Grigori Rasputin

Grigori Rasputin was a Siberian peasant and religious wanderer who gained access to the Russian imperial family. Alexandra Feodorovna believed that his prayers could ease the haemophiliac attacks of Tsarevich Alexei, and his continued presence at court became politically damaging.

Rasputin was murdered by aristocratic conspirators in December 1916. His reputation was shaped by scandal, political propaganda and later legend. John Boyne’s The House of Special Purpose includes him within its fictional reconstruction of the Romanov household before the revolution.