Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov

Holy Passion-⁠bearer Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov was born on 12 August 1904, the only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. He was killed with his parents and four sisters on 4 (17) July 1918 at Yekaterinburg. The Russian Church numbered him among the holy Passion-⁠bearers at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in the year 2000.

His birth was long awaited: the emperor and empress had four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and ardently desired an heir. Alexei was born a year after the imperial family's pilgrimage to Sarov, for the glorification of Saint Seraphim. But within weeks it became clear that he was ill with haemophilia: any bleeding could be fatal, and his life hung always by a thread. In September 1912 an unguarded movement brought an internal haemorrhage so grave that his life was feared for, and prayers for the tsarevich's recovery were offered in all the churches of Russia. The nature of the illness was a state secret, and his parents often had to hide their grief. The children of the imperial family were raised in the spirit of the Orthodox faith, in the traditions of a devout life.

After the revolution the family was arrested and sent to Tobolsk. In the spring of 1918 the emperor, the empress and Maria were taken to Yekaterinburg and confined in the Ipatiev house. The tsarevich was ill then and could not be moved; when his health recovered, the other members of the family were brought from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg and confined in the same house. Conditions in the "house of special purpose" were much harder than at Tobolsk: a guard of twelve soldiers, daily humiliations, deprivation, mockery. The few testimonies that survive show a united family that bore every trial with meekness and patience.

The family was killed in the night of 4 (17) July 1918. Patriarch Tikhon blessed the serving of memorial services for the murdered emperor and, on 8 (21) July, said in the Kazan Cathedral in Moscow that the killing of a man who had suffered for the good of Russia must be condemned. Veneration of the imperial family continued in secret throughout the Soviet period. They are commemorated on 4 (17) July, the day of the killing, and on the day of the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.