3rd September 1835
Boris Andreiev coughed briefly, before putting his mind on other things. He was due to have an audience with the Tsar himself shortly, but there was one thing he had to control. It was that damn cough he had acquired recently, that accursed, abominable cough...
The Tsar walked in, and Boris coughed again. Little did he know, that little cough changed the fate of a nation.
31st December 1835
It was the evening of the last day of the year, and Nicholas, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, was mortally ill. The physicians had proven themselves true incompetents at every stage of his illness, and now nothing could be done but to pray to Almighty God for the swift assumption of his soul into Heaven. He coughed blood from his mouth, delirious, as he had been for several weeks. Beside his bed were several physicians and a priest, watching, waiting. He kept himself conscious by sheer force of will, knowing well that if he fell asleep, he might never wake up.
He lasted through the night, but on the morning of the next day, as the sun rose thinly through the thick winter clouds, he expired, his last words simple, forced through a bloody mouth between racking coughs - 'Where...is...Alexander...'.
January 13 1836
The funeral of Nicholas was grand and extravagant, his body borne on a coach down to its tomb in Saint Basil's Cathedral. Thousands stood at the sides as the procession, guarded by troops of soldiers, made its slow way toward the cathedral. He was eulogised, and as the royal coffin was placed in the tomb, it ended.
Little did the many people present, including recently-crowned Alexander II, know how much had changed and would change because of one little cough.
A Brief History of the Russian Empire (Vladimir Putin)[1]
The brief reign of Emperor Nicholas (26 December 1825-1 January 1836) is relatively unimportant to history compared to the subsequent reign of Alexander II ( 5 January 1836-8 November 1886) which lasted 50 years and was a period of great reform in the Russian Empire. Alexander II understood well the value of modernisation, and left a somewhat schizophrenic legacy - on one hand he was an autocratic leader with much in common with previous Tsars, and on the other a great reformer who was heavily involved in industrialisation, modernisation and expansion, greatly improving and reforming the Russian Empire throughout his 50-year rule.
To understand him fully, we must also understand his circumstances...
[1] Yes, Putin is a historian ITTL. He's pretty much the only OTL character that will be showing up in the 20th and 21st Centuries however, mostly due to butterflies.