This episode of the Sofa King Podcast looks at the Mad Monk of Russia, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. Born in a small town in Siberia to peasants, he had a reputation of having visions from God as a young child, and he eventually left town to join a monastery after he was recruited due to his “visions.” However, Rasputin wasn’t that good at being a monk. He entered the Verkhoture Monastery at age 17 but left by 19, so he could get married and never finished his religious training.

Shortly after the birth of his daughters, Rasputin decided to go on a holy pilgrimage around the ancient world. Eventually, he landed in Petrograd and spread his own reputation as a fortune teller and a mystic healer. It just so happened that the rulers of Russia (Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna) lived there and had a son sick with Hemophilia. After trying everything modern medicine could do at the time (such as give him aspirin), they turned to Rasputin who had gained quite a following.

Rasputin allegedly cured Aleksei’s Hemophilia, and he was part of the royal court from that moment on. His time at court was troublesome to say the least. He was hated by the peasants who thought a low born person shouldn’t be sleeping with the Tsarina (as rumors suggested), and he was hated by aristocracy who didn’t want a drunken peasant who slept with whores in the palace. After a nose-less hooker tried to assassinate him with a wicked knife wound to his gut, Rasputin became paranoid and started to drink more.

As World War I started, and the Czar left for war, Rasputin spent even more time with the Tsarina, and this could not stand. Eventually, members of the royal family plotted for his death, and he infamously did not die easily! What did they do to try to kill him? Why did it take so much to put Rasputin down? What penalties fell upon the royals who murdered him? What predictions came true after Rasputin’s death? Listen, laugh, learn.