Authors: Carolly Erickson
T
sar Alexander, that giant of a man with a look as cold as steel, that much admired ruler whom his subjects called Alexander Mirotworetz, Creator
of Peace, had collapsed suddenly, and his doctors insisted that he be taken to his estate at Livadia, on the Black Sea, and given a complete rest.
It was the end of September, 1894, and Nicky, having agreed to meet Alix at Wolfsgarten, was just preparing to leave to join her there. Startled by his father’s sharp decline, and made
uneasy by the firmness of the imperial physicians’ directives, he felt he had to accompany the family to Livadia rather than go to Hesse, and cancelled his plans.
The tsar had not been well for some months. His huge, cumbersome body swayed ominously when he walked, his immensely broad shoulders had become somewhat stooped and the skin of his round,
black-bearded face had taken on an unhealthy pallor. At times he had difficulty breathing. He was only forty-nine, and until this year his health had always been exceptionally good, his physical
strength phenomenal. But some said he would not survive this abrupt collapse, and there were murmurs of concern about the succession, for it was generally assumed that Nicky, with his clear, kind
eyes and gentle manner, his slight frame and sensitive mien, would be shoved roughly aside by his domineering uncles once the tsar was dead, and there would be a struggle for power.
Frightened and ill-equipped to cope with the crisis, Nicky asked for permission to bring Alix to Livadia, and his parents agreed. He missed her: he needed her support to steady him. Though the
doctors
did not say that his father was dying, Nicky had only to look at him to sense that, if he did not die, he would at least be incapacitated, and for a long time;
already the government papers sent in a steady stream to Livadia from Petersburg were being given to Nicky to read and sign, and he was finding this work a great strain.
He had always feared and dreaded the day when he would become tsar, and taken comfort from his father’s relatively young age and robust health.
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To be sure, there was the ever-present danger that Alexander might be assassinated, as his father had been, and attempts on his life had been made. But Nicky, ever the
fatalist, was not overly concerned about that, and had always made the assumption that he would not have to take on the burden of the throne himself for a very long time to come.
Now, though, watching his dearly loved father, that Hercules who had once been able to tie an iron poker into knots, who could bend a solid silver rouble with his thumb, slip daily more and more
into enfeeblement, Nicky was forced to confront the probability that the terrifying task of rulership would soon become his.
If Alexander III were to die before he was fifty, he would indeed be an anomaly, but then he had always been an anomaly, not only in the strength and girth of his outsize body but in his manner
of living. He looked, many thought, like a very large Russian peasant, and within his palaces he lived in peasant style, simply and without formality, wearing whenever possible the baggy trousers,
soft bloused shirt and sheepskin jacket of a Russian villager. He wore his clothes, in fact, until they tore at the seams, and then he asked his valet to patch them.
All his life Nicky had watched his father working at his big desk, his dog at his feet, tall stacks of papers before him. He had worked doggedly, frequently angrily, scribbling insults to his
ministers (‘Fools! Idiots!’) in the margins of the documents he signed, muttering to himself about the perfidy of the European states and condemning Queen Victoria in particular as a
‘nasty, interfering old woman’.
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He had made the task of rulership seem gruelling and distasteful – not an honour and a privilege
to be cherished but a cross of
martyrdom, to be carried while in a mood of constant irritation. And Nicky was well aware that his father would have preferred to pass on
that cross, that obligation, to his favourite son Michael, and not to Nicky himself, who had the misfortune to be the firstborn. Michael was still an adolescent, but in the tsar’s opinion he
alone, of the three imperial brothers, displayed the self-confident, frank manner of one born to rule; Nicky was too soft and self-effacing, too easily swayed by others, and the third son Georgy,
clever but shallow, lacked the seriousness to take on the imperial authority.
Alix received Nicky’s telegram at Wolfsgarten, telling her of the tsar’s grave illness and asking her to come to the Crimea, and immediately she made plans to join her fiancé.
She knew he would be in anguish, worrying about his father and grieving at his suffering and at the same time dreading the looming probability of having to step into his shoes. He was bound to need
her comfort, reassurance and strength, and she had to be with him.
