Okay then, what Rasputin facts have you got for me?
BUCKLE UP, BUDDY, HERE WE GO, IT'S RASPUTIN-O-CLOCK
Rasputin had a wife and several children. Here he is with his kids in Siberia:
You think your dad is embarrassing? Imagine this guy rollin' into the PTA meeting, solemnly proclaiming that it's perfectly fine if he whips his ding-dang-doodle-dong out in public, because the tsar lets him do it.
One of his children, Maria Rasputin, became a circus performer and wrote multiple books attempting to rehabilitate her father's name. She died in 1977 in Los Angeles. Here she is with some co-stars:
In costume:
With a photo of dear old dad:
It was said she inherited his intense eyes, but other than that, she seemed way more, um...grounded than her father.
Rasputin was rumored to be member of the Khlysty, an underground religious sect with a foundational belief that in order to become closer to God, one needed to sin as outrageously as possible (translation: they had a bunch of orgies), and then in the process of praying for penance, they could directly commune with the Holy Spirit.
Don't you want to party with this completely fun and normal man? For God purposes?
He was investigated for potential ties to the Khlysts, but no concrete evidence was found of his involvement. Later, his daughter, Maria, mentioned in one of her books that he'd been in the sect for a while but eventually left because all those orgies weren't exactly his style...he preferred regular orgies, thank you. (Probably).
Most people who met Rasputin immediately commented on his bad personal hygiene and foul smell.
Surprising no one, people said Rasputin smelled at turns like a goat, a yak, livestock in general, and just...so much poo.
He often set off on various pilgrimages to holy places and was apparently quite proud of the fact that, during one of these voyages, he did not change his underwear for six months.
Another person said his breath was unreal levels of awful, and that his teeth were like "blackened stumps."
Could some of this have been anti-Rasputin propaganda, as he was mythologized even before he died? Probably. But also, does this guy look like a fan of Dove soap to you?
Rasputin was most famous for his ability to "heal" the tsarevich's hemophilia, but was also beloved by Alexei's sisters, the Grand Duchesses, who called him, "our friend, Father Grigori."
Rasputin with the royal family. Things were tricky due to Alexei's illness, I get it, but can I just say with the stoic objectivism of a true historian that I would not let this man near my children with a 20-foot pole.
Some of the letters the Grand Duchesses exchanged with Rasputin still survive. In 1908, he sent a telegram to then nine-year-old Maria saying:
My Dear Pearl M! Tell me how you talked with the sea, with nature! I miss your simple soul. We will see each other soon! A big kiss.
Understandably, those in the royal household outside of the immediate royal family, were horrified at Rasputin's proximity to the children. One of their governesses petitioned the tsar for Rasputin's removal from the household when she found out he was allowed inside the girls' nursery. In response, Tsar Nicholas had Rasputin banned from the nursery, but it was clear the girls were already attached.
In a letter to Maria, her sister, 12-year-old Tatiana, wrote:
I am so afr(aid) that [our governness] can speak ... about our friend something bad [...] hope our nurse will be nice to our friend now."
Tsarina Alexandra eventually fired the governess; at this point, Alexandra was wholly convinced Rasputin was a holy man and gave him full access to the household.
Rasputin's familiarity with the entire family, particularly the children, was "all quite unbelievable and beyond understanding," wrote Nicolas' sister, Xenia, echoing literally everyone else's thoughts more than a century later.
Someone attempted to assassinate Rasputin once before--a 33 year-old noseless sex worker named Khioniya Guseva. Yes, you read that right.
(She's pictured here in 1914. It's not clear exactly why Khioniya Guseva's nose collapsed, though modern scientists are fairly certain it was syphilis. She claimed it wasn't syphilis, but rather, "bad medicines" that had caused the bridge to cave in.)
In 1914, Rasputin was visiting his family in his home village of Pokrovskoye when Guseva approached him and stabbed him in the abdomen, screaming, "I have killed the Antichrist!"
But because Rasputin was like a cockroach in regrettably more ways than one, he did not die--although he may have been the Antichrist at that point, why not?--and instead, he stumbled through the streets holding his intestines, which were spooling out of the stab wound. He eventually made his way to a hospital after a mob subdued Guseva. It took him seven weeks to recover after he stuffed his intestines, which were hanging out, did I mention that???? they were all out all over the place, like cursed noodles back into his abdominal cavity.
Guseva was later declared mentally ill and placed in an asylum, from which she was later released. She then tried unsuccessfully to assassinate a Russian Orthodox church official in 1919, after which she disappears from the history; we don't know what happened to her, what her life was like after that, or when she died, but kudos to her for trying to disembowel Rasputin--rookie mistake, that, as the guy was basically unkill-able.
Rasputin was...kind of into it when Prince Felix Yusupov was actively trying to kill him.
According to Yusupov, at least.
In 1916, Yusupov and a group of conspirators famously murdered Rasputin (after poisoning, stabbing, shooting, and then drowning him because again...unkill-able). Yusupov was deliciously proud of his involvement in this, and went on to write multiple accounts of the murder in the following decades.
The basement of the Yusupov Palace, where Rasputin was poisoned...and shot...and stabbed...and didn't actually die until the conspirators chased him out into the backyard and shot him a final time, after which he fell into the frozen river and was STILL trying to claw his way back to the surface...allegedly.
It's difficult to know exactly what happened during Rasputin's death, as all accounts of the murder were written by Yusupov and his fellows, who had everything to gain from exaggerating how difficult it was to kill the mystical holy man who was widely believed by many at that point to actually possess supernatural powers.
But in one account of the murder, Yusupov wrote that after being poisoned (or stabbed...the account varies. Hello, unreliable narrator!), Rasputin collapsed to the floor, apparently dead.
Except, surprise! Nope! He wasn't dead! Because as Yusupov and his buddies were congratulating themselves on a job well-done, Rasputin sprang back up, terrifying everyone, and leaned right into Yusupov's face with a slow, wolfish smile, and purred, "You're a naughty boy, aren't you?" As in, "Ooh, daddy, do it again."
The naughty boy in question and Rasputin Killer, Prince Felix Yusupov.
Now, let's be real--Rasputin could have said this, sure. He was absolutely enough of a freak to enjoy being murdered.
But Yusupov could only have benefitted from describing Rasputin as some sort of deranged sexual sadist who enjoyed being poisoned.
It was widely known but only acknowledged behind closed doors that Yusupov was gay, which was a no-no. Perhaps he was positioning himself as the pinnacle of straight masculinity, literally murdering the "gay-ly comes onto me while I'm trying to nobly stop his evil from spreading" guy. Who knows?
But again...I would NOT put it past Rasputin, honestly. I would not put anything past Rasputin. Literally nothing. Like, the fouler, the worse, the stinkier...nothing would surprise me at this point. Truly, one of the most insane people of all time, in every possible way, I cannot believe we get to exist on a part of the timeline that allows us to point at him and go, "What about that guy, huh? Wanna talk about all the shit he did? For the next five hours? Because Jesus Christ, man."
