Nicholas II dies in 1900

He almost did. OTL he had a terrible attack of fever that year. (It was diagnosed as typhus which seems... odd; were the late Romanovs much afflicted by lice? OTOH typhus was a broad label that got applied to a range of fevers-with-rash. FWIW, "typhus" was also the diagnosis for whatever killed Alexander I back in 1825.) He was raving and near death at one point, and took weeks to recover.

So say the fever is a bit worse, and carries him off. At this point the Tsarina is pregnant with their fourth child, who will turn out to be... another girl. So Grand Duke Michael, 22 years old, becomes Tsar.

My impression is that Michael would neither be much better than Nicholas, nor either much worse. But he'd be... different. Not a strong personality, but weak in different ways from his brother.

One thought: do we still have a Russo-Japanese War? On one hand, that war arose out of a real conflict of interests, which would not be easy for a new and young Czar to resolve in his first few years in office. On the other, the particular personality of Nicholas did play a nontrivial role in Russia's drift to disaster there.

Oh, and: at this point Michael becomes the most eligible bachelor in Europe. Which is likely to make him even more miserable than he was OTL.

Thoughts?


Doug M.
 

Xen

Banned
I posted something not too different of Nicholas being assassinated in 1904, and had Michael married off to Princess Thyra of Denmark. In OTL Thyra died when she was in her mid 70s in 1945, unmarried and without children. Here she'll be in her 20's, and very eligible, she is also Michael's cousin, which doesnt seem to be a problem for royalty.
 
I posted something not too different of Nicholas being assassinated in 1904 ...

I also tried last October in a thread on producing a superpower to rival the USA https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?p=2018762#post2018762

It was slightly forced in order to give Russia the best chance towards fast economic development and political stability but I can repeat my idea below:

POD number 1. Grand Duke Michael (born in 1878) meets Pyotr Stolypin who impresses him with his views that the police should maintain files on all possible dissidents (as he did as governor of Saratov in OTL), should reform Russian agriculture to generate a large Kulak class (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolypin_Reform) and should avoid wars (I do not know if he already held that view before the 1905 disaster but he might have).

POD number 2. A month later, a revolutionary gets lucky and assassinates Tsar Nicholas II. Michael is the new Tsar and appoints Stolypin as his advisor (he was obviously right about watching subversives). OTL there was much opposition to Stolypin's reforms. However, here they are imposed by the tsar and there is no post 1905 Duma.

I assume that the Michael/Stolypin double act runs to at least 1930. Russia agrees a deal with Japan based on Japan having Korea and Russia Manchuria. I also assume that Michael is good at flattering Kaiser Wilhelm II to avoid a Germany - Russia war while encouraging him to build a large fleet and thus maintaining tension between Germany and Britain.
 
Another possibility could be that Nicholas's next younger brother, Alexander, did not die as an infant in 1870, but lived to succeed him had Nicholas died in 1900. If Alexander were more like his strong father than either Nicholas or Michael, he might have been able to hold the country together in 1917. He might even have been liberal enough to profit from and understand the 1905 Revolution, so that 1917 did not happen?
 

Onyx

Banned
What about Nicholas Son? Why not him, the Chinese placed there Last Emperor Pu Yi at like the age 6, would Mikhail help Nicholas Son being the Tsar?
 
I used this as the POD for my Tsar Michael The Great timeline and story.

Thus I studied the events in some detail. Alexandra tried to argue that because she was pregnant she be regent for her unborn child in the hope that it was a boy (it was actually Anastasia IIRC). The Grand Dukes (basically Nicholas II's uncles, cousins etc who made up the State Council) stamped down hard on this idea and proclaimed that if Nicholas died, then Michael would be Tsar REGARDLESS of whether or not Alexandra later gave birth to a boy

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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