Nicholas signed the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention, which was designed to counter Germany's attempts to gain influence in the Middle East; it ended the Great Game of confrontation between Russia and the British Empire.

Domestically, he was criticised by liberals for his government's repression of political opponents and his perceived fault or inaction during the Khodynka Tragedy, anti-Jewish pogroms, Bloody Sunday and the violent suppression of the 1905 Russian Revolution.

[29] Leaving Livadia on 7 November, Tsar Alexander's funeral procession—which included Nicholas's maternal aunt through marriage and paternal first cousin once removed Queen Olga of Greece, and the Prince and Princess of Wales—arrived in Moscow.

[32] Despite a visit to the United Kingdom in 1893, where he observed the House of Commons in debate and was seemingly impressed by the machinery of constitutional monarchy, Nicholas turned his back on any notion of giving away any power to elected representatives in Russia.

[65][66][67] A few days prior to Bloody Sunday (9 (22) January 1905), priest and labor leader Georgy Gapon informed the government of the forthcoming procession to the Winter Palace to hand a workers' petition to the tsar.

[68] Finally informed by the Prefect of Police that he lacked the men to pluck Gapon from among his followers and place him under arrest, the newly appointed Minister of the Interior, Prince Sviatopolk-Mirsky, and his colleagues decided to bring additional troops to reinforce the city.

By late 1916, Romanov family desperation reached the point that Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, younger brother of Alexander III and the Tsar's only surviving uncle, was deputed to beg Nicholas to grant a constitution and a government responsible to the Duma.

[citation needed] In 1907, to end longstanding controversies over central Asia, Russia and the United Kingdom signed the Anglo-Russian Convention that resolved most of the problems generated for decades by The Great Game.

When Russia protested about the annexation, the Austrians threatened to leak secret communications between Izvolsky and Aehrenthal, prompting Nicholas to complain in a letter to Emperor Franz Joseph, about a breach of confidence.

With the Baltic Sea barred by German U-boats and the Dardanelles by the guns of Germany's ally, the Ottoman Empire, Russia initially could receive help only via Archangel, which was frozen solid in winter, or via Vladivostok, which was over 6,400 kilometres (4,000 mi) from the front line.

Nicholas chose to turn down King Christian's offer of mediation, as he felt it would be a betrayal for Russia to form a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers when its allies Britain and France were still fighting.

Despite efforts by the British Ambassador Sir George Buchanan to warn the Tsar that he should grant constitutional reforms to fend off revolution, Nicholas continued to bury himself away at the Staff HQ (Stavka) 600 kilometres (400 mi) away at Mogilev, leaving his capital and court open to intrigues and insurrection.

Faced with this demand, which was echoed by his generals, deprived of loyal troops, with his family firmly in the hands of the Provisional Government, and fearful of unleashing civil war and opening the way for German conquest, Nicholas had little choice but to submit.

News of the offer provoked uproar from the Labour Party and many Liberals, and the British ambassador, George Buchanan, advised the government that the extreme left would use the ex-tsar's presence "as an excuse for rousing public opinion against us".

[123] The offer of asylum was withdrawn in April following objections by King George V, who, acting on the advice of his secretary, Lord Stamfordham, was worried that Nicholas's presence might provoke an uprising like the previous year's Easter Rising in Ireland.

[154] After an arduous journey which included two overnight stops, fording rivers, frequent changes of horses and a foiled plot by the Yekaterinburg Red Guards to abduct and kill the prisoners, the party arrived at Tyumen and boarded a requisitioned train.

The Romanovs' train was halted at Omsk station and after a frantic exchange of cables with Moscow, it was agreed that they should go to Yekaterinburg in return for a guarantee of safety for the imperial family; they finally arrived there on the morning of 30 April.

[160] Although the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow still intended to bring Nicholas to trial, as the military situation deteriorated, Leon Trotsky and Yakov Sverdlov began to publicly equivocate about the possible fate of the former tsar.

According to the account of Bolshevik officer Yakov Yurovsky (the chief executioner), in the early hours of 17 July 1918,[55][56] the royal family was awakened around 2:00 am, got dressed, and were led down into a half-basement room at the back of the Ipatiev house.

[167] In view of the enemy's proximity to Yekaterinburg and the exposure by the Cheka of a serious White Guard plot with the goal of abducting the former tsar and his family… In light of the approach of counterrevolutionary bands toward the Red capital of the Urals and the possibility of the crowned executioner escaping trial by the people (a plot among the White Guards to try to abduct him and his family was exposed and the compromising documents will be published), the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, resolved to shoot the former Tsar, Nikolai Romanov, who is guilty of countless, bloody, violent acts against the Russian people.

[177] Prosecutors reopened the investigation into the deaths of the imperial family[178] and, in April 2008, DNA tests performed by an American laboratory proved that bone fragments exhumed in the Ural Mountains belonged to two children of Nicholas II, Alexei and a daughter.

"[189] The British Royal Family was represented at the funeral by Prince Michael of Kent, and more than twenty ambassadors to Russia, including Sir Andrew Wood, Archbishop John Bukovsky, and Ernst-Jörg von Studnitz, were also in attendance.

[192] According to a statement by the Moscow synod, they were glorified as saints for the following reasons: In the last Orthodox Russian monarch and members of his family we see people who sincerely strove to incarnate in their lives the commands of the Gospel.

In the suffering borne by the Royal Family in prison with humility, patience, and meekness, and in their martyrs' deaths in Yekaterinburg in the night of 17 July 1918 was revealed the light of the faith of Christ that conquers evil.

Religious leaders in both churches also had objections to canonising the tsar's family because they perceived him as a weak emperor whose incompetence led to the revolution and the suffering of his people and made him partially responsible for his own assassination and those of his wife, children and servants.

For these opponents, the fact that the tsar was, in private life, a kind man and a good husband and father or a leader who showed genuine concern for the peasantry did not override his poor governance of Russia.

Aleksandr Mosolov, who headed his Court Chancellery for sixteen years, wrote that Nicholas, though intelligent and well-educated, never adopted a definite, energetic attitude and loathed making a decision in the presence of others.

Sergei Witte, who served Nicholas and his father for eleven years as Minister of Finance, commented that the tsar was a well-intentioned child, but his actions were entirely dependent upon the character of his counselors, most of whom were bad.

[196] Pavel Bykov, who wrote the first full account of the downfall of the tsar for the new Soviet government, denounced Nicholas as a "tyrant, who paid with his life for the age-old repression and arbitrary rule of his ancestors over the Russian people, over the impoverished and blood-soaked country".

[7] Barbara Tuchman provides a damning evaluation of his reign in her 1962 book The Guns of August, describing his sole focus as sovereign as being "to preserve intact the absolute monarchy bequeathed to him by his father", and writing that, "lacking the intellect, energy or training for his job", Nicholas "fell back on personal favorites, whim, simple mulishness, and other devices of the empty-headed autocrat ... when a telegram was brought to him announcing the annihilation of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, he read it, stuffed it in his pocket, and went on playing tennis".