It had to be a state secret, because in Russia, for the heir to the throne (as Aleksei was) because it went through the male line, he could not be perceived as being ill in any way. The minute Aleksei was born, and they saw that he had the bleeding disease - this dreaded bleeding disease - there was a total clamp down, they had to protect him, first, from any injury or accident that will cause bleeding, but also in the widest sense. How did Hemophilia impact the Romanov family? In fact, it was often called the Coburg curse, because of the way he had come down from front through the German side of the family.
So, they knew straightaway these horrible telltale marks and a spattering of blood, that this might be the one thing, the one thing that they'd lived in dread off, which was the Coburg disease, the Hesser disease. And the swaddling on Aleksei had been so tight that it had pressed on his navel, and caused bleeding at the recently cut umbilical cords. And the reason this happened was because there's a tradition in Russian midwifery when a child is born, and they still do it now, I think: They swaddle the babies very tightly up like little packages. But all the history books - until I did my research - said it wasn't known until a couple of months later, but in fact, I found evidence within family letters that, in fact, the baby started bleeding from the navel as soon as he was born. When she gave birth to a boy after four daughters, it was no surprise I guess, to her and Nicholas, that their worst fears came true within hours of Aleksei being born, because he started bleeding from the navel. In fact, his mother Alexandra had lived in utter terror and dread of giving birth to a male child who would have hemophilia passed on to him. In terms of the Romanov family, the most common misconception is that it was several weeks after Aleksei was born in August 1914 that the family discovered he was a hemophiliac. Hemophilia came down to the Russian royal family by via the German Hesser family. The disorder had been brought into the Russian royal family by his mother Alexandra, because her family had hemophilia transmitted to them via her mother, Princess Alice, who was the daughter of Queen Victoria. Hemophilia is very particular to Aleksei in terms of the Romanovs because there hadn't been any hemophilia in the Russian royal family until Aleksei was born in 1904. How did hemophilia enter the Romanov bloodline? But when I started looking at the Romanov family, I became extremely interested in the dynamic of their family life, including how they coped with having a hemophiliac son and having to hide that fact from public view. It hadn't particularly interested me because I wasn't really into Royals and palaces and all that stuff. I was always a lover of Russian history, but I never thought much about the Royal family and the aristocracy until about 2006-2007, when an agent I was then with suggested I write something about the Romanov family. I got interested in them quite late, really. How did you become interested in studying the Romanov family?
I've written extensively on the Romanov family and the impact of hemophilia on the family regarding Aleksei Nikolaevich of Russia, who with his parents was murdered in 1918, in Ekaterinburg. I'm also a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and I specialize in Russian history, particularly late Imperial Russia and the final years of the imperial family and Victorian era (the reign of Queen Victoria). I have an honorary doctorate from Leeds University where I studied Russian. Read the interview transcript, or watch the video recording. Helen Rappaport to learn more about how hemophilia impacted the Romanov family, and its lasting impact on world history. In advance of World Hemophilia Day this year (April 17), NHF sat down with historian Dr.