Myths & Mischief

Welcome back to Myths & Mischief! This is your Lovable Lord of Lore, today’s mischievous myth is about how the “windows of the soul” can bend people to your will.

A Staring Contest between Rasputin and Paine.

People frequently pine that beautiful people can get whatever they want. Historically speaking, there is some evidence of that. There are two historic figures that used their soul piercing gaze to change the world, or at least the world as they knew it. You may be hard-pressed to find two people with comparable peepers to those of Thomas Paine and Grigori Rasputin.

In first-person accounts, it was stated that any woman that locked eyes with Tom Paine would fall helplessly in love with him. He seemed to have had that affect on men as well. Ben Franklin was enamored by Tom Paine. He had Paine accompanied him to Europe to win favor for the revolution in America. Once they returned, Tom Paine wrote his famous piece, “Common Sense”, which was orated to the troops at Mount Vernon by George Washington to inspire them to continue fighting and to persevere through the winter. After that revolution was successful, Tom Paine then ventured back to France and ignited the French Revolution, using his powers of persuasion. Now, while he was a talented writer, his personal contact with people made him even more influential. Ironically, the French Revolution saved the new American country because it wiped out the debt that the former colonies owed the French royals, which was gone once they had a new government and a new country, so there was no country left to repay.

Grigori Rasputin, better known as the Mad Monk, was a different kind of guy. He was described as being semi-literate. Although his nickname, the Mad Monk, is what most people know him by, he was never actually ordained as a monk. At times, he claimed to be a lion tamer or a cabaret dancer. Apparently, he was sexually proficient at a young age, in part due to his mesmerizing eyes. Eventually, what he sold was healing powers, which helped him make inroads into the ruling class in Russia via Empress Alexandra, the wife of the Czar. Tsarevich Alexei, the son of the Empress was a hemophiliac. Rasputin suggested that he avoid aspirin, a blood thinner, and when he did get cut, Rasputin would hypnotize him in order to stop the bleeding, saving Tsarevich’s life on multiple occasions.

By treating her son, Rasputin made connections into the power structure in Russia and ended up being the symbol of everything evil about the ruling class. People didn’t generally trust him- he was seen as grotesque and disturbing. Eventually Prince Yusupov and other like-minded individuals plotted the second assassination attempt of Rasputin. Little did they know that he would be tougher to kill than a bad Hollywood movie villain.

The most well-known account of the events comes from Prince Yusupov himself in his memoirs “Lost Splendour.” He claimed that Rasputin was invited into the palace and escorted to the basement. Playing off of his gluttony and repugnant behavior, he was given cake and Madeira wine. Both were laced with enough cyanide to kill an entire cabaret of dancers, a lion, or a monastery full of monks. While he ate, they played music upstairs to simulate a party and throw off suspicion. According to Yusupov, Yankee Doodle Dandy was playing on the gramophone as he ate the assortment of tainted pastries. After eating, he claimed that his stomach didn’t feel well and his head felt heavy. After drinking the third and final laced bottle of wine, he appeared to be reinvigorated.

There are multiple explanations of why the cyanide didn’t work including the effects of the cyanide being offset by the sugar in the food and drink, he may have developed an immunity to cyanide after his first assassination attempt, or that he had a stomach disorder so he couldn’t process the poison due to the low amount of acid in his stomach.

His would-be assassins were at a loss and were out of cyanide, so they desperately tried to decide what to do next. Since the cyanide didn’t work, they took to brandishing a gun. They shot him in the chest. Unfazed, but understanding he was in danger, he started for the exit. He was shot in the back but kept going. His assassins quickly caught up to him and shot him point-blank in the head. He continued with his effort to leave. His assassins caught up to him, shot him 4 more times, beat him, wrapped him in a linen sheet, loaded him into a trunk, where they drove him to the Neva River. Still alive, they held him under the freezing water. The water was too cold for them, so they left him floating in the water only to be horrified that he started to swim away. Eventually he did succumb to hypothermia. The official report concluded that the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds and that he was thrown in the river to cover up the incident. Even the bad guys in movies aren’t that hard to kill.

While they were rid of the Mad Monk, the Tsar and his family, including Duchess Anastasia (despite the Disney Movie) were killed in the Russian Revolution in 1918, the same revolution that ended the Tsar’s reign in Russia and pulled Russia out of World War I.

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