Doomed Queens (43 page)

Rasputin has been called the mad monk, a miracle worker, a charlatan, a devil, and a lothario. All of these allegations are true—he was a hornet’s nest of contradictions. He styled himself a starets, or spiritual healer of peasant origin, yet he had a superhuman thirst for alcohol and a talent for getting under the ladies’ petticoats. He stank like a goat, had pockmarked skin, yet dressed luxuriously. Rasputin’s most noted feature was his intense gray eyes, which he used to hypnotize his subjects. Prince Felix Yussupov wrote of a healing session, “I gradually slipped into a drowsy state, as though a powerful narcotic had been administered to me. All I could see was Rasputin’s glittering eyes.” Many women who came to him for spiritual advice soon found themselves in his putrid embrace; he whispered to them, “You think I am polluting you, but I am not. I am purifying you.”

Rasputin arrived in Alexandra’s life during Alexei’s most severe bleeding episode. Though doctors had written the boy off as worm food, the starets said a few prayers and assured the tsarina that her son would survive. And he did—everyone considered it a miracle. After this, it was a matter of time before Alexandra convinced herself that Alexei would die without Rasputin. The starets soon insinuated himself into every aspect of royal life.

When Russia was forced into war with Germany, Tsar Nicholas was called to the front. Alexandra remained at home with Alexei—and Rasputin. Desperate to help her husband, she consulted the starets for political advice. Government officials were hired and fired willy-nilly, based on whether Rasputin liked them. Unaware of Alexei’s disease, people could not comprehend why Rasputin was accorded so much power. Believing the worst, they gossiped that the tsarina had wild orgies with him, that she was using him to destroy Russia. When Alexandra’s interference led to governmental chaos, they brought up her German heritage and accused her of spying for the enemy. Pained by these charges, the tsarina protested, “Twenty years have I spent in Russia…. All my heart is bound to this country….”

Rasputin’s influence could not continue. To save Russia—so they thought—several of the tsar’s relatives, one of whom was Prince Yussupov, lured Rasputin to dinner on New Year’s Eve, 1916. The starets was as tenacious in death as he was in life. To kill him, the aristocrats poisoned and shot him—still he lived. Finally, they threw Rasputin into the Neva to drown.

Rasputin must have had intimations of his death. He wrote Nicholas several days before his murder, “I feel that I shall leave life before January 1…. if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one in the family, that is to say, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people.”

Rasputin’s prediction proved to be all too accurate. Despite the best intentions of Rasputin’s assassins, peasants viewed the mad monk’s murder as an attack upon one of their own. It inflamed class tensions to revolutionary levels, encouraged by food shortages due to the war and a harsh winter. Hoping to protect his country and family, Nicholas abdicated in 1917. But it mattered little—Alexandra and the rest of her family were imprisoned and executed by firing squad in 1918.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

Don’t trust a holy man who acts like the devil.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

The Romanovs’ treatment post-assassination makes the denouement of
Fargo
seem a genteel soiree. Their bodies were dismembered, then burned with hundreds of gallons of gasoline and sulfuric acid. What remained was thrown down an abandoned mine shaft, not to be found for another century. However, the church treated the Romanovs far more kindly. It granted Alexandra and her family sainthood—an ironic coda for a woman so reluctant to convert.

An icon depicting the Romanovs in their sainted glory.

1952

ascist, whore, saint, queen—María Eva Duarte de Perón, the woman better known as Evita, embodied all these roles in her brief life. Though Evita’s life would eventually inspire a musical sporting her name, her rise to power bears a greater resemblance to
My Fair Lady
.

Born in 1919, this South American Eliza Doolittle was the bastard daughter of an impoverished seamstress mother. Determined to have a better life, Evita looked to the movies for direction. She ran away at fifteen to Buenos Aires to become an actress and quickly scored some walk-on roles. The secret to Evita’s semisuccess was the same as that of other hungry starlets: She slept her way to the middle. This attests to her ambition, since most claim she lacked sex appeal. Years of poverty left Evita sickly and thin; would-be lotharios found themselves nursing her rather than enjoying other bedside activities.

Though Evita flopped on the stage and screen, she hit her stride on the radio where her blatantly plebian accent endeared her to the working class. She soon cleaned up her pronunciation and bleached her hair blond. Evita gained fame in radio plays about female regents such as Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great. These served as dress rehearsals for her next act, which was jump-started when she met General Juan Perón in 1944; Perón was the charismatic founder of Peronism, a populist movement that infused the ideology of socialism with a soupçon of fascism.

Perón described his first meeting with Evita: “There was a woman of fragile appearance, but with a strong voice, with long blonde hair falling loose to her back and fevered eyes. She said her name was Eva Duarte, that she acted on the radio and that she wanted to help the people….” Perón decided that her radio pedigree was useful for preaching his doctrine to the unwashed masses. He promptly dumped his mistress for Evita, who eagerly espoused all his ideals, fascist or not.

The couple married in 1945; Perón ran for president of Argentina and won. To complete Evita’s metamorphosis into a glamorous consort, Perón altered her birth certificate to erase her illegitimacy and destroyed her old films, photographs, and radio recordings. She began wearing couture and subdued her curls into a tight chignon. The transformation was effective: In 1946,
Newsweek
named Evita the “woman behind the throne.”

Though she was now first lady, Evita never forgot her humble origins. Just as she had single-mindedly pursued fame, Evita threw herself into her mission to help the poor. To gain political support for Argentina, Perón sent her to Europe in 1947. Yet all Evita could think of was home. Upon her return to Argentina, she launched the Eva Perón Foundation to provide health care, homes, and schools to those lacking basic amenities.

Evita tirelessly embraced her work as if she knew her time was limited—and it was. In 1950, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer at the age of thirty. When her doctor insisted on treatment, she retorted, “I do not want to stay in bed drinking hot toddies. I want to help people today, not tomorrow. And that is how I want to die.”

Before she succumbed to the inevitable, Evita was begged to run for vice president of Argentina. She coyly refused, knowing her days were numbered. Nonetheless, the people of Argentina granted Evita the title of Spiritual Leader of the Nation, an honor that accompanied her to the grave in 1952.