Rasputin

Poisoned, shot, drowned — the mystic who wouldn't die, whispering at the end of an empire.

Grigori Rasputin: Siberian holy man with documented, unexplained influence over the last Romanovs through the tsarevich's hemophilia. Murdered December 1916 by aristocrats; the legend of poison, shooting, and drowning comes chiefly from killer Felix Yusupov's self-serving memoir — the autopsy recorded gunshots, no poison. Documented: his police surveillance files (extensive), his warnings that his death would doom the dynasty (the dynasty fell ten weeks later). The court mystic as single point of failure for an empire: the archetype this map keeps re-filing.