Why can't Alexei be Tsar?

Onyx

Banned
There is alot of PODs of that the Russian Revolution fails, and the continuing Tsar after these PODS is mostly Mikhail, not Nicholas's son Alexei.
Why can't Alexei be Tsar? is he too young? Or is it because he dies early on the revolution?
 
Alexis was fatally ill (haemophilia). It means that even if he would become the Emperor, his reign would necessarily be very short, while his uncle Grand Duke Michael was healthy man and second in the succession line, immediately after Alexis.
 
As the last poster has mentioned, Crown Prince Alexi, was a Haemophiliac, who inherited the disease from his mother, who was a carrier, & would have died fairly young from fatal "bleeds", as a result of missing Factor VIII...
(Haemophilia was fairly common within the royal families of Europe, as a relative of Alexi, Prince Leopold died of the same disease, while fairly young...).
It could be argued that Alexi's condition accellerated the downfall of the Romanov Dynasty, in that his Mother, seeking a cure for his condition, & finding no medical cure, turns to faith healers such as Rasputin...
As a result, she like Marie Antonette, before her, became a target for vicious anti-Royalist rumours...
 
Why can't Alexei be Tsar? is he too young? Or is it because he dies early on the revolution?

Tsar Nicholas II gave up Alexei's rights to the Russian throne when he himself abdicated because neither he nor Tsarina Alexandra would have been willing to be separated from their 12 year old haemophiliac son which is what would have had to happen.

Such was the hatred felt toward the Tsar and Tsarina that no way would they have been allowed to be around Alexei in a position to influence him. By this time the mass of the Russian people felt that the German-born Tsarina was in league with Germany, aiming at Russia's defeat.

Regarding this matter, the Tsar in his abdication statement stated:

"In agreement with the Imperial Duma, we have thought it good to abdicate from the throne of the Russian state and to lay down the supreme power. Not wishing to part with our dear son we hand over our inheritance to our brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, and give him our blessing to mount the throne of the Russian state."

Whether Nicholas had the legal right to surrender his son's rights was another hotly contested debate.
 
Last edited:
There is alot of PODs of that the Russian Revolution fails, and the continuing Tsar after these PODS is mostly Mikhail, not Nicholas's son Alexei.
Why can't Alexei be Tsar? is he too young? Or is it because he dies early on the revolution?

The specifics vary from timeline to timeline, but in general, it comes down to Alexei's constitution. Long story short, he had haemophilia, which was probably going to kill him sooner or later. And even while he was alive, the existence of this condition (which was never publically revealed) caused various actions by his family which seem to have hastened the fall of the romanov's (first and foremost, if Alexei isnt sick, then Grigori Rasputin is nothing more than another peasant faith healer, thus avoiding a major problem for the regime). Add into this an assortment of other problems (such as being too young to be a major figure in time for the revolution), and he simply isnt a good candidate to head up the royalists. And if you remove his disease, then you have tinkered with the genetics of european royalty and the mechanics of the imperial family, with butterflies which may create a very different russia and europe. And if history is the same until the revolution, then Alexei is either dead (haemophilia, revolutionaries, what have you) or incapable of ruling. In this case, the next candidate for the throne is Grand Duke Michael, Tsar nicholas II's brother.
 
Supposing he lived long enough to reproduce, would his descendants have been haemophiliacs? I believe it's linked to the X-chromosome, so I'd imagine his daughters would be carriers at least, but his sons wouldn't. I could be wrong on that, though, I'm not a geneticist :D
 
Re: last post
Daughter's are carrier's, Sons have the disease, & in this time period, don't make it past the age of 20-25 ...
 
If he is very careful and the Revolution never happened, he could have lived into his 40's or 50's. I have heard hemophiliacs without much safety precautions lived to an older age, his Uncle lived into his 30's, and he was a Hemophiliac, so if he were very careful, which he was except for the Incident at Spala, then he would have been okay.
 
Alexis was fatally ill (haemophilia). It means that even if he would become the Emperor, his reign would necessarily be very short, while his uncle Grand Duke Michael was healthy man and second in the succession line, immediately after Alexis.

I do not agree. He could have survived. Far stranger things have happened. For example that King of Jerusalem who contracted leprosy as a child. He even had children.

Re: last post
Daughter's are carrier's, Sons have the disease, & in this time period, don't make it past the age of 20-25 ...

Exactly, that is longer than plenty of monarchs have lived.
 
Last edited:
Top