Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria
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As for Nicky, Alix begged him to realize that they must end this fruitless quest for happiness because she could not bring herself to convert. Better to end this tortuous situation once and for all. Nicholas had to understand her point of view, because “I have tried to look at it in every light…but I always return to one thing. I cannot do it against my conscience.” To do so would be “a sin…and I should be miserable all the days of my life, knowing that I had done a wrongful thing.” Therefore, “what happiness can come from a marriage which begins without the real blessing of God?”
If she changed religions out of convenience, Alix explained in a final letter, “I should never find my peace of mind again, and like that I should never be your real companion who should help you on in life; for there always should be something between us two, in my not having the real conviction of the belief I had taken, and in the regret for the one I had left.” Alix ended her letter by pointing out that it was useless for Nicky to go on hoping, because “I can never change my confession.”17 Those six words combined to cut Nicky’s heart with razor-sharp precision.
Devastated by the news, he wrote in his diary: “It is impossible for her to change religion, and all my hopes are shattered by this implacable obstacle.”18 A month passed before Nicholas found the courage to take up a pen and reply. When he did so, he was full of tender sympathy for the anguish his Alix was going through. He also admired her for the depth of her commitment to God. But Nicholas wrote too of his own desolation, of feeling “so lonely and so beaten down!!” He would place his trust in God and pray that “He will guide my darling along the path.” Then Nicky’s gentleness turned to defiance.
Oh! do not say “no” directly, my dearest Alix, do not ruin my life already! Do you think there can be any happiness in the whole world without you! After having involuntarily! kept me waiting and hoping, can this end in such a way?19
The tsarevitch was still hoping against all hope for a miracle. His chance came four months later, during the fateful visit to Coburg in April 1894.
Once he was in Coburg, Alix’s presence spurred Nicholas into action. Left alone together, Nicholas chipped away at her defenses. In an experience emotionally draining for them both, Nicky argued and cajoled for two interminable hours. Alix cried the whole time, whispering, “No! I cannot.”20 But little did Nicky know that despite her refusal, the ground beneath her was already giving way.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, ever the busybody, was just as caught up as everyone else by the drama. Anxious to see a Russo-German alliance come true—a union that might come in politically handy for Germany—Willy proceeded to convince Alix to convert. It was an ironic move on the Kaiser’s part in view of Wilhelm’s fight with his sister, Sophie, over her conversion to Orthodoxy.
At Coburg, Wilhelm used all his skills of persuasion to convince Alix of Hesse that she must forsake her Protestant faith and become a Russian Orthodox. Consumed by her own conflicting emotions, Alix was unaware that she was being used by the Kaiser as a pawn in his game of political chess. Wilhelm’s matchmaking was an attempt at countering growing Russian animosity toward Germany, a disturbing trend that had begun after Willy ascended the throne in 1888.
Ever since he visited Russia in 1886, Wilhelm II—as one historian puts it— “considered himself to be a specialist in Russian affairs, in which he took a conspicuous interest.” Moreover, the Kaiser “regarded Russia as a special preserve for his alleged diplomatic expertise.”21 Sensing a diplomatic coup in the offing for Germany if he could get Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt to walk down the aisle in St. Petersburg, Willy set about pushing the lovebirds to commit themselves. In so doing, Willy fancied himself playing not so much Cupid as Bismarck. So grateful would Nicky and Alix be for his help in getting them together that Germany and the Kaiser would soon assert themselves on the Russian stage and, even more important, on the European scene. But however much playing the diplomat tickled the Kaiser’s inflated ego, the fact was that Wilhelm II had for years feared Russia. His frenetic attentions at Coburg were therefore more than mere exercises to amuse his own self-worth. They were, in fact, calculated maneuvering on the Kaiser’s part to shape the destiny of Germany. This was, after all, “the heyday of ‘personal rule’ “ where Kaiser Wilhelm was concerned.22 And the period during which the tsarevitch seriously pursued Princess Alix fell squarely during the era when Wilhelm II exercised dominance over German affairs.
