Chapter 410: The Goddess of Winter Awakens
Weeks had passed since that night where Bruno and Heidi came to terms with the fact that they were getting old beneath the beauty and tranquility of the sleeping sun, and now the man and his family found themselves in Saint Petersburg.
Officially, Bruno had been sent to the capital of the Russian Empire to oversee the current agreement of joint industrial, technological, economic, and military cooperation. A force of German soldiers had been dispatched to help train the Russians with their latest batch of armored vehicles, domestically produced via tooling, technical data packages, and engineers provided by the German Reich.
Sure, the engineers and their stay were temporary—just for a few years—giving the Russians time to begin mass production within perfect specification before returning to the Reich. But Bruno’s visit was far more temporary.
And while his generals, officers, and soldiers aided Russia in understanding the new military reforms Germany was developing in this more peaceful era, along with testing new equipment and tactics together, Bruno and Nicholas were sitting peacefully within the Winter Palace, discussing matters of family rather than war or diplomacy.
But their discussion was an unimportant matter between two friends. No, the real important scene was taking place within the estate grounds—the gardens, to be precise—which were completely covered in snow.
Prince Alexei Nikolaevich was a boy who had been described in Bruno’s past life as shy, good-natured, intelligent, and even playfully mischievous. He had been stricken with hemophilia since birth, and quite a severe case at that.
He suffered silently, never once letting his condition cloud his thoughts or judgment, let alone allowing it to compel him to cruelty—when so many others in his privileged and prestigious position would casually find themselves engaging in such degenerate and destructive behavior.
The boy was now nearing the age he was when he was brutally and mercilessly executed by the Red Army along with his entire family—without provocation or justification. That being 14 years old at this point.
The massacre of the Romanovs was one of the most tragic and unjust regicides in history. For all of Nicholas’s failures as a leader, many of which were no fault of his own, he had never been a cruel monarch.
Sure, when crowned he was most certainly unfit for the job due to his complicated upbringing, but by all accounts he had been a good man trying to do his best to stabilize an impossible position that he inherited suddenly and forcefully from the death of his father—who had done nothing but abuse and neglect him in ways that made him fundamentally incapable of ruling.