We've had two episodes on Austria, two episodes on Germany, and so now the series turns its attention to the third eagle: Russia. There Alexander iii is the Tsar, and his son and heir is Nicholas, played by Charles "Pendleton" Kay.
Nicholas has no interest in politics, and spends all his time drinking and playing games with his friends, or carrying on a relationship with ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska (Jan Francis, Lisa in Secret Army). His parents want him to marry a princess, not a ballerina, and considering the difficulty he has breaking it off with Mathilde, it becomes clear just how indecisive and generally useless he is.
The princess he chooses is Alexandra "Alix" of Hesse-Darmstadt, and while his parents do not approve of her because she is German, it does meet with the approval of both Queen Victoria and, especially, Kaiser Wilhelm - Barry Foster making a short appearance in the episode to practically order Nicholas to propose to Alix immediately.
Princess Alix is played by Gayle Hunnicutt (Irene Adler in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). Nicholas's lack of tact means he makes a mess of his proposal by talking about his affairs to Alix, but then they do appear to come to genuinely love each other.
Sadly, they are going to prove to be very bad influences on each other, with their shared conviction that the Tsar is appointed by god and can therefore do no wrong and need not share power with anyone else. There are early signs of that here as Alix ignores advice from those around her, even her own sister.
No sooner are they engaged when Tsar Alexander falls ill and is probably dying, and Nicholas has to face the fact that he will be Tsar very soon. The Russian liberals, represented by industrialist Sergei Witte (Freddie Jones, Claudius in The Caesars, Ynyr in Krull, among many other roles) and professor Paul Miliukov (David "Monkey" Collings), hope they can influence him into being more of a reformer than his father.
Witte is actually doing very nicely out of the status quo, but he fears that if Russia does not modernise at least a little, their whole system could be threatened by revolutionaries.
In the leader of these revolutionaries we meet the final main character of Fall of Eagles, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, played by Patrick "Sejanus" Stewart. He is only in a couple of scenes in this episode, meeting his future wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya for the first time as he takes over her secret group just by being better at organising than the rest of them are, and by actually having a plan.
In the closing scenes Tsar Alexander dies, and there is a brief appearance from Kevin Stoney as the priest who officially recognises Nicholas as Tsar Nicholas ii. His only dialogue is a long list of the many titles Nicholas has inherited, which carry on even as the credits start to roll.
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