The Family Romanov: Part One

Miraculously, the tsar went uninjured, but many in his retinue were not as lucky.

He’d freed the serfs (peasant slaves) and modernized the courts.

He was left, he later confessed, with a “presentiment—a secret conviction...that I am destined for terrible trials.”

“The tsar is swift and harsh. He shows no mercy,” one of Alexander’s courtiers noted.

Nicholas never learned to deal with ministers or politicians. He never gave a speech, studied diplomacy, or grappled with national policy. In short, he never developed the qualities of a statesman.

Alexandra’s sharp nose gave her face a cold sternness, and her tight, thin lips rarely curved into a smile. “When she did [smile],” recalled her cousin Queen Marie of Romania, “it was grudging, as though making a concession.”

Alexandra’s sharp nose gave her face a cold sternness, and her tight, thin lips rarely curved into a smile. “When she did [smile],” recalled her cousin Queen Marie of Romania, “it was grudging, as though making a concession.”

Overnight, “Sunny” turned aloof, serious, and withdrawn.

Handpicked by Her Majesty, a string of English tutors and governesses traveled to Hesse with instructions to send detailed reports back to Windsor Castle.

In return, they received a stream of orders from the queen: the princess must learn to speak proper English; high standards of taste and morality should be set; training in the avoidance of idle talk and gossip was imperative.

There was no way we could live off the land alone, for our [acreage was] very paltry, and the earnings of my older brother [who went off to a factory in the winter] were inadequate.

I tilled the soil.

My father was strict...and despotic....

When his binges were over...Father would become...morose and demanding.

The day before Alix and her family returned to Hesse, Nicholas gave her a small, jeweled brooch as a token of his affection.

Eager and grateful for her guidance, he called himself “your poor little Nicky with a weak will,” and thanked her for her “reprimanding words.”

St. Petersburg society quickly judged her to be stuck-up, straitlaced, and utterly boring.

She disapproved of what she considered the aristocracy’s idle and listless lives—sleeping until noon, then rushing off to hairdressers or gambling clubs before returning home to dress for yet another late-night party.

The higher classes, she determined, were “corroded by a lack of [religious] faith and marked by depravity.”

When she did venture out, she hid herself under a parasol so no one could see her face.

On one shore stood a marble folly shaped like a Turkish bath, its gilt-tipped minaret stretching toward the sky.

The first was the immense Catherine Palace, sprawling across the landscape in an extravagant profusion of blue, white, and gold.

The first was the immense Catherine Palace, sprawling across the landscape in an extravagant profusion of blue, white, and gold.

Olga remained in the lace-draped bassinet beside her parents’ bed for several weeks before finally being sent upstairs to the nursery.

The reign of Nicholas II, many peasants predicted, would be beset with troubles from God.

By September, Alexandra was pregnant again—and feeling miserable. Her back ached. Her legs swelled. And she experienced such debilitating nausea that the doctor confined her to bed for seven weeks.

Known as the dark sisters because they dabbled in the occult, the two were notorious for the midnight séances they held in their St. Petersburg palaces.

And they told the empress about a French mystic and “soul doctor” called “Dr.” Philippe (though he was not a medical doctor), who could heal the sick by chanting, predict the future by praying, and make himself invisible just by donning a magic hat.

“Holy Russia abounds in saints,” declared one church official in 1901.

“God sends consolation from time to time in the guise of simple men.”

A portly man with wire-rimmed glasses and a black handlebar mustache, Dr. Philippe gave the empress what he called a “moral examination” by peering deep into her eyes for several long moments.

She even bathed in the moonlight on what “Dr.” Philippe called “astrologically auspicious nights.”

Laborers, their faces thin and careworn, trudged across the arching canal bridges toward their factory jobs.

One item the empress did not stint on was the girls’ clothing. She liked to outfit the grand duchesses by pairs in matching and expensive dresses.

Supervised by Nanny Eagar and protected by a dozen sentries, the girls pedaled their bicycles down the shaded lanes or played in the little house built on Children’s Island.

Mother, painfully raising herself, advanced toward me, holding out her dreadfully emaciated arms, dry and long and thin, like boughs off a Christmas tree....

Despite the birth of a fourth daughter, Nicholas and Alexandra continued to meet with “Dr.” Philippe, and the charlatan soon convinced the empress that she was pregnant with a son.

He had interceded with the Almighty on her behalf, and God had blessed her.

This event cemented her belief in mysticism. From now on, she would blindly throw open the palace doors to many a strange or shady character who claimed to have holy powers.

The celebratory cannons began—three hundred salvos this time.