In 1891, several years before he became Czar, Nicholas traveled to Japan. It was a difficult trip for the royal, in which he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, but he also got a tattoo while he was there, a depiction of a dragon which reportedly took a total of seven hours of work to complete.
Cultural norms regarding tattoos have shifted dramatically over the past century and a half. But they were quite popular with various members of European royal families near the turn of the century. {read}
