thanks so much to curiositystream for helping us tell today's historic tale when hiromoguines confronted rasputin in december of NUMBER_TOKEN it signaled a major turning point in his reputation we don't know exactly what happened and many accounts of these events disagree in fact eliador may have not even been there but regardless the fallout would be extreme wall rasputin had been in the holy land eliador had written him asking for his help after his conspiracy-laden screeds against the prime minister had led to police involvement but when a response didn't come fast enough for him he took rasputin's silence as a betrayal and turned on him soon he and harry mcginnis were central figures in a public campaign to banish rasputin from court iliador in particular pushed the narrative that rasputin controlled the royal family and was alexandra's lover but then odd things started happening particularly bad things for rasputin's enemies theophone was exiled hair mcginnis vanished to a remote monastery and eliador essentially arrested and imprisoned before renouncing his faith and going on the run now there is no evidence that their conflict with rasputin was the reason for these punishments the fact is all three of them were firebrands who'd clashed with both the church and the crown i mean heck iliadore had even gotten a hold of alexandra and her daughter's letters to rasputin and initiated a blackmail attempt but regardless of the facts the popular narrative was rasputin was so powerful he could have his rivals banished or killed yeah that's right killed months earlier the prime minister a rasputin opponent had been shot and this too was chalked up in the public eye as another of rasputin's victims then a barrage of investigations came as the church began investigating rasputin's beliefs and the secret police once again began shadowing him in hopes of discovering he was secretly at least all of this predictably caused a fuhrer in the press who realized that news about rasputin sold a lot of newspapers the more salacious and extreme the claims the better tsar nicholas rightly understanding that these scandals were undermining the monarchy gave orders for government officials to meet with editors and discourage the stories when that failed he simply had copies of newspapers confiscated which is when things got real political because one of the biggest reforms after the NUMBER_TOKEN revolution was a guaranteed freedom of speech and in intervening nicholas had just forced a standoff between the crown and the duma the russian national assembly also established in NUMBER_TOKEN. the duma began debating whether they would open an official inquiry into rasputin the tsar and the press intervention and when nicholas summoned representatives to the palace to talk about it and then they clashed it led to a rift between the duma and the crown basically nicholas was used to being an autocrat his words and wasn't taking well to the duma investigating his private life and you know actually nicholas didn't even seem to have liked rasputin much but on principle he wasn't going to cave
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