At the time of Ernie’s wedding, his younger sister, Alix, wandered through the New Palace in a quandary. For the past two years since her father’s death she had lived contentedly with her brother, playing hostess at his Grand Ducal receptions while he took care of her ‘chivalrously,’ acting as her ‘father, mother and friend.’
After the wedding all that would have to change. The arrival of a new Grand Duchess would leave Alix redundant as a hostess and, fond as she was of Ducky, she did not relish the prospect of playing gooseberry in her own home. Marriage was her best option but nearing her twenty-second birthday, Alix had already rejected ‘the highest position there is’ and her chances of finding an eligible suitor were rapidly diminishing. Princes and dukes regularly visited Darmstadt but Alix had too much independence of spirit to settle for a loveless match. There was only one man to whom she had ever been deeply attracted and for almost a decade she had struggled to put him from her mind.
Ten years earlier when she visited Russia for Ella’s wedding, twelve-year-old Alix had been enthralled by the gentle Tsarevich Nicholas (Nicky). He was shy and softly spoken and, even at that early age, had been so attentive to her as they scratched their names together in the window of a villa at Peterhof.
In the intervening years Alix had blossomed into a striking young woman who could not fail to win Nicky’s attention when she returned to Russia to visit Ella in January 1889:
“Tall she was, and delicately, beautifully shaped, with exquisitely white neck and shoulders. Her abundant hair, red gold, was so long that she could easily sit upon it when it was unbound. Her complexion was clear and as rosy as a little child’s.”
Ella, convinced that the couple were destined for each other, watched them growing closer and when Nicky confided in her his affection for her sister, she promised she would do all she could to help ‘bring [them] together in love.’ But the course of true love was not to run smoothly for Hessian princess and the Russian Tsarevich. While Ella was eagerly pressing for the match, Nicky’s mother, Tsarina Marie Feodorovna, was busily preparing lists of suitable brides for her son and Alix of Hesse did not feature on the list of illustrious names. Fond as she was of Ella, the Tsarina believed that the future Tsar of all the Russias could make a more advantageous match than a lowly Hessian princess, particularly one whom she viewed as unsuitable as a future Empress of all the Russias. Despondently Nicky viewed each suggestion with an increasing sense of desperation:
“I am at the crossing of two paths,” he wrote, “I myself want to go in the other direction, while Mama obviously wants me to take this one! What will happen?”
To Ella the solution was obvious: Nicky must follow his heart. She would, she promised, ‘move heaven and earth’ to bring them together and would not rest until her plans came to fruition. In every conversation with her sister she spoke of the kindly Tsarevich, and repeatedly reminded Alix that Nicky thought of her constantly. She encouraged them to write to one another and invited Alix to her country estate, Ilinskoe, in the hope of furthering the romance.
The Tsarina was far from pleased and voiced her fears to her sister, the Princess of Wales, knowing that she in turn would pass on the news to Queen Victoria whose legendary Russophobia would surely bring a swift end to Ella’s plans. The news both alarmed and angered the Queen. She had never wanted Ella to marry a Russian but the thought of her favourite granddaughter becoming Empress of so violent a country was more than she could bear. Victoria, as the eldest Hessian sister, must tell Ella that Alix ‘will not be allowed’ to marry a Russian; and Ernie must forbid her from ever visiting Russia again.
But Ella - whom the Queen had once ‘not credited with so much independence of character’ - refused to let the matter drop. Letters poured into Darmstadt from Russia, filled with flattering descriptions of the lovelorn Tsarevich; how he missed Alix, how he loved her, how he longed to see her again. The letters were painful enough for Alix, but when Ella appeared in person, it was even harder to bear. Alix was ruining Nicky’s life, she said, could she not at least send him a kind word, a message, perhaps even a photograph?
Alix was in turmoil. Her grandmother’s warnings left her plagued by nightmares and a sense of impending doom. She loved Nicky deeply, she could not deny it, but more than Queen Victoria’s admonitions and her own unaccountable fears, her conscience troubled her deeply. According to Russian law, the wife of the Tsar had to be of the Orthodox faith and, try as she might, Alix could not abandon Lutheranism.
Year after year, Ella continued her relentless campaign, alternately cajoling and bullying Alix to reconsider. Alix’s scruples, she claimed, were unwarranted; the question of religion need not trouble her, after all she herself had converted and found Orthodoxy far more fulfilling than Protestantism•. Even the Tsarina had come to realise that her son could only be happy with Alix and was ready to welcome her into the Imperial Family with open arms. Still Alix would not give way.
The impasse dragged on until Ernie’s wedding in April 1894. Knowing that Nicky would be present as first cousin of the bride, Alix panicked and wrote desperately to his sister Xenia, begging her to warn him that there was no point in prolonging his misery as she could never consent to be his wife.
“I know Ella will begin again, but what is the good of it and it is cruel always to say I am ruining his life - can I help it when to make him happy I should be committing a sin in my conscience. It is hard enough as it is and beginning about it again is so unkind.”
Ella certainly did ‘begin again’ as soon as she arrived in Coburg. Drawing her brother into the conspiracy, she invited Ernie and Alix to her rooms at a time when she knew Nicky would be calling, whereupon she and Ernie made a subtle exit, leaving them together. The plan failed. Nicky proposed but a weeping Alix reiterated that she could not change her religion. Still Ella refused to give up hope and, for once, found a willing ally in her own former suitor, Cousin Willy.
