Romanov’s Revenge

[RJGFox]

I wrote this in July 2025, unconnected to anything else. I had just finished reading Sebag-Montefiore’s Romanov’s and Beevor’s Russia: Revolution and Civil War, and that was a jumping off point…and of course, the brutality of both the Empire and of Bolsheviks really shone through it all.

Me, a laptop, and 2 bottles of reasonably good red later...

##

The scaffold was in the middle of the hall. Two substantial wooden uprights with metal bases bolted to the floor and a thick wooden cross beam. From the crossbeam hung four block and tackle. Through the burnished metal of each pulley ran a length of rope. The last foot – and the noose – of each rope was piano wire.

The four prisoners entered the hall from the temporary cell block built in one of the palace kitchens. It had been their home for two weeks. One side of the room converted to cells not much larger than stable stalls – with straw mattresses and coarse blankets for sleeping and ceramic chamber pots that were emptied every other day. The other side – the large kitchen range, with the fire desultorily stoked by their guards giving just an impression of heat. Outside, snow lay on the ground.

The four prisoners: Pyotr Ermakov; Grigory Nikulin; Alexey Kabanov; and Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin.

The prisoners couldn’t see the raised stage along one side of the hall. But as Old Bolsheviks, the theatrics of the situation wouldn’t have surprised them. In the middle of the staging, a single, high-backed chair. And at each end, two flags: the tricolour – the flag of the nation, and the yellow Imperial Standard – especially apposite on this day.

The prisoners now stood, hooded, with their hands bound behind their back. One had his hands clasped in a brief, snatched prayer.

Two prisoners had a Guard with a hand on their left shoulder. The other two, with shaking legs, had a Guard either side, holding them up. Fifteen other soldiers stood in the room, for now, watching. But each with his own designated duty.

The door at the end of the hall opened, and all the soldiers turned. First, there was silence. And then, unseen by the prisoners, a lone woman appeared. Tall and broad, with long, blonde hair, she was walking slowly, almost shuffling.

The woman approached the scaffold and stood in-front of the first prisoner. With a nod to the guards, each prisoner had their hoods removed.

Blinking into the light, the prisoners looked over at the woman. Each knew exactly who she was – and of course, why they were here.

Looking older than her 42 years, she had little mobility in her right arm, which hung by her side. Her face and neck were marked. A thin but prominent scar ran from her right nostril to her ear. Her neck had a gouge from a bullet ricochet that was now coloured by the plaster and brick dust that had got into an open wound. And where her neck met her right shoulder, two healed bayonet wounds, which had permanently damaged her arm.

Out of sight and under her clothes, her body was marked by 17 more wounds of different kinds. These said nothing, however, about the mental anguish that she lived with.

But now, she stood in front of Ermakov. She had been waiting for this. Prepared for it. Imagined it.

He looked older, but exactly the same as he looked in both her dreams and nightmares. With their guards gripping them firmly, the other prisoners tried to look over – realising the significance of this moment.

Ermakov himself looked forward, towards her. But his eyes did not focus. He looked past her, his heartbeat quickening.

“Look at me” said the woman. Ermakov didn’t move.

“Look at me!” She said, louder, through gritted teeth.

Ermakov’s eyes moved downwards and met hers.

The woman prodded him, firmly in the solar plexus.

“You remember me” she said, flatly. It wasn’t a question.

Ermakov was silent. Expressionless.

“You remember me!” she repeated, prodding him again.

Like many of her famous ancestors, this woman was unusually strong. As a young girl, she’d been able to pick her older sisters off the ground. Once, at 14, she’d lifted her young brother’s tutor above her head. She was strong, tall, and broad.

Ermakov was unmoved.

“I remember you!” she snarled.

“I remember your smell. Your stink. The vodka on your breath.” She was angry. As angry as she had every right to be. Spit gathered at the corners of her mouth.

She flicked his face. He recoiled.

“You remember my mother. My father…Your Tsar!”

Ermakov spat. It narrowly missed the woman. She turned and watched the phlegm fall to the ground. The guard at his shoulder pistol whipped him in the face, and he fell to his knees.

The woman remained unmoved.

Two other guards ran to Ermakov’s side, pulling him back to his feet and holding him in place. His mangled mouth poured deep red blood.

The woman stood in front of him still. Eyes boring into him.

In a split second, she grabbed his face, her fingers pushing against what remained of his teeth.

