A superbly crafted and humane portrait of the final days of the last Romanovs - Nicholas II of Russia and his wife Alexandra. Complementing his Pulitzer prize-winning Peter the Great , in this commanding book Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of imperial Russia to tell the story of the decline and fall of the ruling Romanov family: Tsar Nicholas II's political naivete; his wife Alexandra's obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin; and their son Alexis's battle with haemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a family tragedy played out on the brutal stage of early twentieth-century Russian history - the tale of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.