Nicholas II Cup of Sorrows

Buried under layers of dust, lace and velvet, something glints briefly. A gilded ceramic cup, with Cyrillic script, a double-headed eagle, angular motif, and a tantalising date, 1896. It’s Nicholas the Second’s Coronation Cup. Also called Khodynka Cup of Sorrows. Or the Blood Cup. A memento of a society broken and cast to the four winds: Imperial Russia. 

This goblet is a personal family item, but more than that, it is a genuine historical artefact, only given out once, on the 30^th of May 1896, according to Wikipedia. On the 16^th, or 18^th of May, or other dates according to the internet hivemind – that is maybe because of the confusing idea that there is more than the Catholic Gregorian calendar….

Reading the story of this cup feels like reading Russia’s history itself. 

In 1896, the new Russian Czar, Nicholas II, kicks off his reign with a popular celebration. And to mark the occasion, food, drinks and a must-have give-away: a gilded cup with his name and the year of the event. A cup with a design that speaks of a new, more enlightened Russia – think Harry and Meghan plates. The Russian people crowd the field just outside of Moscow to get their hands on this freebie, the Khodynka cup! Rumour has it that there could even be a gold coin in it. Or that the cups are made in gold. Who knows! Half a million people turn up, push and shove. Stampede! Thousands die in the crush. Celebrations turned into tragedy. 

The opposition jumps on the occasion: Nicholas the Second is now Nicholas the Bloody, who danced while people died. 

And the Coronation Cup becomes the Cup of Sorrows. The Blood Cup. 

This cup is Russia. Boisterous in joy and crushing in sorrow. Flashing gold and splashing blood. The very society whose demise it heralded. 

Someone carried this cup in exile. With the czarist regime spiralling out into the void in 1917, then its republican and socialists oppositions, it is the entire Russian upper class that fled. Some had secured their fortunes overseas. Most did not, and especially the ones who fought until the last boat left Odessa. And so, the destitute exiles fled with anything they could salvage: jewellery, stones, but also furs, memorabilia, anything that could have a material value, even if they were cherished memories. And so these shreds of a vanishing social order went on to be traded for cash, services or favours. 

This is how, so my family saga claims, this cup was bartered in Congo for medical services. And then gifted on. 

This was the time when Grand Dukes, princesses, countesses, generals and captains became doormen, maître d’h, taxies, nannies, courtesans just to survive. A concierge in Le Cannet still had a proud picture of himself in full White Army dress uniform in his lodge in the 70s. The Orthodox churches they had built during their splendour in Paris, in Nice, … became rally points where memories could be passed on. Like the Katanga society, it became an implicit society, unspoken but never forgotten. Unlike the Katanga society, they only faded out of sight, but never dissolved. They are a cloud of golden glitter that still drifts around today. Their titles are still whispered: Grand Duke, Hetman of the Zaporizhia, Ataman of the Don. There were 2 million refugees; they have great-grand-sons and great-grand-daughters. 

The Blood Cup is part of what they shed along their trail in exile: gems, titles, stories, now curios all.

This Cup of Sorrows is a witness of the few decades when millennia of social order around the world went tumbling down. 

Imagine what it felt like living around 1900! The last military expeditions against the native Americans in the Far West are just over, cowboys and Indians are on their way to Hollywood. Japan, a feudal society a few years before, is now a major power competing, and winning, with the West. In China, the Mandate of Heaven was coming to a close, after 31 emperors since 1059 BC; the Qing dynasty would be the last. Africa, South East Asia, were forcefully redrawn. Central Europe would be entirely redefined after WWI, so would the Middle East. Millennia of social order liquefied, vanished, reincarnated. 

The very nickname Cup of Sorrows seems universal for so many events around that date. 

It speaks of a time when change was a possibility, a probability, not a fantasy. This is the same time when humanity became fascinated with science fiction, utopia, uchronia, rediscovered epic sagas: in the 20s, science fiction was not yet codified, it reads less formulaic. Could the Sahara be a forgotten kingdom of lush forests? Yes, it is Atlantis by Pierre Benoît, 1919. Could an island in the Pacific be the world’s portal for ancient, evil entities? Why not, Lovecraft, Cthulhu. Why not dream, of what social order could be in millennia? Time Machine. Wells, 1895. 

Maybe any of it sounded far-fetched. But it did not sound absurd anymore to readers. 

That is what this Cup is. The Cup of Sorrows is a token of a so-Russian tragedy, a gilded curio of a fading society, but also the symbol of an age of metamorphoses, of regeneration. 

Modern and antique, hopeful and desperate. 

The Blood Cup.

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