AS SEEN ON TV: RASPUTIN

GRIGORI RASPUTIN

AS SEEN IN:
"Rasputin: Dark Servant Of Destiny"

AS PLAYED BY:
Alan Rickman

From the "Forever Knight" wiki:
Rasputin's influence came to extend beyond the healing of Alexei. Both the Czar and Czarina considered him a religious prophet. Eventually, everyone who wanted an audience with the royal couple had to go through Rasputin, a situation bound to cause anger. He was not accepted, either by the nobility nor by the Orthodox Church. But the Czar referred to Rasputin as "our friend" and a "holy man", a sign of the trust that was placed in him.

It was into this court that Nick Knight came in 1916. As a friend of the Czar, he was perturbed by the influence he saw Rasputin have, especially over the Czarina. When he realized that the monk was a vampire, he understood why they were enthralled to him. However, concern turned to outrage when he discovered that it was LaCroix who had decided to bring Rasputin across.

From Wikipedia:
The legends surrounding the death of Rasputin are perhaps even more mysterious and bizarre than his life. According to Greg King's 1996 book The Man Who Killed Rasputin, a previous attempt on Rasputin's life had failed: Rasputin was visiting his wife and children in Pokrovskoye, his hometown along the Tura River in Siberia. On June 29, 1914, after either just receiving a telegram or exiting church, he was attacked suddenly by Khionia Guseva, a former prostitute who had become a disciple of the monk Iliodor. Iliodor, who once was a friend of Rasputin but had grown disgusted with his behaviour and disrespectful talk about the royal family, had appealed to women who had been harmed by Rasputin to form a mutual support group. Guseva thrust a knife into Rasputin's abdomen, and his entrails hung out of what seemed like a mortal wound. Convinced of her success, Guseva supposedly screamed, "I have killed the antichrist!"

After intensive surgery, however, Rasputin recovered. It was said of his survival that "the soul of this cursed muzhik was sewn on his body." His daughter, Maria, observed in her memoirs that he was never the same man after that: he seemed to tire more easily and frequently took opium for pain relief.

Was it opium? Or some turn of the century variant on "Tru-Blood"?

Back to the "Forever Knight" wiki:
There are legends surrounding the attempts on Rasputin's life. An attempt is alleged to have been made to poison him with cyanide; and, when it failed, he was shot four times, and then clubbed unconscious. His body was wrapped up and thrown in the river. The difficulty in killing him by such methods would, of course, be completely explained by LaCroix's bringing him over. As a vampire, Rasputin was not killed by any of these methods: he escaped the river and returned to the palace. There he was confronted by Nick, who staked him.

Meanwhile, back at 'Warehouse 13':Artie suggested that MacPherson's psychic residue may have trigged an artifact near the vault, which would account for his appearances as a spectre in the Warehouse. Claudia identified the possible artifact as Rasputin's prayer rope. (As Artie splained it, Rasputin did die from the first attempt on his life. It was the use of the prayer rope that re-animated his corpse.)

But when they tried to neutralize it, nothing happened. And that's because the reason behind Rasputin's survival from all those assassination attempts was vampirism, not the prayer rope.

BCnU!