaries are way more reliable and understandable, like those I am having about the family imprisoned at the Ipatiev house, walking down the stairs towards a basement right now. They may be executed, or they may suffer a similar fate to that of the brothers and sisters of Ivan VI: forever imprisoned, but at least together. The visions I had about the terrified 13-year-old boy who is now the head of that family are also reliable.

Alexander III thought his father´s murder was a lesson on what happened when you lowered your guard, when you allowed yourself to be seduced by liberal ideas. His father tried to compromise and look where that got him, liberals could not be appeased, they did not want a reasonable solution to the country´s problems, they only wanted the destruction of all of Russia´s traditions, the destruction of orthodoxy, the destruction of the monarchy and thus their family, and the revolutionaries were willing to kill as many people necessary to succeed, as they had killed those Cossacks. The Russian people needed to be protected from that, and to do so, Alexander III needed to be firm and uphold the values of Autocracy, of absolute monarchy. At least that was Alexander´s train of thought, and he tried to make his son, Nicholas, think the same way.

Nicholas did not need much convincing to think like his father, seeing his grandfather bleeding to death at a young age had caused a profound impact on him. Things that happen when you are young have a way to remain with you forever. The fate of Russia was almost sealed.

The name of Nicholas means "victory of the people", a sad irony.