"Alexander I, one of Russia's greatest emperors, beloved of his subjects for his many liberalizing works and reforms domestically, and for his astounding - and unexpected - victory over the presumably invulnerable Napoleon Bonaparte, reigned from 1801 to late 1825.

Caught up in the personal and political maelstrom between his domineering grandmother Catherine the Great and his highly neurotic and volatile father, Paul I, Alexander came to the throne as a result of a coup mounted against his father in March 1801. Alexander was devastated when the takeover turned violent and his father was assassinated.".

"By 1825, his popularity waning, the health of his wife becoming more fragile by the day, he decided to remove himself and a bare-bones court to Taganrog, a remote town near the Crimea. A few weeks after his arrival there, he suddenly fell ill and died on November 19, 1825.".

"Rumors have swarmed that the young and still vigorous tsar - he was only forty-eight - had staged his death to expiate the sin that refused to leave him, the sin of patricide. The Legend has it that his "reincarnation" took the form of a starets, the humble and holy men who in the nineteenth century wandered throughout Russia doing good works. In this work, Alexis Troubetzkoy "solves" one of the most intriguing royal mysteries of the past two centuries."--BOOK JACKET.