Nicholas II
Nicholas II (1868-1918). Last tsar of Russia, the son of Alexander III, whom he succeeded in 1894. He married the German Princess Alexandra (1894), a woman of stronger character than his own. Unsuited by temperament to govern Russia, the tsar was ill at ease in public and clung obstinately to the belief that he ruled through divine right. Russia’s disastrous defeat in the Japanese war (1904-05), leading to the 1905 revolution, forced him to agree to a new constitution. During World War I his involvement in the war left the country’s government effectively with Alexandra, whose decisions and policies were considerably influenced by Rasputin. Following the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power (1917) he was forced to abdicate and was shot with his wife and children at Ekaterinburg. In 1995 DNA testing established that a number of bones, which had been discovered four years earlier in a disused mineshaft, were those of Nicholas.
