The Empress Alexandra had four gorgeous, intelligent daughters. Though most mothers would be more than happy with the healthy children she had produced, it was her heart's deepest desire and her duty to produce an heir: a male child, a son. This she finally accomplished with little Alexei who was born in 1904; but her happiness proved short-lived when it became clear that she'd passed onto her son the cursed disease of Hemophilia. She had a brother, and uncles, that died from the disease. She was fully aware of the suffering Hemophilia bestowed on its hapless victim. The disease plagued Queen Victoria's family and Alexandra was a grand daughter of the great queen of England. There was nothing to be done about the condition save for prayers and gentle treatment. Her long sought after heir was as fragile as crystal.

Alexei's birth was the beginning of a long, terrible nightmare. No doctors could cure him. No doctors could ease the constant, anguish and suffering. And, suffer, the poor boy did. Bouts of internal bleeding would cause his tiny body to swell to extreme proportions, pushing the small boy to beg for death, his screams piercing the stillness of the palace. Even the most hardened heart felt compassion for the brave little boy on which so much hope had been pinned. Hope that faded with every bout of the disease. With Alexei not just a child would be lost, but the security of an entire nation.

"Mama!" he cried in the midst of his agony. "Help me!" She stood, wringing her hands, tears coursing over her lovely cheeks, heart breaking for the child she long waited for, and now so wished to keep alive despite his tortured existence. What is a mother to do? Alexandra was a princess, then an Empress, but above all, she was a mother. What mother will cease in her efforts to ease her child's suffering? Alexandra sent for every noted healer, every doctor she knew of, every remedy, cure, potion and promise that might heal, or at the very least, provide some comfort for her darling son.

Enter Rasputin. A Starets--not a monk--but a drifter of a holy man, unrecognized or ordained by the church, but tolerated in his strange particular brand of holiness. Dirty, rank, he wore the untidy and coarse clothes of a wandering Russian monk. Bathing was a foreign thing to him. He was everything vile and lewd, and yet he attracted the highborn women with his rough, coarse ways. He sought out the primal desires suppressed in a woman's heart, unleashed those desires in her body. He was no stranger to the addiction of the flesh. It was said he said what he shouldn't say, and touched what he shouldn't touch. Rasputin didn't care. It was all performed under the guise of his ministry, his powers, and his divine abilities to help those wretched afflicted souls struggling on this earth.