Here’s a little preview of what’s coming up in the next few pages… accompanied by Diana’s page layout sketches, below.

Page 5. These pages continue on from the last scene at Tsarevich Alexei’s bedside – in charting the growth of Rasputin’s influence in Saint Petersburg. Page 5 features a church where Rasputin, dramatically speaking in tongues amidst the crowd, has succeeded in utterly upstaging the local priest.

Page 6. A late-night visitor at Rasputin’s apartment, and a drunken dinner party: here we address some of the more scandalous rumours that fuelled Rasputin’s notoriety.

Page 7. Going behind the scenes here, we see a different side to the character. Here’s Rasputin with his two daughters, walking in a city park. It’s our first proper look at Varya, our lead character (here, just 16 years old).

(Page 8, not pictured below, is the continuation of that scene.)

Page 9. The night of Rasputin’s murder, in December 1916. The two sisters are awake, and they watch through the window as their father is taken away by car in the middle of the night. It’s the last time either of them will see him alive.