On a cold winter night in 1916, Felix Yusupov anxiously prepared  to pick up his dinner guest. If all went as planned,  his guest would be dead by morning, though four others had already tried and failed to finish him off. The Russian monarchy  was on the brink of collapse, and to Yusupov  and his fellow aristocrats, the holy man they’d invited to dinner  was the single cause of it all. But who was he, and how could a single monk  be to blame for the fate of an empire? Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin  began his life in Siberia, born in 1869 to a peasant family. He might have lived a life of obscurity  in his small village, if not for his conversion  to the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1890s. Inspired by the humbled monks  that wandered endlessly from holy site to holy site, he spent years on pilgrimages  across Russia. On his travels, strangers were captivated  by Rasputin’s magnetic presence. Some even believed he had mystical gifts  of prediction and healing. Despite Rasputin’s heavy drinking,  petty theft, and promiscuity, his reputation as a monk  quickly spread beyond Siberia and attracted both laypeople  and powerful Orthodox clergymen. When he finally reached the capital,  St. Petersburg, Rasputin used  his charisma and connections to win favor with the imperial family’s  spiritual advisor. In November 1905, Rasputin was finally introduced  to Russian Tsar Nicholas II. Nicholas and his wife Alexandra  devoutly believed in the Orthodox Church, as well as in mysticism  and supernatural powers, and this Siberian holy man  had them transfixed. It was a particularly tumultuous period  for Russia and their family. The monarchy  was barely clinging to control after the Revolution of 1905. Their political struggles  were only intensified by personal turmoil: Alexei, the heir to the throne, had a life-threatening blood disease  called hemophilia. When Alexei suffered  a severe medical crisis in 1912, Rasputin advised his parents  to reject treatment from doctors. Alexei’s health improved,  cementing the royal family’s belief that Rasputin had magical healing powers, and guaranteeing  his privileged place on the royal court. Today, we know that  the doctors had prescribed aspirin, a drug that worsens hemophilia. After this incident,  Rasputin made a prophecy: if he died,  or the royal family deserted him, both their son and their crown  would soon be gone. Outside the royal family,  people had mixed views on Rasputin. On one hand, peasants regarded him  as one of their own, amplifying their often-unheard voice  to the monarchy. But nobles and clergymen  came to despise his presence. Rasputin never ceased  his scandalous behavior, and they were skeptical  of his so-called powers and thought he was corrupting  the royal family. By the end of World War I, they were convinced  the only way to maintain order was to eliminate this sham  of a holy man. With this conviction, Yusupov began  to plot Rasputin’s assassination. Though the exact details  remain mysterious, our best guess at how it all unfolded  comes from Yusupov’s memoirs. He served Rasputin a number of pastries,  believing they contained cyanide. But unbeknownst to Yusupov, one of his co-conspirators  had a change of heart, and substituted the poison  with a harmless substance. To Yusupov’s shock,  Rasputin ate them without ill effect. In desperation,  he shot Rasputin at point-blank range. But Rasputin recovered,  punched his attacker, and fled. Yusupov and his accomplices pursued him, finally killing Rasputin  with a bullet to the forehead and dumping his body  in the Malaya Nevka river. But far from stabilizing  the monarchy’s authority, Rasputin’s death enraged the peasantry. Just as Rasputin prophesied, his murder was swiftly followed  by that of the royal family. Whether the downfall  of the Russian monarchy was a product of the monk’s curse, or the result of political tensions  decades in the making, well, we may never know.