a distraught Alexandra tries to run the government while a powerful movement begins against her-claiming Rasputin is ruling with her. Nicholas is at the military quarters and seems helpless at war and in his fight with the duma. Rasputin increasingly dominates the situation and a sense of impending doom overtakes the Romanovs and Rasputin predicts his murder and theirs- while their relatives Felix yusupov and Dmitri pavlovich plot Rasputin's brutal murder.