The Last of the Tsars the First World War, where he served in the Russian Army. When Tsar Nicholas abdicated in March 1917, he did so in favour of Grand Duke Michael, who himself abdicated some 48 hours later. So Michael was in fact 'the last of the Tsars.' The play was commissioned by the Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, in the spring of 1966, after another play on the same subject, "Nicholas Romanov" by William Kinsolving, had been tried out by the Stratford Festival Company at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in February, 1966, and found insufficiently dramatic. In spite of the shared general theme,
Monarchy of the Netherlands came for Wilhelmina and the monarchy during World War II. Wilhelmina was forced to retreat to London, but refused evacuation all the way to Canada (although princess Juliana was sent there with her children). Wilhelmina regularly held radio broadcasts into the occupied Netherlands and staunchly supported the Dutch troops in exile. She became the symbol for Dutch resistance against the Germans. Wilhelmina established popular support for the monarchy that essentially holds to this day. Prior to the Batavian Revolution of 1795, the semi-independent provinces of the Netherlands had chief-executives called stadtholders, who were all drawn from the House of Orange