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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.
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