While Wilhelm II was cajoling Alix into making her fateful decision, also working in the wings was her sister, Ella. But in meddling in the affair at Coburg, the bombastic Kaiser Wilhelm was careful as much as possible not to cross paths with the still-ravishing Ella, for years before he had been hopelessly in love with her but was spurned when he offered her marriage. Ella’s rejection hurt Willy deeply. And seeing and talking to her now brought back painful memories to a Kaiser who was so accustomed to being obeyed.
The Empress Frederick, also in Coburg for the wedding, kept Sophie abreast of what was happening with her cousins. After telling her daughter that “little Missy of Roumania was looking pale and thin, and is expecting No. II!” Vicky went on to add her bit about the drama: “I wish I could tell you that everything is settled about him and Alicky, they both much wish it, but the religious question still seems the obstacle.”23
With the kind of maddening existence Crown Princess Marie of Romania was leading since her arrival at Bucharest, it was not surprising that Empress Frederick found Missy looking pale and thin. The Romania that the sheltered seventeen-year-old princess was set to call home was a bewildering place. As one biographer has written:
In the nineteenth century it was called “the kingdom at the edge of the Western World.” Born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, breathtakingly beautiful, wrapped in mystery and age-old legends, it is a land of towering mountains and rich pastures, powerful rivers and fertile plains that merge into the eastern steppes. It was said to have been the habitat of mythical-sounding princes—Michael the Brave, Mircea the Old, Vlad the Impaler, Brancovan the Good, whose names now belong to the pantheon of local folklore.24
Upon her arrival in Bucharest, Missy was seized with fear. The new crown princess, very much the unseasoned performer on public occasions, could feel thousands of eyes scrutinizing her every move. Missy suffered through her ordeals, feeling “small, foolish insignificant and ‘exceedingly lonely amidst the multitude.’ “ Throughout all the welcoming events, the one thing that touched her was the sight of Union Jacks flying next to the Romanian flags all over Bucharest. Upon seeing “the beloved old flag!” recalled Missy, “tears came into my eyes, [for] that flag meant home!” So new to the country, the yellow, red, and blue Romanian colors meant nothing yet to this very British princess.
Once she began to settle down, Missy’s irrepressible high spirits were quickly quashed. Home was the imposing Royal Palace, a regal but cold and forbidding abode, more suited to the taste of Romania’s King Carol I than to a teenage girl accustomed to comfortable surroundings. Instead of chintzes and an airy milieu, the new crown princess was consigned to spend endless hours cooped up in a palace resembling a marble sarcophagus. Much to Missy’s chagrin, the apartments that were now her home were in her view “a disaster.” Done up in what she derided as “Altdeutsch,” a heavy and garish style of “bad rococo,” the furnishing and living arrangements only served to depress the new bride so that her heart sank “lower and lower” until she “wondered if it would ever end sinking.”25
Even more depressing than her gloomy surroundings was the fact that she and her new husband were expected to live under the same roof as King Carol. From the start, Carol I made no concessions to the new arrival. As a member of the Romanian royal family, Missy was expected to fit in—seamlessly. All of the king’s demands were to be assumed without question. Der Onkel brooked no opposition to his highly attuned sense of discipline and duty. And no one was more aware of this than der Onkel’s nephew and heir, Crown Prince Ferdinand. Both men, so thoroughly at home in
the strict military Prussian world, had no idea how to deal with a lonely seventeen-year-old girl whose high-spirited personality was now undergoing a profound change.
In time Carol I was to find to his exasperation that he had to reckon with a spitfire. But in the early days, the new crown princess had little energy to fight back. Shocked at her new role as a wife, depressed at living in a new country, disappointed that her husband was completely subservient to the king, Missy’s first year in Bucharest became an absolute nightmare. She chafed at the restrictions— not even the carefully screened Madame Grecianu, her lady-in-waiting, was allowed to be chummy with her.
