For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been deposed; some slain in war;

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Some poisoned by their wives; some sleeping kill'd;

All murder'd: for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp... 

~ William Shakespeare (1564-1616) (King Richard II, Act III, Sc. 2) 

What is going to happen to me and all of Russia?  I am not prepared to be a Tsar.  I know nothing of the business of ruling.  

~ Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (upon his accession)  

Be more autocratic than Peter the Great and sterner than Ivan the Terrible.

~ Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna (1872-1918)* (reported advice to her husband, Nicholas II)  

I shall never, under any circumstances, agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to my care.  

~ Nicholas II (attributed)  

I pity the Tsar.  I pity Russia.  He is a poor and unhappy sovereign.  What did he inherit and what will he leave?  He is obviously a good and quite intelligent man, but he lacks will power, and it is from that character that his state defects developed, that is, his defects as a ruler, especially an autocratic and absolute ruler.  

~ Sergei Witte (1849-1915) (after serving as Russian prime minister, 1905/06)   

Today is the 100th anniversary - the centennial - of the murder on this date in 1918 of Russia's Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family by a Bolshevik execution squad at Ekaterinburg in central Russia.  Amid the "February Revolution"** sparked by serious Russian reverses in World War I, the Tsar had abdicated on 15 March 1917 and then been arrested by the provisional government, which at first agreed that he and his family should be allowed to leave Russia.*** Out for revenge, however, the Bolsheviks blocked the Romanov's departure, and after the Red seizure of power in the subsequent "October Revolution," they moved the royal family and their entourage to the city of Ekaterinburg, where they were eventually executed under the pretext that "white" forces were approaching the area during the Russian civil war. 

The order for their deaths seems to have come from the Bolshevik Central Committee, but Lenin's actual role remains uncertain.  After the execution, the victims' bodies were buried in several rude graves in nearby woods, but after the fall of Communism, the remains were rediscovered, exhumed, identified using DNA testing, and reburied in the Tsarist mausoleum in the Sts. Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg.  Subsequently, Nicholas II and his family have all been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church, and their tomb has become something of a pilgrimage site. (Even I've been there.)  As historian Orlando Figes has noted, however, it's been even more tragic for the 20th century and beyond that 

                "Nicholas had not been blessed with either his father's strength

                 or his intelligence." 

* N.B. The Tsarina Alexandra was even more dogmatically autocratic than the Tsar, and her baleful influence - plus her infamous association with Rasputin - were a major factor in Nicholas's unpopularity.  Also, it didn't help her image - during World War I - that she had been born a German princess.

** "February" in accordance with the old-style Russian calendar (March by ours). Similarly, what the Russians call the "October Revolution" happened in our November.  

*** An excellent new read is Helen Rappaport's The Race to Save the Romanovs, a detailed account of the desperate attempts by the crowned heads of Europe - all related to Nicholas and his family - to get them out of Russia.  

           The Romanov royal family in 1913.  Left to right:  Olga, Maria, Tsar Nicholas II,
           the Tsarina, Anastasia, the Tsarevich Alexii, and Tatiana:
Tzar Nicholas II and family : Russian heir demands Tsar Nicholas II murder investigation   

   The tomb of the remains of Nicholas II and his family in the cathedral of the
   Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg.