Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Alexei Romanov: The Heir Who Never Ruled
Transcript
- Lucas: Last time we talked about Peter the Great's reforms and how he dragged Russia into the modern world. But there was a personal cost to all that transformation, and it's nowhere more visible than in the story of his son, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich. Luna: The heir who never became tsar — I've heard he was basically the anti-Peter. Lucas: Exactly. Alexei was born in 1690 to Peter's first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, who Peter eventually forced into a convent. From the start, Alexei was raised by his mother's conservative circle, surrounded by boyars and clergy who resented Peter's westernizing reforms. So by the time the boy was old enough to understand the world, he'd absorbed all the traditionalist opposition to his father's project. Luna: So he grew up seeing his father as the enemy. Lucas: Pretty much. Peter tried to involve him — sent him to study in Dresden, arranged a marriage to Princess Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was a German princess connected to the Holy Roman Empire. Charlotte gave birth to a son, the future Peter II, but she died soon after. Alexei was miserable. He wrote letters to his confessor saying he wished his father would just die so he could undo everything Peter had built. Luna: That's... not something you want your father, the tsar, to read. Lucas: No. And eventually Peter did find out. By 1716, Peter was losing patience. He gave Alexei an ultimatum: either reform and support the reforms, or renounce the throne and become a monk. Alexei panicked. Instead of choosing, he fled — he escaped Russia with his mistress, Yefrosinya, and sought refuge with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in Vienna. Luna: He fled to the Holy Roman Empire? That's a direct challenge to his father's authority. Lucas: Exactly. Peter saw it as treason. He sent his best diplomat, Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy — an ancestor of the writer — to track Alexei down and bring him back. Tolstoy used a mix of threats and promises: he assured Alexei that if he returned, he'd be forgiven and allowed to live quietly on his estate. Alexei believed him, and in 1718, he came back to Moscow. Luna: Spoiler: he was not forgiven. Lucas: Not even close. As soon as Alexei arrived, Peter ordered an investigation. Alexei was interrogated, and under torture he named his accomplices — his closest advisors, like Alexander Kikin, who was broken on the wheel. But the real goal was to extract a confession of treason. Alexei admitted he'd hoped for his father's death and planned to restore the old ways. Peter then had a special court of 127 dignitaries — boyars, senators, clergy — try his own son for treason. Luna: A tsar putting his heir on trial — that's unprecedented, right? Lucas: In Russian history, yes. The court found Alexei guilty and sentenced him to death. But before the sentence could be carried out, Alexei died in the Peter and Paul Fortress on June 26, 1718. The official cause was a stroke, but rumors of torture or even strangulation spread immediately. We'll never know for sure, but the timing was awfully convenient for Peter. Luna: And after that, Peter issued that famous law about succession, right? Lucas: Yes — the Manifesto on the Order of Succession in 1722. Peter decreed that the reigning tsar could choose his own successor, bypassing the traditional line of primogeniture. It was a direct result of the Alexei affair. Peter argued that the heir should be chosen based on merit, not birth. That law stayed in effect for the rest of the century and caused no end of succession crises — including the chaos after Peter's own death, when his wife Catherine I took the throne. Luna: So Alexei's tragedy shaped Russian politics for generations. Lucas: Absolutely. It also set a terrifying precedent: the tsar would kill his own son to protect his reforms. The case haunted the Romanovs. When the Decembrists rose up in 1825, they saw themselves as heirs to a different tradition — one where the ruler had no right to destroy the family for the state. But for Peter, the state was everything. Alexei was simply an obstacle to Russia's future. Luna: And then there's the personal tragedy — a father and son who could never understand each other. Lucas: That's what makes it so compelling. Alexei wasn't a villain. He was a product of the old Russia Peter was trying to erase. In another world, he might have been a decent tsar, conservative but stable. But Peter couldn't tolerate that vision. So he sacrificed his son for his dream of a modern Russia. Luna: And the dream worked — but at what cost? Lucas: That's a question the Romanovs would keep asking, all the way to 1917.