“Look at me…” she demanded, pulling his face towards hers.

“You remember me. Look at me!”

She let go of him, and pulled the neck of her dress down, exposing the wounds on her neck and her shoulders.

‘You did this to me. You did this to me! And you killed them all. You and the rest of the ghouls…”

Her face was distorted first by fury and then split by a macabre grin.

“But it was all for nothing you know?”

Ermakov looked away. She grabbed him again.

“Look at me. Look at me! It was all for nothing. It was all for nothing! I am your Tsar now!” Her yell reverberated around the empty hall.

Ermakov blinked her spit out of his eyes.

She let him go, grimly wiping the blood off her hand on the rough fabric of his jacket. Seconds later, the guard struck Ermakov so hard in the back that he fell to his knees again with a whimper.

She stopped in front of the other three prisoners,

Nikulin was first. As she approached he looked away, and then down, at his feet. She quickly grabbed his face too.

“Look at me!” she snarled.

“Grigory, I remember you. You remember me. We thought you were different, didn’t we? But you weren’t, were you? You were just as vulgar as the rest.”

There was a pregnant pause. For a split second their eyes met, and she was there again – the war, Yekaterinburg. She almost willed him to open his mouth.

He didn’t. Yet.

Disappointed, she pushed his head back, and let it go, turning to move on.

Then Nikulin spoke. Defiantly and definitively.

“I don’t regret it for a second…you fucking bitch.”

The guard punched Nikulin in the side of his head. His knees shook like a prize-fighter.

The woman raised her hand after the brief burst of violence.

Nikulin had stayed upright. He composed himself. The imprint of the woman’s fingertips was still on his cheeks.

“It was an honour. And I would do it again. In a heartbeat.” He paused. “I did it for the people. For the peasants and the workers of Russia”

The woman allowed a wry smile to play across her lips.

“And yet. Here we are. Tomorrow, when they read their papers and listen to their radios, the peasants and the workers will applaud your end.”

She paused, shaking her head.

“It was all for nothing.”

Next was Kabanov. She started quickly: “You served my father. And then you betrayed him and killed him.”

Kabanov didn’t answer. He was being held up by two guards. His legs had failed him. And his bladder too.

The woman looked him up and down.

“Pathetic.” She said firmly.

“Pathetic.” She repeated

“Some people know how to die, like heroes. My father stood tall and proud in-front of you and your band... And yet, you…” She waved and looked down at his trousers, like she was searching for the words.

“…you have pissed yourself because you are afraid. Because you are a coward Alexey, you are a coward. Pathetic.”

As she walked away, Kubanov let out an involuntary sob.

Last was Medvedev-Kudrin.

The woman almost snarled like a wolf as she approached him. For him, her fury was different and much harder to hide.

“I remember you.”

“I remember you.” She repeated. She walked up to him directly, her arm outstretched. Her index finger met his cheek. Pushing her finger forward firmly, her fingernail cut into his skin.

When she spoke again, she bared her teeth.

“You killed my father.” She snapped. There was a pause, and then she slapped his face.

Medvedev-Kudrin was also being held up – a guard at each shoulder. But for now, he maintained control of his bowels.

His cheek already shone red. He looked straight at her but didn’t see.

“You killed my father” she intoned again. Medvedev-Kudrin sucked his teeth.

“You shot him. First. First!” She prodded him in the chest. “And he was worth a hundred of you. A thousand of you…” she said, tailing off.

There was a pause, and then she flicked his cheek. Hard. He blinked but was unmoved.

“It was all for nothing you know?” She paused, willing a response. “It was all for nothing!”

Then he spoke.

“We did it for Russia. Mother Russia.”

The woman snorted.

“How dare you!” she exclaimed, and prodded him in the chest. He flinched.

“How dare you! What do you know about Russia? Hmmm? What do you know? And your mother? No! Never! You and your…ilk, you and the fellow ghouls! You are abortions. Abortions!’ She spat in his face.

There was a pause. She caught her breath.

“And it was all for nothing! Do you know that? Nothing. I am your Tsar now. I am your Tsar now! And I am, I am going to treat you – like you treated my father!”

The threat echoed round the hall, and she was silent, staring into Medvedev-Kudrin’s eyes for almost a minute; before nodding at the guard behind him, who hit him round the head with a rifle butt. Medvedev-Kudrin fell to the floor.

