The Russian church didn't canonize them but does call them Passion Bearers. They were not martyrs but faced death in a Christ-like way. The church outside Russia fully canonized them. I have an icon of them in my icon corner. I am also fond of Alexandra's older sister, St. Elizabeth Grand Duchess of Russia, who was martyred. Her icon is in my corner as well.

much-touted-but-incredibly-corrupt democracy

Indeed.

He was an autocrat who believed passionately in his divine calling and in the autocratic way of life

Is autocracy incompatible with sanctity?

In my youth I believed quite strongly in the divine right of kings

If you believed in the Stuart version of the Divine Right of Kings, it's good that your belief has been tempered with age. On the other hand, …….

. Any form of government will only be as healthy and good as the men and women who form it at any given time

Do you mean that God allows us our folly?

May the souls of the Tsar and his family and their servants, butchered 100 years ago today, rest in peace.

Nicholas, and family, were devout Christians. That doesn't mean he was an effective leader with answers to the problems of his day. He led the country into three disastrous wars, the last one being devastating for Russia. German generals, in particular, brought Lenin back from exile with the hope he would destabilize Russia and get it out of the war. Nicholas also realized too late that reforms were needed, but he waited too long to initiate them. As was said about Louis XVI, he was a good clock maker. Terrible leader.

But, they weren't killed because of their faith. They were killed by political enemies. To call them martyrs is a little much in my book.

But were they killed because of their religious beliefs?

Peter the Great abolished the Moscow Patriarchy and established synodical government instead. I think (but may be wrong) that the tsar was responsible for episcopal aqppointments (as the monarch is for the Church of England). So until his abdication Tsar Nicholas was effectively Head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

...the tsar was responsible for...

Indeed, he was. Caesaro-papism was-is the order of the day in the Eastern Orthodox world, and has been since Byzantine days. Henry VIII may have been the only western monarch to copy the Eastern model, but he wasn't anywhere near the only one to have thought about doing so. Too, more than one historian has supposed that Henry II (of Becket fame) would have taken the course that Henry VIII did several hundred years later if he could have gotten away with it.

England's Henry the Bad, who died believing himself a good Catholic and bequeathed his soul to our Lady of Walsingham, would have been aghast at the irreversibly Protestant direction that 'his' church took under his unfortunate son, the adamantly Protestant Edward VI. A form of de facto caesaro-papism also showed its face in the west in the treaty of Westphalia which in 1648 ended the Thirty Years' War. The treaty provided that the religion of the ruler (Catholic or Protestant) would be the religion of the state. That Catholic rulers were allowed to name their bishops was a widespread reality. In many cases this was a provision that kept them within the Roman fold.

As recently as the early XXth century the Austro-Hungarian emperor, the legendary Franz Joseph, vetoed the 1903 election of a pope, Cardinal Rampiolla Marano. The shocked consistory had no idea that that law was still 'on the books'. They quickly elected a different pope, Pius X, who was more to the emperor's liking, and Pius lost no time in prohibiting any future such vetos.

Lay investiture (which remains to this day a sorrowful tug-of-war in regard to the perils of the Church in China) has been a recurring theme in the history of the Latin Church, and we, by and large, consider it an infringement on the Church's spiritual authority and institutional integrity, a spiritual institution free from state meddling. Not so the Eastern Churches, where caesaro-papism and the lay investiture that goes with it has been an accepted, even welcome, reality from the very earliest days. Even today, though the Russian Church has been given a new lease on life under the current regime, it is careful not to ruffle the state's feathers and plays its dutiful part in fostering Russian nationalism.

'Henry the Bad, who died believing himself a good Catholic'
After what he did to his wives? I suppose he must have blanked that out.....

I believe ROCOR canonized them first. As I recall, there was some resistance in Moscow to declaring them martyrs so they were declared passion bearers. In any event, they were later canonized.

