Question

Who was tsar nicholas 2 and why he was unpopular during the world war 1?

Answer 1

Nicholas succeeded his father's throne, Alexander III, when the later died from liver disease on 20 October 1894.  Nicholas was 26.

That same year Nicholas married Princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, the grand-daughter of Queen Victoria.  Alexandra was instrumental in convincing Nicholas to resist ever-growing calls for increased democracy within Russia.  Alexandra was a firm believer in the autocratic principle.  Nicholas required little persuasion: as a nationalist he decried those who favoured western style democracy.

There are more reasons to that but the most common are:

He wasn't psychologically ready to rule the country, for example, he couldn't just fire the ministers he didn't like and he seemed to care more about his family than about his country. The elite could feel he was weak and so could the people

Some parts of the society wanted liberty, right, democracy, etc., Ukraine and Finland wanted to secede but the 1905 October Manifesto triggered a rift between monarchists, liberals, centrists and other political forces which only made matters worse

Russia took part in WWI because of Nicholas’ policy but it wasn't profitable for the country from the very beginning. As the Empire was being torn apart by revolutionaires and their anti-Russian propaganda, it couldn't entirely focus on the war. The economic situation wasn't that good either. Eventually Russia kept on fighting for its allies interests (it originally wanted to defend the Orthodox Serbia) until both German and Russian soldiers were tired of the protracted war. Then, in 1917 the Bolsheviks' took over the country and declared Russia's withdrawal from the war