As he was being returned to his feet, the woman walked over to the stage, climbing its steps. She sat on the central chair.

She was wearing a military uniform. As befitted the nature of this drumhead trial, it was a field uniform. An officer’s tunic, open, over a khaki gimnastorka. Only the Imperial Crowns on her shoulder boards alluded to her role as Commander in Chief.

As she took her seat, each prisoner was seized by three guards, who pushed them backwards. Four masked executioners stood ready, passing the wire loop over their heads and tightening it. Despite his earlier calmness, Ermakov was the only one to try and resist – the wire already cutting into his skin and drawing blood.

Within minutes however, all four were on their feet, the nooses drawn tight round their neck.

Also on stage was a tall, upright officer from the Стража/Strazha. Two steps away from the Tsar, in his hands he held words she had dictated to him directly – from memory. He began:

“Pyotr Ermakov, Grigory Nikulin, Alexey Kabanov; Mikhail Medvedev-Kudrin, in view of the fact that you have all been found guilty of Regicide by the Governing Senate, Maria, Empress of All the Russia’s, has decided to execute you.”

One of the prisoners let out a wail. Another pissed himself again.

Impassive, Empress Maria leaned back in her chair. Reaching up, she unbuttoned the top button of her gimnastorka. Her good hand then went into her tunic pocket. She had locket pictures of her family: Mama, Papa, Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia, Alexei. She opened each and laid them out on her lap. As she looked down at them, her eyes were stinging. Just one more beautiful summer with them, that would be enough.

But now, after 23 years, someone would pay.

The tears finished their journey down her cheek before she looked up again.

Each of the condemned men had a different look on their face. Resignation. Defiance. Terror. Sadness.

Turning to the Sergeant in charge of the executioners manning the pulleys, she made a beckoning motion with the first two fingers of her left hand.

The executioners deftly pulled their ropes forward by about a foot. Just enough to lift the prisoners stockinged feet off the floor, their toes less than 6 inches from supporting their own weight.

Within seconds, the hall was filled with the sounds of choking, and the collars of the prisoner’s uniform soaked with blood.

Thirty seconds later, the executioners loosened their grip on their ropes. The prisoners fell to the floor, gasping for air, blood pouring from their necks.

But with another beckon of Maria’s hand, their feet were off the ground again, with blood pooling on the floor beneath them.

5 minutes later, with the sound of choking subsiding, Maria closed the lockets of her family and returned them to her pocket. She rose from her chair and first saluted the Strazha officer, before thanking each of the other soldiers in the hall. Some had their own tears running down their face.

The business of the evening done, Empress Maria left the hall, sweeping through the kitchens, before walking out into the snowy yard. To her staff, it appeared that their shuffling queen was now walking more freely.

Outside the kitchen doors, two Daimler armoured cars, Imperial Flags flying from their whip aerials, waited alongside her armoured vehicle for the short journey back to the Royal Train. She would return to Petrograd by rail. 6 years after the fall of the Soviets, and 4 years after her coronation, the security situation across much of Russia was normalised, but the Лейб-гвардия/ Leib-gvardiya would not make the same complacent mistakes as their predecessors.

By the time the prisoners were cut down, Empress Maria was on her train, drinking tea, sweetened with cherries.

[Belushi TD]

Oh, wow.....

You've done a good job, in my opinion, of capturing the psyche of a theoretical Romanov survivor.

And the history that's vaguely alluded to. I want to read the history books from that universe!

Belushi TD

[jemhouston]

Excellent

[RJGFox]

Excellent

Thank you - glad you appreciated!

[RJGFox]

Oh, wow.....

You've done a good job, in my opinion, of capturing the psyche of a theoretical Romanov survivor.

And the history that's vaguely alluded to. I want to read the history books from that universe!

Belushi TD

Thanks!
Yes my biggest take away from the reading I did around the fall of the Tsar and the end of the Romanov dynasty is the brutality of it all - not just the murder of the Imperial family but for example, the deaths of the Martyrs of Alapayevsk - clubbed, thrown down a mineshaft, grenades down after them, and then left to die from starvation and their wounds.

It struck me that any vengeance would be equally as unpleasant so I’m glad you think I captured that psyche.

I did some scribbling about what a timeline could look like - but it was beyond my wit without a substantial amount of handwavium.

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

As Kipling so aptly put it, '"Deadlier Than The Male."