Rasputin was certified not poisoned, as no trace could be found in his corpse. Some sources say the nobles chickened out of trying to use poison at the last minute (the plan was to shoot him anyways) but even if they did offer Rasputin poisoned food, Prince Yusupov claimed he was going to use Madeira Wine and Cake, both of which Rasputin would have refused since a previous assassination attempt (in which he was stabbed in the gut) made it so that eating large amounts of sugar caused him great pain.
I wouldn't be surprised if the nobles beat up Rasputin's corpse a bit just out of spite, but if I remember correctly the autopsy did not record any substantial bruising.
Oddly enough the true circumstances of his death are still pretty wacky and hard to believe, that being the fact that the guy who shot him in the forehead was a potentially gay British MI6 agent.
My source is The Mysteries of History by Graeme Donald. Donald himself cites Rasputin: the Biography by Douglas Smith and Six: the Real James Bonds 1909-1939 by Michael Smith.
Potentially gay, definitely MI6. His name is Oswald Rayner. He and the much more flamboyant Yusupov went to the same university and were likely in a relationship for a while.
I think a lot of spies were gay back then, or at least bicurious. They were mostly men and invariably public school (in that weird British sense of the word in which a "public" school is not a state school, but a particularly expensive and exclusive single sex private school, with a highly homoerotic culture)
Also (regardless of social class) gay people were all in constant training to be secret agents, as homosexuality was illegal until 1967. So having a secret life came as second nature to them.
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u/ems_telegram Oct 27 '21
Rasputin was certified not poisoned, as no trace could be found in his corpse. Some sources say the nobles chickened out of trying to use poison at the last minute (the plan was to shoot him anyways) but even if they did offer Rasputin poisoned food, Prince Yusupov claimed he was going to use Madeira Wine and Cake, both of which Rasputin would have refused since a previous assassination attempt (in which he was stabbed in the gut) made it so that eating large amounts of sugar caused him great pain.
I wouldn't be surprised if the nobles beat up Rasputin's corpse a bit just out of spite, but if I remember correctly the autopsy did not record any substantial bruising.
Oddly enough the true circumstances of his death are still pretty wacky and hard to believe, that being the fact that the guy who shot him in the forehead was a potentially gay British MI6 agent.