For some time the Kaiser had been hoping to forge stronger ties between Russia and Germany to counteract the Russians’ alliance with Prussia’s archenemy, France. What better way could there be to ingratiate himself with the heir to the Russian throne than to help him gain his heart’s desire and at the same time install another German princess in St. Petersburg? Talking late into the night, Willy arrogantly promised that he would persuade Alix to change her mind. The following morning, with supreme hypocrisy considering his treatment of his own sister, Sophie•, the Kaiser assured his cousin that conversion to Orthodoxy did not entail turning her back on Lutheranism.
The day after Ernie’s wedding, Nicky proposed for a second time and this time Alix yielded. They emerged smiling into an adjoining room where the Kaiser, Ella, and the entire Russian party were waiting, and made their announcement. The whole company rejoiced, hugging one another in ‘an orgy of kissing,’ and even Queen Victoria, touched by the romance, gave Nicky and Alix her blessing. Only later did the Queen confide her true feelings:
“My blood runs cold when I think of her so young…on that unstable throne…She is like my own child.”
Tragically, time would justify her fears.
After Ernie’s wedding, Alix returned to England with her sister, Victoria, and the Queen, who advised her to seek a cure for her recurrent sciatica at the spa in Harrogate. There, as Nicky prepared for a grand wedding in St. Petersburg and Ella scoured her shelves for Orthodox literature to send to her, Alix had the first glimpse of what her future life would entail. Stories of her recent engagement filled the English newspapers and little crowds gathered to gape at the future Empress of all the Russias. Confined to a wheelchair and unused to being on show, Alix was annoyed and embarrassed by the intrusion. It did not bode well for a woman who would soon be expected to shine on the most glittering stage in the world.
The following month, at Queen Victoria’s invitation, Nicky’s arrived in England and, for a few days he and Alix enjoyed the relative seclusion of Victoria’s house at Walton-on-Thames, before moving on to the more formal atmosphere of Windsor. In spite of the necessary presence of a chaperone - in this case, Alix’s Aunt Helen, the Duchess of Albany - the romance flourished until by the time the Tsarevich left for Russia at the end of July, he and Alix could hardly bear to be parted. At least they could look forward to further meeting at Wolfsgarten in the autumn, where they would be joined by the rest of the Hessian sisters.
After a month with her grandmother in Osborne, Alix returned to Darmstadt at the end of August. Now in the excitement of her forthcoming marriage, her nightmares were fewer, her sciatica improved and the future suddenly appeared brighter. She was ‘longing more than ever’ to see the Tsarevich when suddenly a desperate telegram arrived from the Crimea. Nicky’s father, Tsar Alexander III had been taken ill on his summer estate in Livadia and his condition was deteriorating so rapidly that Nicky dared not leave his side. The plans for a meeting in Wolfsgarten would have to be abandoned; instead, he pleaded, could Alix not come to Russia?
Within days, Alix and Victoria had set out for Warsaw from where Ella would travel on with Alix to Livadia. Only when they reached the Russian border did Ella realise that in the panic no one had thought to make to make special arrangements for Alix’s arrival. So it was that the future Empress of All the Russias made an unpropitious entry to her new homeland among all the ordinary passengers.
The sudden and unexpected death of forty-nine-year-old Tsar Alexander III on 1st November 1894 came as a great blow to the whole of Europe. He may not have been the most popular monarch but his firm rule and strength of character had brought relative peace and stability to his country, which few believed his passive son would be able to maintain. Queen Victoria feared the implications for Alix while the Duchess of York’s thoughts turned to her frail sister-in-law, Toria of Wales: ‘I do hope precious Toria won’t be ill!’
Devastated by his loss, Nicky sobbed that he was unequal to the task ahead of him and pleaded with Alix to have the wedding brought forward. With selfless courage, she rose to the occasion, immediately converted to Orthodoxy and agreed to ‘seal her fate,’ in her grandmother’s ominous words, on the Dowager Empress’s birthday, a mere three weeks after the death of the Tsar.
Shortly after one-fifteen in the afternoon of 26th November 1894, Alix, leaning on her brother’s arm, walked through the imposing corridors and malachite ballrooms of the Winter Palace to the chapel where she and Nicky were married according to the Orthodox rite. In spite of the gathering of royalties - including the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke of York - recent events gave the occasion a sombre atmosphere. The new Tsar, it was reported, looked pale and both his bride and his mother wept throughout the ceremony. Even amid the cheering crowds lining the streets of St. Petersburg, inauspicious whispers were heard: “She has come to us behind a coffin.”
Yet, for all the trials that Alix was to suffer in Russia, hers was perhaps one of the greatest royal romances of all time. Nicky she loved with a passion surpassing even that of her grandmother for beloved Albert and, to the end of their lives his devotion, his longing to ‘return to her arms’ never wavered. They complimented each other: he, a calming influence on her overstretched nerves; she, a powerful source of inspiration to override his natural diffidence:
“It was a real love-match - one of those ideal unions that seem to belong to fairyland, and tales of which are handed down through the ages. Their love grew with their life together, drew them ever closer, and never abated. The Emperor’s diaries and the Empress’s letters to the Emperor show what they were to each other.”
It was a love they would both need to sustain them throughout the perils, tragedies and disasters of the reign of Tsar Nicholas II.
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