There is a widely known legend that a friend of Nicholas II’s family, Grigory Rasputin, had an unholy affair with the monarch’s wife. Let's find out if this is really so.

These rumors have been exciting minds in Russia and beyond for more than a century. The mysterious personality of an illiterate man who won the trust of the first family of the empire and was brutally murdered in the house of the country's first rich man is in itself extremely interesting. However, the history of the relationship between Grigory Rasputin and the last Russian empress became a completely separate line. Dozens have been written about her books, a lot has been filmed films, and in the public consciousness, truth has long been mixed with fiction.

The famous song Rasputin by Boney M even contains the line Lover of the Russian Queen (“lover of the Russian queen”). It is this “status” that Rasputin is primarily known in the West:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYnVYJDxu2Q

It must be said that Rasputin would hardly have appeared in the royal family at all if not for the incurable disease of Tsarevich Alexei - hemophilia. When medicine is powerless, a person clutches at any straw. And the visits of the “holy fool,” as Elder Gregory was then called in St. Petersburg, became such a straw. It is not known for certain whether Rasputin helped the Tsarevich with his gift or, as wrote some, he mixed drugs into his food, but the pain began to bother the boy less often. And this quickly made the eccentric man a friend of the imperial family and, first of all, Alexandra Feodorovna. It is interesting that the elder was 36 years old at the time of their acquaintance, and Nikolai was 37.

Rumors that Alexandra Fedorovna was cheating on her wife with Rasputin spread mainly after the start of the war with Germany, when dissatisfaction with the authorities on the part of the nobility intensified and the German woman became extremely active in government affairs.

It is reliably known about the trial of a 31-year-old Kazan carpenter, who in the fall of 1914 called the Empress a girl of easy virtue. The surname Rasputin in those years was deciphered as “Romanova Alexandra destroyed the throne of Emperor Nicholas with her behavior.” During the war, cinemas even banned the showing of a film in which the Tsar placed the St. George Cross on himself, because in the darkness someone’s voice was invariably heard: “The Tsar-Father is with Yegor, and the Tsarina-Mother is with Gregory.” The famous poetess Zinaida Gippius wrote in her “diary”: “Grisha himself rules, drinks and the ladies-in-waiting...i.e. And Fedorovna, out of habit.” A prominent Foreign Ministry official, A. N. Mandelstam, claimed that he had “reliable” information about the empress’s relationship with the elder.

In 1917, rumors were readily picked up by officers and sailors, who talked about Alexandra’s adventures in the arms of not only the famous healer, but also ordinary military men. Added to this were old rumors about Rasputin’s popularity among aristocrats.

After the February Revolution, the Provisional Government conducted a special investigation. "It turned outthat Rasputin’s amorous adventures do not go beyond nightly orgies with girls of easy virtue and chansonnet singers, as well as sometimes with some of his petitioners. As for the proximity to the ladies of high society, in this regard, no positive observation materials were obtained by the investigation,” wrote a participant in the investigation, prosecutor Vladimir Rudnev.

And the poet Alexander Blok, after a personal conversation with Rudnev, wrote in his diary: “He did not live either with the Empress or with Vyrubova (Alexandra Feodorovna’s friend. - Note: “Verified”).”

Thus, not a single proof or reliable evidence of the love affair between Alexandra Feodorovna and Rasputin exists. Moreover, they had practically no opportunity to be alone.