The choice of Missy’s lady-in-waiting had been made with the utmost care by King Carol. Thanks to Queen Victoria’s strict dictums, the king had to tread carefully here. The queen, who had described “the immorality of the Society at Bucharest [as being] quite awful,” wanted her granddaughter’s lady-in-waiting to be beyond reproach. The British chargé d’affaires at Bucharest, Charles Hardinge, was of the same opinion. “Owing to the laxity of morals and the looseness of their divorce laws,” noted Hardinge, “Roumanian society was hopelessly complicated and involved due to the number of people divorced, married to others who had been divorced and with sometimes families of more than one previous marriage on either side.” Because of this, “the King experienced considerable difficulty in finding a lady to act as Mistress of the Princess’s Household unconnected with any scandal.” But, when finally “the lady was found,” Hardinge recalled that Sir Henry Ponsonby wrote to him on behalf of Queen Victoria, saying, “we were glad to learn the name of the pure Madame Greciano.
Missy might have been less miserable if Nando had taken her side and been more understanding. Unfortunately, he was too frightened of his uncle to do anything other than the old man’s bidding. Soon enough, Missy found that her gallant knight was nothing more than a shadow of der Onkel. He was, after all, “uncle’s nephew, a man of duty, trained to do uncle’s bidding, trained to see with uncle’s eyes, almost to use uncle’s words.”27 This was a far cry from the reassuring words Missy wrote to Queen Victoria not long before the wedding, when she assured her concerned grandmother that all would be well. “My dear Grand Mama,” wrote Missy, “though my task may at first seem difficult, I am sure that both Ferdinand and the King will do all they can to make it easy for me.”28 How those words must have haunted Crown Princess Marie as she languished in the gilded cage of the Royal Palace at Bucharest.
To make matters worse, Missy found that her normally healthy constitution was failing her. She was at a loss as to the reason for her lethargy and queasiness. But it was soon apparent what was behind these unnerving changes. Within a few months of her arrival, Missy learned that she was pregnant. It was a bewildering jolt to the innocent young bride. She was still trying to cope with the demands of being Nando’s wife while at the same time battling her deepening homesickness and increasing unhappiness with her living arrangements, and the news of impending motherhood hit her like a bolt of lightning.
It was the motherly Lady Monson, an Englishwoman who had been of some help to Missy in her early days in Bucharest, who broke the news to the seventeen-year-old princess. Just before leaving for England, Lady Monson found a pale, sullen Missy languishing in her “disastrous rococo room.” Usually energetic and eager for exercise, the newlywed was bewildered by her sudden attacks of queasiness. “I feel giddy,” confessed Missy, “food disgusts me.…Everything makes me feel sick; smells, noises, faces, even colours. I’m altogether changed, I don’t recognize my own self!” Lady Monson knew exactly what was the matter. She told Missy that everyone would be delighted. But when Missy showed signs of confusion and seemed about to burst out crying, Lady Monson asked her, “You don’t mean to say no one ever told you?” Nearly panicking, Missy replied frantically, “Told me what?”29 It was at that moment that the new crown princess was told about the birds and the bees. It also then dawned on Missy that her primary role was to provide heirs to the throne—and she took the news badly.
As for Nando and King Carol, the news that a new Romanian prince or princess was soon to be born was a welcome one. If his plan in providing a docile and malleable wife for Nando was not materializing right away, at least King Carol was satisfied to see that his wish for dynastic heirs was quickly coming to fruition.
With an heir on the way, the noose around Missy tightened. Concerned for her health and that of the baby growing inside her, the mother-to-be was cosseted even further. Feeling trapped, constantly sick, and missing her mother and Ducky terribly, Missy’s deep depression knew no bounds. Finally, on 15 October 1893, Missy’s firstborn—a boy—came into the world at Peles Castle, the picturesque castle constructed by King Carol on the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains at the summer resort of Sinaia. Romanian doctors and clergymen had been adamant that the birth be free of chloroform, for in their eyes, “women must pay in agony for the sins of Eve.”30 They and King Carol, however, had not reckoned with Missy’s mother who, like the autocratic Romanov that she was, insisted that chloroform was necessary for the birth. Also fighting for Missy was her grandmother, Queen Victoria. One of the first women to have used chloroform to ease labor pains, Victoria knew firsthand of its benefits. King Carol received many missives from his formidable British counterpart, who insisted that Missy be given chloroform. The king gave in.
