Nicholas II was granted honorary senior rank in a number of foreign armies, reciprocating by extending similar distinctions to a number of his fellow monarchs. These included the Imperial German, Spanish, Italian, Danish and British armies. [ citation needed] Harding, Luke (25 August 2007). "Bones found by Russian builder finally solve riddle of the missing Romanovs". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 20 May 2010.

a b Longworth, Phillip (2006). Russia:The Once and Future Empire From Pre-History to Putin. St. Martin's Press. p.233. ISBN 978-0-312-36041-2. Sergei L. Firsov, "Emperor Nicholas II as an Orthodox Tsar" Russian Studies in History 50.4 (2012): 79–90.That summer, the failure of the Kerensky Offensive against Austro-Hungarian and German forces in Galicia led to anti-government rioting in Petrograd, known as the July Days. The government feared that further disturbances in the city could easily reach Tsarskoye Selo and it was decided to move the imperial family to a safer location. [130] Alexander Kerensky, who had taken over as prime minister, selected the town of Tobolsk in Western Siberia, since it was remote from any large city and 150 miles (240km) from the nearest rail station. [131] Some sources state that there was an intention to send the family abroad in the spring of 1918 via Japan, [132] but more recent work suggests that this was just a Bolshevik rumour. [133] The family left the Alexander Palace late on 13 August, reached Tyumen by rail four days later and then by two river ferries finally reached Tobolsk on 19 August. [134] There they lived in the former Governor's Mansion in considerable comfort. In October 1917, however, the Bolsheviks seized power from Kerensky's Provisional Government; Nicholas followed the events in October with interest but not yet with alarm. Boris Soloviev, the husband of Maria Rasputin, attempted to organize a rescue with monarchical factions, but it came to nothing. Rumors persist that Soloviev was working for the Bolsheviks or the Germans, or both. [135] Separate preparations for a rescue by Nikolai Yevgenyevich Markov were frustrated by Soloviev's ineffectual activities. [136] Nicholas continued to underestimate Lenin's importance. In the meantime he and his family occupied themselves with reading books, exercising and playing games; Nicholas particularly enjoyed chopping firewood. [137] However, in January 1918, the guard detachment's committee grew more assertive, restricting the hours that the family could spend in the grounds and banning them from walking to church on a Sunday as they had done since October. [138] In a later incident, the soldiers tore the epaulettes from Kobylinsky's uniform, and he asked Nicholas not to wear his uniform outside for fear of provoking a similar event. [139]

His tolerance if not preference for charlatans and adventurers extended to grave matters of external policy, and his vacillating conduct and erratic decisions aroused misgivings and occasional alarm among his more conventional advisers. The foreign ministry itself was not a bastion of diplomatic expertise. Patronage and "connections" were the keys to appointment and promotion. [37]Glenn E. Curtis (1996). "Kievan Rus' and Mongol Periods". Russia: A Country Study. Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007 . Retrieved 26 November 2013. A second Duma met for the first time in February 1907. The leftist parties—including the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, who had boycotted the First Duma—had won 200 seats in the Second, more than a third of the membership. Again Nicholas waited impatiently to rid himself of the Duma. In two letters to his mother he let his bitterness flow:

After the Second Duma resulted in similar problems, the new prime minister Pyotr Stolypin (whom Witte described as "reactionary") [ citation needed] unilaterally dissolved it, and changed the electoral laws to allow for future Dumas to have a more conservative content, and to be dominated by the liberal-conservative Octobrist Party of Alexander Guchkov. Stolypin, a skilful politician, had ambitious plans for reform. These included making loans available to the lower classes to enable them to buy land, with the intent of forming a farming class loyal to the crown. Nevertheless, when the Duma remained hostile, Stolypin had no qualms about invoking Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws, which empowered the tsar to issue 'urgent and extraordinary' emergency decrees 'during the recess of the State Duma'. Stolypin's most famous legislative act, the change in peasant land tenure, was promulgated under Article 87. [84] The Empire of Russia was declared by Peter the Great in 1721. Officially, Russia would be ruled by the Romanov dynasty until the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, direct male descendants of Michael Romanov came to an end in 1730 with the death of Peter II of Russia, grandson of Peter the Great. The throne passed to Anna, a niece of Peter the Great, and after the brief rule of her niece's infant son Ivan VI, the throne was seized by Elizabeth, a daughter of Peter the Great. Elizabeth would be the last of the direct Romanovs to rule Russia. Elizabeth declared her nephew, Peter, to be her heir. Peter (who would rule as Peter III) spoke little Russian, having been a German prince of the House of Holstein-Gottorp before arriving in Russia to assume the Imperial title. He and his German wife Sophia changed their name to Romanov upon inheriting the throne. Peter was ill-liked, and he was assassinated within six months of assuming the throne, in a coup orchestrated by his wife, who became Empress in her own right and ruled as Catherine the Great (both Peter and Catherine were descended from the House of Rurik). Following the confused successions of the descendants of Peter the Great, Catherine's son Paul I established clear succession laws which governed the rules of primogeniture over the Imperial throne until the fall of the Empire in 1917.

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Emperor Nicholas II of Russia with his physically similar cousin, George V of the United Kingdom (right), wearing German military uniforms in Berlin before the war; 1913

Details on further testing of the Imperial remains are contained in Rogaev, E.I., Grigorenko, A.P., Moliaka, I.K., Faskhutdinova, G., Goltsov, A., Lahti, A., Hildebrandt, C., Kittler, E.L.W. and Morozova, I., "Genomic identification in historical case of the Nicholas II royal family.", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (2009).Robert D. Warth, "Before Rasputin: Piety and the Occult at the Court of Nicholas II." Historian 47.3 (1985): 323–337. A few days prior to Bloody Sunday (9 (22) January 1905), priest and labor leader Georgy Gapon informed the government of the forthcoming procession to the Winter Palace to hand a workers' petition to the tsar. On Saturday, 8 (21) January, the ministers convened to consider the situation. There was never any thought that the tsar, who had left the capital for Tsarskoye Selo on the advice of the ministers, would actually meet Gapon; the suggestion that some other member of the imperial family receive the petition was rejected. [64] Russia's Last Tsar Declared Victim of Repression". Time. Archived from the original on 14 January 2009 . Retrieved 7 September 2009.