:08:04
Gavrila Gavsha and Fyodor Koshka,
:08:07
from whom were to come
Russia's 17 ruling families.
:08:14
The first Russian czar
of the Romanov dynasty
:08:18
was Mikhail Fyodorovich,
who came to the throne in 1613.
:08:25
The seventeenth and last Romanov
czar was Nicholas II.
:08:34
He was born in 1868.
:08:37
His father was Alexander III.
:08:41
His mother, Princess Dagmar
of Denmark,
:08:44
who in Russia took the name
of Marie Fyodorovna.
:08:48
He was privately tutored
at the palace.
:08:50
In 1894, he married
:08:55
the German Princess
Alix of Hesse,
:08:58
who became the Czarina
Alexandra Fyodorovna.
:09:02
Nicholas II succeeded to
the throne in 1894.
:09:07
The coronation festivities were
marred by the Khodynka,
:09:11
a bloody trampling on people
in Khodynka meadow in Moscow.
:09:16
In the course of its 300-year
history, the Romanov dynasty
:09:22
had survived many upheavals:
:09:24
the peasant insurrections led
by Razin and Pugachev,
:09:28
the Decembrist uprising,
the Narodnaya Volya movement,
:09:30
and the revolution of 1905.
:09:33
However, never before had
the future
:09:36
looked so ominous
for the royal family.
:09:40
Nothing short of a miracle
could save the situation.