Nicholas II and "The Daughter of Time"
I remember that when I was in college my Russian History Professor, Dr. Paul Johnson(Georgia State University), discussed how Nicholas' proposal that the disputes arising from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo be submitted to an international tribunal for arbitration. If only the world had listened to him, 20,000,000 people wouldn't have been slaughtered needlessly. And there would have been no WWII, no Hitler and no 50,000,000 dead.
I remember a very spirited debate in class as to whether this suggested "tribunal" was in fact a precursor of the United Nations. I think it was. I remember writing a paper about those who sought war and those who sought to stop war. With all due apologies to several generations of historians, how in the world did WWI become The Great War? There is an old Irish saying that the worst or most ferocious battles aren't between right and wrong, the worst battles are between right and right.
World War II was "The Great War" because it was a battle between good and evil. After learning about the role of the British in the Zimmerman Telegram and Oswald Rayner's late dinner at Moika Palace, Lenin's trip across Germany with the help of the Kaiser and worst of all, Serbian secret service(and government?) involvement or knowledge of the plot by "The Black Hand" to assassinate Franz Ferdinand.
It sure sounds like that in a world filled with cynics, Nicholas was one of the few who possessed true character.
I think it is time that someone tell people what Nicholas did right.
When I was 10, I read Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time". And, by the way, Truth is the daughter of time.
I learned that all extant portraits of Richard III had been retouched by Tudor painters. Despite the wonderful imagery of Shakespeare, Richard III was never a hunchback.
"Richard was the handsomest man in the room except his brother Edward."
Countess of Desmond 1475
"Such was his renown in warfare, that when ever a difficult and dangerous policy had to be undertaken, it would be entrusted to his generalship".
Dominic Mancini, 1483
"Thank God, the giver of all gifts, for the support received from our most loving brother".
Edward IV,Writing to Pope Sixtus IV, 1482
"On my trouth I lykyd never the condicions of ony prince so wel as his; God hathe sent hym to us for the wele of all..."
Thomas Langton - Bishop of St. David's
"King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us was piteously slain and murdered to the great heaviness of this city".
York City Records, 1485
Not quite Shakespeare. St. Thomas More wrote the biography of Richard III upon which Shakespeare's Richard III was based. St. Thomas wrote from what he had been told as a child when he served as a page for Cardinal Morton, a protege of Henry Tudor. He finished it several years before his death. But he never published it. Very strange.