One could argue politics or religion as the cause of their death. I think it was both. Nicholas was the emperor and had military support and he still headed the military. He was also head of the Russian church since Peter the Great took power away from the Patriarch - even abolished it at one point. How much power he had after his last abdication - he abdicated more than once - is open to question.

This makes me wonder how far Marie Antoinette's cause has progressed while I wasn't paying attention.

Jackson,

You've been reading too much propaganda. His wife wasn't the boil that needed to be lanced.

Statue of King Charles the Martyr at Grace and St Peter's Parish in Baltimore, Maryland

Louis had many problems besides not being equipped temperamentally for the office. He did call the Estates General into session - big mistake since they never agreed on much of anything. Wiser kings had known better. French agriculture was reeling from the tail end of the Little Ice Age. The French farmers would not adapt away from cereal grains to growing root crops which could survive the climate changes. Other countries did this, but not France. As Jackson mentioned, help to our own country put them in a financial bind. I have even read that the debts incurred building Versailles weakened the economy for many years to come. Then there is the reputed masonic plotting and scheming. Too much going on at the same time.

I cannot improve on Planctus' exposition. Contrary to popular belief, Russia was not a basket case under Nicholas, who had made so many reforms and seen his country grow economically, his armies far from beaten in dissarray (why else was Wilhelm at his wits end to get Russia out of the war?),that things in general were going well, so well that Lenin at one point exclaimed, 'oh, we will never get to have our revolution'. That says everything we need to know about that bacillus, Lenin.

If Nicholas and Alexandra have anything about them that was blameworthy it was being enthralled with that monster, Rasputin. Alexandra herself was most to blame for putting the fate of Russia in the hands of that charlatan.

...all the empires had fallen...

The Austro-Hungarian Empire had not fallen. It was still intact. Karl and Zita were the last Kaiser and Kaiserin, following upon the death of Franz Joseph. Karl was declared Blessed and Venerable by Pope John Paul II. He was a brilliant and forward-looking emperor who accomplished much good for his people in the brief few years of his reign. He was a passionate Catholic who was loved by the common people, whose welfare he sought. His tireless efforts to end the war which he hated were rebuffed by the Entente powers, and especially by that Presbyterian twit Woodrow Wilson, who demanded the dissolution of his nation as a condition of peace. He died in exile an old man though only in his early thirties. It is interesting that none of his foes, the 'good guys', have been beatified by the Church - even if they had been Catholic (we assume that Clemenceau was Catholic?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allies_of_World_War_I

Were Nicholas II (and Louis XVI, and Karl Hapsburg, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, and Don Carlos, etc.) perfect? Of course not. I remember a story where Nicholas couldn't be bothered by the total destruction of the Russian fleet because he wanted to finish a game of tennis.

But Planctus and Chick are right. Even if they are fallen men, they are men who lived Christian lives and realized that the Christian ideal was to be followed as much as possible in governing society. Hence their being placed in the crosshairs of the revolutionaries.

Also - wasn't T.S. Eliot a member of the Society of King Charles Martyr? (A group I considered joining before swimming back across the Tiber, as it were.)

Yeah.

Created the Federal Reserve.
Introduced the Popular vote (instead of State Legislatures) into presidential elections.
Popularized a loose interpretation of the Executive Power in American politics (forget the Constitution and all that!)
Ran on a non-intervention platform, then brought us into WWI "to save (shudder) Democracy"
Tried to guilt us into adopting the Fourteen Points and joining the League of Nations (God bless Henry Cabot Lodge, the man who saved America)
And let's not even mention his lovely contributions to "Birth of a Nation"!

It is generally true that the churches recognize each other's saints, although they may not always agree. The various churches differ in their methods for declaring sanctity, although with some individuals it is a matter of acclamation by the people. I'm not aware of the Catholic or Orthodox churches canonizing a Protestant - well, other than Marty Haugen. ;-)

Agreed, Liam - but Wilson never invented a popular plush named after himself, nor got stuck in a bathtub. So we can't find him adorable or hilarious in spite all of the bad he did.