She had worries of her own just then, for she had discovered, once she returned to Hesse from England, that a rift had developed between Ernie and his wife. Ducky was pregnant, miserable and
full of grievances. She poured out those grievances to Alix – ‘in her open way she speaks about everything’, Alix told Nicky in a letter, implying that Ducky’s revelations
concerned her intimate life with Ernie. Alix took pride in her own sophistication, in her knowing things ‘others don’t till they are grown up and married’.
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She could listen without being shocked, and she could understand. But the rift, though not entirely unexpected, was upsetting. Ernie had tried, against his nature, to
make a conventional marriage, and the effort was failing. There would be an heir to inherit his grand ducal throne, but if Ducky continued to be outspoken, there would also be a scandal.
Alix set out from Wolfsgarten, accompanied by Gretchen von Fabrice, Baroness Grancy, and her sister Victoria, who travelled with her party as far as Warsaw. From there the others went on alone,
across the Ukraine, the air growing warmer as they made their way southwards.
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Frosty mornings gave way to mists and fog as their
train carried them past rain-soaked fields from which the grain had been harvested, only the pale stubble remaining. For days they journeyed on through the flat plains, with longer and
longer stretches of track between towns and villages. Cut off from word of what was happening in Livadia, Alix must have worried over what she would find when she arrived.
At Warsaw Ella joined Alix and her party, and brought news. The tsar was still alive, but his condition was worsening. Bertie had been sent for from England, and would make the journey as soon
as he could. Meanwhile, no one was in charge at Livadia, and all was in disorder.
When Nicky came to meet Alix, Ella and the others at the mountain town of Simferopol he looked stricken. It was all too much for him, having to fend off his father’s ministers with their
contradictory advice and suggestions and to struggle to keep his equilibrium while the loud-voiced Uncle Vladimir and the strong-willed, sinister Uncle Serge tried to influence, if not control, his
every move. His mother was beside herself with anxiety. The doctors, all but helpless, offered neither comfort nor hope. And Nicky himself, torn between attending to his father’s governmental
affairs and sitting by his bedside, listening to his increasingly shallow breathing, watching his vitality ebb, was tense and miserable.
The long slow drive from Simferopol to the southern coast of the Crimea wound through mountain passes, along swift rivers and in among green hills. Thick oak forests led to a high, twisting,
boulder-strewn pass, then to a plateau beyond which the land sloped away towards the broad bay. On high cliffs overlooking the brilliant expanse of dark blue sea were perched an array of handsome
large whitewashed villas set in gardens blooming with oleander, wisteria and abundant roses. Flowering vines covered the walls, even in October, and the warm sun shone down on green lawns and
groves of cypress, and left a golden wake across the deep blue of the water. The air was full of the scent of grapes and there were vineyards and orchards set in among the mansions, giving the
entire panorama a lush Mediterranean atmosphere.
When Alix and Nicky drove up to the imperial mansion, they were given a formal welcome. With old-fashioned politeness Tsar Alexander had insisted on dressing up in
uniform to meet his future daughter-in-law, though the effort left him prostrate afterwards. It was all he could do to recline on a sofa brought out onto a balcony, his huge bulk swathed in a
blanket despite the balmy weather, his oxygen tank by his side. He was sleeping much of the time during the day, waking fitfully at night and suffering severe nosebleeds and attacks of nausea.
Every new attack brought his children, Minnie, and all the doctors to his bedside, while the other relatives, ministers and servants congregated nearby, listening and waiting for the latest medical
pronouncement. In the intervals between crises the family went into the chapel to pray, while the court officials huddled in panic-ridden clusters and the servants, sorrowful and lost, wandered
aimlessly from room to room, many with tears running down their cheeks.
Nicky took refuge from all the strain and chaos in Alix’s room, where she sat, outwardly composed, and embroidered a chalice cover to be used in the rite when she joined the Orthodox
church. They prayed together, and he told her of his difficulties. They went for walks and drives together, though with each passing day the tsar’s crises seemed to come more often and Nicky
could not afford to be away for long.
