Grigori Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who became a healer and confidant of the tsars, was murdered in December 1916 by a group of aristocrats. According to a letter attributed to him, written a few weeks earlier, the seer had left a terrible warning: if it was nobles who killed him, "none of your family, none of your children or relations, will remain alive for more than two years".
On the night of 16-17 July 1918 — nineteen months later — Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra and their five children were shot in a cellar in Yekaterinburg. The dynasty that had ruled Russia for three centuries was extinguished in minutes, within the deadline the letter had set.
Between prophecy and legend
Historians still debate the authenticity of that document, published years later by Rasputin's secretary. Genuine prophecy or legend born of hindsight, it has forever bound the fate of the "mad monk" to that of the Romanovs: the man the court could not decipher in life became, in death, its most exact oracle.