Nicholas and Alexandra adored each other. Her letters to him exhibited an undimmed passion after decades of marriage, and he was no less affectionate in return. But their mutual dependence blinded him to her weaknesses in her role as his consort. Alexandra had an hauteur that empresses and queens elsewhere balanced with a degree of ‘theatricality’. She simply could not display false emotion or pretend to enjoy herself when she felt apathetic or miserable. Her failure to put on a show of warmth to people in high society did her harm in Russian public opinion.1 Imperious and opinionated, she alienated most of his relatives including his mother Maria Fëdorovna. Alexandra was content to remain aloof. She always behaved as if she could be sure of having God and common sense on her side.
This would not have mattered so much if the Russian Empire had not been bedevilled by deep crisis, a crisis widely blamed on an emperor too weak to resist the political counsel of an imperious wife. As internal and external difficulties mounted, so hatred of her grew. She had always seen it as her duty to bolster his confidence about sticking to autocratic traditions. Days before the February events she wrote: ‘I so passionately would like to help you carry this load! You are courageous and enduring – I feel with all my soul and suffer with you, much more than I can express in words.’ She added the consoling thought that the late Rasputin – ‘our dear Friend’ – was praying for him in another world.2 Nicholas and Alexandra could not have been more different in temperament: she was fiery while her husband was even-tempered. She was quick to make up her mind; he was slow to take decisions. Every evening they had a tête-à-tête when they would discuss the matters that were bothering them, but they never talked about politics in the presence of others.3 About most things, they agreed, and although she influenced his choice of ministers there is no evidence that she diverted him from a course of policy that he favoured.4
But she incurred more blame than he ever did. Kobylinski, who was typical of his time in thinking that a man should dominate his wife, claimed that ‘she ruled over the family and subjugated the sovereign’. Nicholas was loath to decide any practical matter of importance without consulting her, at least after the abdication. When asked about something, his typical response was: ‘What does my wife think? I’ll go and ask her.’5 Alexandra was opinionated and disliked pusillanimity. One of her catch-phrases was: ‘Better to make mistakes than not to take decisions.’6 She had an aversion to ostentation and luxury and wore just two strings of pearls. This was the extent of her self-indulgence.7 She was by preference a vegetarian – this much she shared with the ‘heretic’ Lev Tolstoy.8 When annoyed, she turned red in the face.9 She wore a pained expression for much of the time but she also found it easy to empathize with people in distress.10 Usually she behaved with restraint, and many thought her haughty. But when something tickled her fancy, she had a smile that conquered hearts. Her daughters knew this better than people outside the family; they called her Little Sun.11
The imperial couple usually conversed in English. Born a princess of Hesse in imperial Germany and baptized as Alix, she lost her mother at the age of six and spent much of her long holidays with her grandmother Queen Victoria in the United Kingdom. After the Japanese war of 1904–1905 she resolved to speak Russian on formal occasions so as to demonstrate commitment to her adopted country, the only problem being that she talked rather slowly as she carefully enunciated every word.12 Hating meetings with high society, she surrounded herself with a set of confidantes who were as highly strung as she was. Their chief qualification for being at court was that they always deferred to her and shared her prejudices. She herself practised her sewing and in wartime she spent many hours nursing the wounded at the Tsarskoe Selo hospital. She avidly studied devotional literature. For recreation, she sometimes played piano duets with Sophie Buxhoeveden, who modestly said that she herself must have had Wagner, Grieg and Tchaikovsky turning in their graves.13
Alexandra knew – this was her torment – that it was her own biological inheritance that passed the dreadful disease of haemophilia to their only male heir Alexei. She told intimates that she was a bird of ill omen.14 Her uncle, brother and two nephews had perished prematurely from the disease. She knew that the same fate could await her son. This was one of the reasons she turned to God.15 She could never forget or probably even forgive herself for Alexei’s condition. Evgeni Botkin, one of the family’s doctors, made his own quiet study of the Romanovs. Medical science of that era had reached an awareness that the syndrome of fatal bleeding affected only boys who were haemophiliac. But, it was thought, women too could experience symptoms that were anything but pleasant. Female members of families that inherited the illness from one generation to another were said to have a predisposition towards hysteria after going through the menopause – and Botkin concluded that this explained Alexandra’s episodes of religious ecstasy.16 But he would never voice such thoughts to her or her husband. He was devoted to the imperial family and was proud to serve them to the end, whatever that end might be.
