Moscow, 17 July 2028

All will remember how after the mysterious death of President Putin at the age of 71 in May 2024, the Russian Federation and the countries which had once formed the Soviet Union, as well as all of Eastern, Central Europe and Western Europe, fell into political chaos. Any number of professional Russian politicians vied with each other for power. But all were discredited; some were utterly corrupt, some were simply buffoons. At that time, when the EU had just collapsed in acrimony, the inward-looking and economically feeble USA was bitterly divided after the fall of the oligarch Trump from power and politicians there were urging States to secede from the Union, and China’s corrupt Communist Party had at last been overthrown after 75 years, it seemed as though the whole world was collapsing. Many anxiously wondered: What would the new world order that was being born look like?

Increasingly, in the Russian Federation a very large majority of citizens decided that they needed a strong but not corrupt leader. Naturally, virtually all turned to the hope for the restoration of the monarchy. Various descendants of the Romanov family came forward in reply. However, most of them could not even speak Russian, many had nothing to do with the Church and only very few had any grasp of the political situation in Russia, in neighbouring countries, many of which, like the former US-run Ukraine, had already fallen apart, or else were in chaos, or indeed of the situation anywhere else in the world. A strong man, a man of the moment and a man with understanding and capable of clear-sighted action had to be found. Among the multitude of Romanov candidates, not a single one seemed even vaguely suitable. And then something quite unexpected and even extraordinary happened.

It was in Paraguay in March 2027, in a small and remote town in Alto Paraguay near the Bolivian border, which had been founded by Russian émigrés in 1928, that a previously unknown Romanov descendant was found. He was discovered by a Russian journalist who had been reporting on the earliest Russian emigration in South America. The settlement was so remote and self-sufficient that it was isolated from Spanish speakers. Everyone still spoke pure, pre-Revolutionary Russian, handed down by great-grandparents to the present generation. There, born in 1989, lived a certain Alexei Romanov, a descendant of Tsar Nicholas I. His great-grandparents, born in Saint Petersburg in 1900, had helped establish the settlement in 1928, his grandparents had been born there in 1930 and his parents in 1956. Alexei had been brought up in piety, but had also mastered Spanish, receiving an excellent education.

Interviewed by the journalist, he had shown his fluency in Russian and also a profound understanding of both Russian history and culture and of the modern world. When the interview was broadcast in the Russian Federation, people were ecstatic, seeing in him the Tsar they had long been seeking. Married to Olga, a descendant of the Dolgoruky family, they had three children. All will remember the family’s visit to Moscow in November 2027 and how the crowds were united in their enthusiasm at his words and at the family’s purely Russian Orthodox way of life and values. Now today, amid the rejoicing of tens of millions, Moscow has celebrated his coronation and that of his wife Tsarina Olga. A new focus of unity has been found in this broken world and countries of the former Russian Empire and very many beyond them are looking with hope to the new Tsar.