Nicholas II (Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov; Russian: Никола́й II, Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Рома́нов) (18 May 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke of Finland, and claimed the title of King of Poland. His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is currently regarded as Saint Nicholas the Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw Imperial Russia go from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to an economic and military disaster. Critics nicknamed him Bloody Nicholas because of the Khodynka Tragedy, Bloody Sunday, and those anti-Semitic pogroms that occured during his reign. As head of state, he approved the Russian mobilization of August 1914 which marked the first fatal step into World War I and thus into the demise of the Romanov dynasty.

Nicholas II abdicated following the February Revolution of 1917 during which he and his family were imprisoned first in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, then later in the Governor's Mansion in Tobolsk, and finally at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. Nicholas II, his wife, his son, his four daughters, the family's medical doctor, the Tsar's Valet, the Empress' Lady in Waiting and the family's cook were all killed in the same room by the Bolsheviks on the night of 17 July 1918. This led to the canonization of Nicholas II, his wife the Empress and their children as martyrs by various groups tied to the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia and, prominently, by the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia.