The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) by Helen Rappaport Read Free Book Online Page A

been of the obscure Saxe-Coburg
    princeling Albert.
    She might have embraced Orthodoxy with all her heart, but Alix
    was English through and through, with English habits, English
    sentiments and a no-nonsense English approach to family life bred
    in the bone by her mother and grandmother before her. Such a
    background would have served her well had she remained within
    the familiar sphere of her Western-European bloodline, but Russia
    – despite the seductive beauty of its landscape, which she already
    loved – was unknown territory, a country legendary for its turbulent
    history and for the overpowering wealth and grandeur of its court.
    Fin-de-siècle imperial St Petersburg was a far cry from the comfortable domesticity of the Neues Palais and the rose gardens of
    Darmstadt.
    Nevertheless, for the sake of love, ‘gentle simple Alicky’ had
    summoned up all her courage to leave the shelter of her brother’s
    quiet and peaceful residenz in Darmstadt to become ‘the great Empress of Russia’.49 To counter her apprehensions about the unfamiliar court practices she was presented with, she closed the door
    to the hostile world outside and everything in it that frightened her.
    Instead, she clung to those few close, familiar things in which she
    took comfort, and to her role as Nicholas’s devoted ‘little wifey’.
    For now, the world – and Russia – could wait.
    Except in one respect: shortly after Alexander III’s death, Nicholas
    had issued a proclamation commanding his subjects to swear the
    oath of allegiance to him as their new tsar. His younger brother
    Grand Duke Georgiy Alexandrovich, he proclaimed, would bear the
    title of tsarevich ‘until it please God to bless our approaching union 24
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    with the Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt with the birth of a son’.50
    In the dynastic scheme of things, Alix’s primary and most urgent
    duty was to provide a male heir to the Russian throne.
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Chapter Two
LA PETITE DUCHESSE
    N
    From her very first days in Russia, Princess Alix of Hesse was deter-
    mined to counter anything she saw as a threat to the quiet family
    life that she had envisaged for herself and Nicky. Family had been
    her only security when death had taken those most dear from her;
    she was far from home, lonely and apprehensive, and dreaded being
    exposed as an object of curiosity. But in protecting her own deeply
    held insecurities by retreating, at every opportunity, from public
    view, she only succeeded in accentuating her already marked air of
    chilly reserve. Alexandra Feodorovna, as she was now styled, found
    herself at the receiving end of hostile looks from a Russian aristoc-
    racy that was already critical of her English upbringing and manners
    – and, to their horror, her poor French, which was still very much
    the language of their elite circles.1 Worse, this insignificant German princess had, in the eyes of the court, displaced the much loved and
    highly sociable former empress, Maria Feodorovna – a still vigorous
    widow in her forties – from her central position at court.
    From the first, Alexandra found the strain of fulfilling her cere-
    monial duties almost intolerable, such as in January 1895, when she
    had to face a line of 550 court ladies for the New Year baise-main ceremony at which they all processed to kiss her imperial hand. Her
    visible discomfort and habit of recoiling in horror when anyone
    tried to get too close were quickly misinterpreted as manifestations
    of a difficult personality. Her new sister-in-law Grand Duchess Olga
    Alexandrovna later recalled: ‘Even in that first year – I remember
    so well – if Alicky smiled they called it mockery. If she looked grave 26
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    LA PETITE DUCHESSE
    they said she was angry.’2 And so, in response, Alexandra retreated
    behind the protective wall of domesticity, preoccupied with the one
    thing primarily expected of her