She had a penchant for mysticism and found an outlet in Russia’s old religious traditions. After adopting Orthodox Christianity, she threw her heart and soul into her new faith.17 She never regretted her transition, declaring: ‘Protestantism is so dry!’18
She continued to see the late Rasputin as the embodiment of Orthodoxy’s primordial truth and virtue. When her maid Maria Tutelberg raised suspicions about him, she cut her short. The empress commented: ‘The Saviour chose his disciples not from scholars and theologians but from simple fishermen and carpenters. In the gospel it’s said that faith can move mountains.’ She pointed to a picture of one of Christ’s miracles and claimed: ‘This God is alive today. I believe that my son will rise again. I know that I’m considered mad because of my faith. But surely all who believed were martyrs.’19 Devout and prayerful, she could not fail to notice that her prayers brought no improvement in her son’s condition. The medical emergencies recurred, and he could easily die at any time. This was why Rasputin became so important to her, as Pierre Gilliard was to recall:
Then when she gained acquaintance with Rasputin she was convinced that if she were to turn to him during Alexei Nikolaevich’s illness, he would live. Her son would live. Alexei Nikolaevich would somehow be better. Call it coincidence if you like but the facts of togetherness [obshchenie] with Rasputin and alleviation of Alexei Nikolaevich’s illness did coincide.
Alexandra believed. She had nothing else to cling to and found peace for herself in this. She was convinced that Rasputin had been a semi-saint and an intermediary between her and God.20
Without Rasputin, she dedicated herself to saving her son as best she could.
Alexei and his mother were closely bonded. Gilliard would recall:
If he went to her twenty times a day, there wasn’t a time when she didn’t kiss him. I could understand that every time she said goodbye, she was afraid that she wouldn’t see him again. What is more, it seems to me that her religion failed to give her what she expected of it: the crises with him continued to occur with their threat to his life. The miracle that she had been waiting for never happened.21
Alexei remained in poor health throughout much of the year. But although ‘our friend’ was dead, fortunately there arose no crisis involving a wound or haemorrhage.22
He always tried to be brave. He had frequent excruciating pain in his legs, but when people asked whether he was in pain he would often deny it.23 Occasionally he himself would enquire: ‘What do you think, will this ever go away?’24 When he was fit enough, his tutor Gibbes played ‘Robbers’ with him.25 Alexei also loved to play with his set of toy soldiers and amused himself on the balalaika.26 Kobylinski remembered him as a bright and spirited lad who could speak English and French. (He was never taught German.)27 His parents and sisters nicknamed him Baby – a sign that they were not hurrying his passage to adulthood – and he had become used to thinking of himself as but a child. Although he was not unintelligent, he was not a precocious pupil, and his tutors Pierre Gilliard and Sydney Gibbes were expected to join in whatever games he had in mind outside the palace. Both men, like Botkin, were too enamoured of their association with the Romanovs to feel they were demeaning themselves, and anyway they had a jolly time. The same was true of lads such as Kolya Derevenko, son of one of the family’s doctors, who was asked to play with him in the daytime. All the Romanovs and their retinue appreciated Alexei’s sweet nature.
Nicholas abdicated at a time of family illness when all four of his daughters Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia lay stricken with measles, probably catching it from Alexei. Olga and Tatyana in addition suffered from pleurisy.28
Olga was a modest young woman who spoke French, English and German. She liked singing and had a good soprano voice. She drew well. She avoided glamorous clothes.29 People noticed that Olga loved her father more than she did her mother.30 Tatyana was more like Alexandra and was always close to her.31 Decisive and somewhat bossy, she helped to keep order in the household, and one of her teachers was to say that if the empress had been removed from the scene, Tatyana would have easily filled her family role.32 Maria was the family beauty. Known to the others as Mashka, she had a talent for drawing and was the most sociable of the sisters. She talked regularly with the guards, discovering the names of their wives and asking how many children they had and how much land. Robust and ever willing, she reminded some people of her grandfather, Alexander III. Alexei would call out: ‘Mashka, come and carry me!’ and Mashka would always happily comply.33 Anastasia was short and well built. She loved to discover people’s weak spots and was never averse to teasing them; on the positive side, she was ‘a natural comic’.34 Her pet name in the family was Shvibzik.35
The happy family found itself in circumstances that it had never imagined possible. The Romanovs, however, were resilient. Only Alexandra found it difficult to smile. Aggrieved by what she saw as a plot by leading politicians to force her husband from the throne, she was often in a sombre mood. She badly missed her active work in the Tsarskoe Selo sanatoriums. But even she could see that she had to put on a brave face. And she and her daughters fell back on the simple pleasures that united them: reading, indoor games and sewing. Alexei played with his toy soldiers and military equipment. Nicholas spent hours sawing wood for the fire. Without their old public responsibilities, they all seized their opportunities for distraction. The whole family wanted to keep up morale while they waited on events.