☤ - a memory of death/loss
In 1918, the Romanov family is executed.
Alexei is not there to see it; he is in his new apartment, which is small and has very thin walls, so thin that he can hear every word his neighbors. But he tolerates it. He is a good Soviet man and he puts up with it, because this is how it’s supposed to be. He is bitter about losing his title as a prince, but in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, everyone is equal and titles like that aren’t needed.
But word of their deaths gets out quickly; he hears it from his sister and father and at least five of his brothers that the royal family is dead. All of them. Including the tsarina.
And the children. The children are all dead.
He does not want to believe it.
He does not want to believe it, he does not want to think that this could have possibly happened, surely, someone somewhere had been wrong and he’d been given false information, and he lies to himself and lives in denial of the fact that the last vestige of his empire, the family he had seen grown up before his own eyes, is dead.
This works fine for weeks, but the reality comes crashing down on him eventually, and when it does, he can only try his best to keep the tears out of his eyes.