20. “The Debauched One“
Since his youth, Rasputin had a magnetism that attracted women, and he swiftly racked up conquests. In his late teens, he married a peasant girl, but marriage did not slow down his womanizing. He became so infamous in his village and surrounding district for licentiousness that he earned the nickname Rasputin, meaning “the depraved”, or “debauched one”, in Russian. In his late twenties, Rasputin saw a vision of either the Virgin Mary or Simeon of Verkhotyure, patron saint of the Urals, experienced a religious conversion, and went on a pilgrimage. Other sources have it that Rasputin actually went on the lam, and left to escape arrest and prosecution for horse theft. Whatever his motives, at around age twenty eight, Rasputin had a crisis and made drastic life changes.
