Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix) (1872-1918)

[kell]

it dont matter since we are kinda off topic anyways lol but ya i agree but there wasa doc on it that showed the entire fight but lets get back onto the topic though churchchill did have many meetings at nicolhases palace at yalta

[PrincessKaimi]

Thank you, Vasillisos Markos. I"m learning. I've been reading about the Romanov mtDNA project, which is on topic. I'm not sure what's harder, learning British royalty or mtDNA patterns.

[lucien]

Today,march 15 in 1917 HM Tsar Nicholas II was forced to Abdicate.

[Furienna]

Ouch, so it was ninetyfour years ago.

[Tarlita]

For all things about the Russian Imperial family with excellent photos, some quite rare and good information on other royal families, you can't go past the Alexander Palace Time Machine site. This site is very informative and check out the forums there where everything is discussed.

[Tsaritsa]

I believe this very complex woman to be worthy of her own thread. She has long been vilified by some for being the main reason for Russia's fall. I feel that she has been misunderstood and therefore deserves a better hearing. I would very much enjoy discussing with you those things which made her the person she became and I look forward to joining in with lively debate.

[COUNTESS]

I don't think she has been villified. She was just unsuited for her position. She was neurotic and she has a very sick child. She helped make a mess of the monarchy, but she was not alone.

[Royal Fan]

a good.....complex lady

[PrincessKaimi]

The official Wikipedia portrait of the Tsarina in thumbnail.

Now, that's a tiara. She looks slightly peeved in the photo, though. I'm not understanding how she made a mess of the monarchy - or how, exactly, she was any more neurotic than most others. She had more children than most of us would want to have, these days, and she probably knew that certain illnesses ran in her family (that would be a very hard position to be in).

Picture is not subject to copyright.

[Duchessmary]

I think she was a good wife and mother, just basically unprepared for life as a Russian Empress. Who could be? She really had no interest in titles or pomp, but once she became Empress, I think she was bewildered. The death of Nicholas' father was very unexpected. She was in Russia two months when she became Empress. She hardly spoke the language, and gave birth to four girls in rapid sucession. When Alexis was born, with a terrible cloud of hemophilia hanging over him, it isolated her even more, because the Russian royal house could not admit the Heir to the Throne was suffering from a life-threatening disease

[mtatum]

Upon reading biographies of her, my impression of the Czarina is that the very qualities that made her an exceptional and devoted mother and wife led to her "failure" as an empress. For example, her dependence on the notorious Rasputin for her son's health definitely caused a wave of disapproval among the Russian elite, and encouraged damaging rumors about her and her family. This was a woman blinded by her love for her suffering child, oblivious to the public's perception of her and the consequences of her reliance on Rasputin.

Moreover, did she actually have a shot to be well-loved by the family she married in and her subjects if the circumstances of her birth -- her German roots -- would always have planted a seed of animosity towards her? As much as she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, I think that the Russian Royal Court overwhelmed her and intimidated her, thus forcing her to retreat further and focus on her family even more.

It did not help her cause that her husband is widely perceived by historians as a weak man, incompetent to lead the Russian Empire especially during the times that he did. His failures and wrong decisions will always be connected to her influence on him, unfair as that may be. He has been described as a devoted family man and a gentle, humble individual, but as the Tsar, he is definitely not esteemed in the same category as his father and the previous Tsars noted for their strength and will.

[Vasillisos Markos]

Alexandra had many good and bad qualities. As a wife and mother, she was very good; as the consort to an autocrat, she was very bad. Excuses can be made for her failure to appeal to the masses (i.e., she came to the throne unexpectedly before learning the language, she had children in rapid succession, a difficult mother-in-law, etc.) and these are all relevant; however, she meddled in affairs and dismissed people whom she believed were against Rasputin and this meddling by Alexandra was unforgivable.

[Tsaritsa]

She was probably desperate to keep Rasputin on side at all costs because in her eyes he was all that stood between her son and death so she was prepared to go to any lengths to pacify him. I wonder about her own health. All her life she seems to have "enjoyed" indifferent health. Was this real physical illness or was there an element of the psychosomatic? Had she, as a child watched her mother caring for her siblings and waited to experience her own share of care only for her wornout mother to die before it happened? Was it at that dreadful time she worked out that sick people are cared for? We know that at some point in her childhood she fell on broken glass which caused lifelong problems exacerbated by five pregnancies which all produced large babies.......but what about the "drops" she took regularly? Were they for a heart condition, real or imagined, or were they for menstual cramps which seem to have been an ongoing problem. What sort of effect on her did those other "substances" have and what was she taking them for? Was her health as delicate as we are led to believe or did she use illness to avoid those things she felt discomforted by?

[Vasillisos Markos]

In answer to your last question, Tsaritsa, I think a little of both. The Tsarina undoubtedly had some ailments (who among us has not) but I believe there was a tinge of psychosomatic illness involved as well. Her anxiety at appearing in public no doubt produced real symptoms of discomfort. Many people are able to overcome this problem, but she unfortunately was not.

Fact and fiction are rife with examples of people who claim to be "sick" to avoid what they view as unpleasant company or actions. Think Mrs. Stevens with her sick headaches on "Bewitched" and Aunt Pittypat in Gone With the Wind. My sister for nearly a year complained of stomach ailments each morning before school and begged to stay home but my mother would not be dissuaded and off my sister went. When the next school year began with a new teacher, there were no more stomaches in the morning.

The doctors may have been prescribing medicines to soothe the Tsarina's anxieties as well as to actually treat ailments. I do sympathize with the stress she endured as a result of her son's sickness. It is too bad her faith in God could not comfort her and bring some peace to "what will be, will be."

[anya1989]

I believe that the Tasrina was shy coued not speak russian and her three of childern didn't go to her very often and she too many miscarriages and she gave her husband the heir with hempitmite.

[COUNTESS]

She was shy, she had 5 children and she was with them constantly. The heir had hemophilia.

[Grandduchess24]

She seemed motherly to her children, loved Nicholas very much and worried constantly about Aleksey, but was she completely hooked on rasputin and believed all he said. She even didn't listen to Ella's consent about the man and insted kicked her out of the palace and refused to see her again. Grand duchess Xenia Alexandrovna also told her things about Rasputin but again alix refused to hear things like that. But alix tried her best to have a happy family and had her daughters support whenever she went to go lay down in the mauve room. She loved everyone in her family and was loved back. I just wonder what queen Victoria would say to hear that her favorite granddaughter was murdered.

[PrincessKaimi]

In those days, Freud found lots and lots of "psychosomatic illness" among the upper class women of Vienna, and thereby discovered the "role of the unconscious" in their terrors. Women were indeed terrified of childbirth, of children dying, and they had very little to put their faith in.

Russia seemed incomprehensible to Alix and I agree, that in a situation like that (there was no real treatment for hemophilia and even today, children die of it), the guilt must have been tremendous. Rasputin, with his huge charisma and his own belief in his powers, attracted her the way similar kinds of religious people attract the desperate in our own times.

I do not see, still, how Alix's behavior led directly to the tragedy; it was larger forces in motion, put perhaps she did help put a final nail in the coffin of Russian monarchy. (I think it was doomed, no matter what and it just happened to be this particular family that ruled during WW1, which became the historical trigger for the revolution).

It's a very sad topic.

[Grandduchess24]

I love this picture of HM she looks so lovely and regal,like the empress she was
And a porcelain doll of her

[Royal Fan]

funny enough ive always thought my mom resembled her