Below, Mathilde Kschessinska. a famous ballerina of the 1890's. She was Nicholas's mistress before he married Alexandra. What strikes me about this is the classic "what if" question. What if Nicholas had actually married her? Certainly there would have been no Alexei, and hence no hemophilia and certainly no Grigori Efimovich Rasputin. My own sense, however, that such a union would not have affected the revolution per se, as those forces of change were too great.
Below, a photo of The Cathedral of the Blood during construction. The man in the white pants is walking down what was, in 1918, Yakova Street towards Voznesensky Lane. The bell tower of the Ascension Cathedral is shown in the rear. The actual massacre took place approximately below the letter "R".
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