1. Nicholas II and his son Alexei enjoy a moment of relaxation near the wartime front.
2. Nicholas II dressed in the old Muscovite-style garb that he sometimes chose for public appearances.
3. Grigori Rasputin, the only person who could settle young Alexei in his bouts of haemophilia.
4. The imperial train where Nicholas II had signed his act of abdication. Times had changed, and people could cluster round the carriage and see how the tsar had liked to travel.
5. General Mikhail Alexeev, Chief of the General Staff: bespectacled, hard-working and exhausted. Alexeev tactfully pressed Nicholas to abdicate.
6. Grand Duke Mikhail, who rejected his brother Nicholas’s invitation to succeed him as tsar. A sensible decision.
7. One of the successive drafts of the act of abdication. Nicholas made his amendments in pencil.
8. Nicholas and Alexandra in happier times with their four daughters and son.
9. A worried Alexandra nursing her son Alexei. Alexandra blamed herself for Alexei’s medical condition.
10. The ailing Alexandra in her wheelchair at Tsarskoe Selo.
11. A letter from ‘Niki’ to his mother Maria Fëdorovna from Tsarskoe Selo, apologizing for his shaky handwriting and recounting that he was teaching Alexei history and geography. He was still using his old notepaper.
12. Olga Romanova and her mother’s unstable confidante Anna Vyrubova. Kerensky ordered Vyrubova’s removal from the Alexander Palace.
13. Cousin monarchs, Nicholas II and George V, before the First World War. Two peas in a pod.
14. Alexander Guchkov, Octobrist minister of war in the first Provisional Government cabinet.
15. Alexander Kerensky, the Socialist-Revolutionary minister of justice who became minister-chairman in July 1917.
16. Pavel Milyukov, Constitutional-Democrat and minister of foreign affairs after Nicholas’s abdication.
17. Sir George Buchanan, UK ambassador to wartime Petrograd.
18. Lavr Kornilov, the Petrograd military commander who rose to commander-in-chief under Kerensky. Kornilov turned against Kerensky in August 1917.
19. Alexander Kerensky among army officers and troops before the October Revolution.
20. Freedom House, Tobolsk, where the Romanovs were held after Tsarskoe Selo.
21. A section of the guard detachment on a snowy day outside Freedom House.
22. Nicholas on their balcony at Freedom House, Tobolsk.
23. Nicholas’s letter to his mother, written two days after the October Revolution, lamenting the ban on the family taking a walk around Tobolsk.
24. Nicholas and Alexei tending the hens at Freedom House: manual tasks were the family’s distraction.
25. Olga Romanova pulling her brother Alexei on a sledge in the grounds of Freedom House.
26. Vasili Pankratov, the ex-prisoner appointed as plenipotentiary to oversee the Romanovs in Tobolsk. He is wearing his favoured Siberian apparel.
27. Evgeni Botkin, the Romanovs’ devoted personal physician. Botkin died alongside them in July 1918.
28. Sydney Gibbes, Englishman and tutor to the Romanov children. The fastidious Gibbes disliked intrusions on his privacy in Tobolsk.
29. Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, Alexandra’s confidante. On arrival in Tobolsk, she quickly annoyed the guards and was ejected from the Kornilov house.
30. Pierre Gilliard, Swiss tutor who helped Alexandra with the family’s financial accounts.
31. Ekaterinburg station no. 1, where the crowd was too hostile for Nicholas, Alexandra and Maria to leave the train.
32. The sequestered Ekaterinburg residence of Nikolai Ipatev, where the Romanovs were brought after Tobolsk.
33. Alexander Beloborodov, chairman of the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee. Ex-prisoner of the jail in Perm.
34. Filipp Goloshchëkin, military commissar of the Urals Regional Soviet Executive Committee. Goloshchëkin often discussed the Romanov question with Lenin before Nicholas and the family were executed.
35. Yakov Yurovski, last commandant at the Ipatev house and overseer of the execution arrangements in July 1918.
36. Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevik party leader and chairman of Sovnarkom. Lenin did everything to remove the traces of his part in the discussion about killing the Romanovs.
37. Yakov Sverdlov, Bolshevik Central Committee secretary and chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets. Close comrade of Lenin in the year after the October Revolution.
38. The blood-stained wall in the Ipatev house cellar after the execution of the Romanovs.
39. Armoured train used by a Czechoslovak fighting unit in 1918. The Czechoslovaks made their locomotives defensible against attack en route by pro-Bolshevik forces.
40. The file of crucial documents from the inquiry into the fate of the Romanovs collected by Nikander Mirolyubov. Mirolyubov retained the status of Procurator of the Kazan Palace of Justice.
41. Dowager Empress Maria Fëdorovna seated in front of her son Nicholas around the turn of the century. After Nicholas left Mogilëv in March 1917, she never saw Nicholas and his family again.
42. Telegram from Alex (Queen Alexandra) to Minnie (Maria Fëdorovna) on 21 December 1918, pleading with her to come into exile. Maria Fëdorovna felt guilty about leaving the country.