Queen Victoria was soon reporting the birth of her latest great-grandchild to the Empress Frederick, noting that “Missy’s baby arrived a fortnight before they expected it.” The eagle-eyed queen betrayed the same sense of propriety she exhibited with Sophie of Greece over the arrival date of her first baby. Missy’s baby came at the appropriate time because the queen added that its appearance was “not too soon really”31 The infant was the queen’s seventeenth great-grandchild. Not surprisingly, in deference to the new baby’s great-uncle, Missy’s firstborn child was given the name Carol.
It came as a welcome break for Missy to flee to the more amenable atmosphere of Coburg in 1894 for the marriage of Ducky to Ernie. Once there, just like the rest of the “royal mob,” Missy was gripped by the unfolding drama of Nicky and Alix, which threatened to overshadow the wedding of Missy’s sister to Alix’s brother.
At Coburg, the Kaiser finally took matters into his own hands. Willy went after the dithering Alix himself and lectured her. It worked. Alix came to a decision that would seal her fate. Willy had convinced her that her place was by Nicky’s side as his wife. Determined to see this marriage alliance secured once and for all, Willy forced a still doubting Nicky to confront Alix. Nicky then found to his amazement that the tantalizing fruit so far out of reach suddenly and miraculously fell into his hands. The tsarevitch’s description of the scene speaks for itself: “The first thing she said was…that she agreed! Oh God, what happened to me then! I started to cry like a child, and so did she, only her expression immediately changed; her face brightened and took on an aura of peace.”32 Nicholas was ecstatic: “A wonderful, unforgettable day in my life—the day of my betrothal to my dear beloved Alix.…God what a mountain has fallen from my shoulders.”33
If much of the tsarevitch’s reaction revealed a sense of utter relief that everything finally fell into place, Alix’s reaction was one of sheer joy. Her cousin and close friend, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein, recalled how “Alix stormed into the room, threw her arms round my neck, and said, ‘I am going to marry Nicky’ “34 And to her former governess, Alix wrote, “I am more happy than words can express; at last after these 5 sad years!”35
How was it that Alix finally relented after all these years—years filled with her own intractable brand of obstinacy, a trait that would manifest itself to her detriment in times to come? Ducky’s role, for one, as the new Grand Duchess of Hesse meant that there was not much point in Alix staying on in Darmstadt, where she would simply be in the way. Besides, much as they tried to appreciate each other, Ducky and Alix were never to be friends, thanks in large part to their di
ffering personalities. Living in the same small principality as the self-assured Ducky was bound to make the more gauche Alix feel out of place.
There was also Ella’s painless religious conversion, which undoubtedly helped settle her younger sister’s mind. But in the end, Alix’s unbounded love for Nicholas was the strongest factor in her decision to agree to his proposal. His undiminished devotion through the stormiest objections was more than enough to move any woman in love. Yet there was one more element in the saga that made Alix want to dedicate her life to Nicky and to Russia. For despite the fact that she was as devoted to him as he was to her, the twenty-one-year-old princess was not blind to the tsarevitch’s shortcomings. Nicholas’s fiancée understood that her gentle and loving Nicky lacked the backbone necessary to rule the vast and unruly empire that was his destiny. Even Mathilde Kschessinska sensed this, admitting that though Nicholas had the “character and will-power” to be a tsar, he definitely “did not have the gift of making his opinion prevail, and he often gave in to others though his first impulses had been right.”3 And Nicholas himself confessed his weakness to his uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir, soon after he had become emperor: “I always give in and in the end am made the fool, without will, and without character.”37 Because Princess Alix was aware of this fault, she concluded that in becoming Nicky’s wife, she could best serve God by helping Nicholas become a better tsar. Not surprisingly for the serious-minded Alix,
She accepted him in the end because it came to her that she and she alone could make him envisage duty from the only possible point of view; that her very passion for him was strong enough to evoke qualities she considered dormant; that in marrying him she would be able to guide and to counsel; that in their joint happiness they would fulfil their high duty to the utmost. And, as she reflected on those points, she came to see that she would not violate her conscience…it was her true vocation to love and to serve him. Therein lay God’s will for her.38