‘A sad and painful day!’ Nicky wrote in his diary a week after Alix’s arrival. ‘Dear Papa did not sleep at all and felt so bad in the morning that they woke us and called
us upstairs. What an ordeal it is.’
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No one was in charge, not the doctors, not Nicky, not even Uncle Vladimir, whose bluster added to all
the agitation.
‘Darling boysy,’ Alix wrote in Nicky’s diary, ‘me loves you, oh so very tenderly and deeply. Be firm and make the doctors, Leyden or the others, come alone to you
everyday and tell you how they find him. Don’t let others be put first and you left out.’ She urged him to ‘show his own mind’ and not let others forget who he was –
the heir to the throne.
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It was now clear that Nicky was only days, perhaps hours, away from succeeding his father. Yet the closer he came to entering his
inheritance, the weaker and less
assertive he grew. Only in Alix’s presence could he find relief from the emotional turmoil that ate away at him, and that was apparent to all who saw him. The tsar was dying, the tsarevich
was sinking under the weight of his fear and suffering. The entire edifice of settled life seemed to be tottering, and chaos loomed.
Finally, on November 1, the long ordeal ended. ‘My God, my God, what a day,’ Nicky recorded. ‘The Lord has summoned our adored, dear, deeply beloved Papa to Him. My head is
spinning, I don’t want to believe it – the awful reality seems so unjust.’ After a traumatic morning during which the exhausted patient was continually given oxygen, he mustered
the energy to take communion, then repeated a short prayer and kissed his wife. Soon afterwards, with a priest holding his head and his sons and daughter nearby, he went into convulsions and
died.
‘It was the death of a saint!’ Nicky wrote. ‘Lord, help us in these terrible days!’ Now the full weight of all he faced seemed to fall on Nicky, as he wept for his
father, for himself, for the unknown future. According to his brother-in-law Sandro, Nicky ‘could not collect his thoughts’. He took Sandro to his room and collapsed in grief, his raw
suffering painful to see.
‘What am I going to do?’ he cried out. ‘What is going to happen to me, to you, to Xenia, to Alix, to mother, to all of Russia? I am not prepared to be a tsar. I never wanted to
become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling. I have no idea of even how to talk to the ministers. Will you help me, Sandro?’
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Help was needed, and immediately, for the funeral arrangements had to be made, the world had to be told of the passing of the tsar, the ministers reassured and guided. Nicky’s first
actions as tsar would set the tone for his reign. He had to make decisions, delegate responsibilities, oversee arrangements, all the while assuming the role of patriarch of the large and unruly
Romanov family.
He did none of this. Hours passed, and the chaos in the house mounted. Frightened servants cowered in dread, or ran from room to room, unable to carry out their duties. No one was in charge.
Throughout the huge sprawling mansion there was a feeling of emptiness and loss, of a world coming to an end. By his death Alexander Mirotworetz, Creator of Peace, had
become the destroyer of order and calm, the sower of desolation. Suddenly there was no order, no solid ground, all was unravelling.
As if to underscore the emotional devastation the weather abruptly changed. The air turned cold, and a gale blew up from the sea, churning the bay into frothy waves and blowing fiercely along
the flower-covered balconies and whitewashed terraces of the imperial mansion. The wind tore at the gardens, lashed the branches of the trees and moaned under the eaves, its sonorous, eerie voice
an echo of the bewildered sadness and disorientation felt by the entire household.
It was all Nicky could do, late that night, to drag himself through the Prayers for the Dead, held in the death-room by the clergy. ‘I felt as if I were dead also,’ he
recorded.
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It was all he could do to hold himself together, buoyed up by Alix, whose constant reassurances and promises of help made the terrible
pain he felt bearable – but only just. He could not comfort his mother, whose grief all but incapacitated her, or reach out to his sisters and brothers in their sorrow. Save for Alix’s
nurture, he was alone. And he was now Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia.
He was now the tsar – yet his uncles, feuding with the agitated imperial ministers, ignored him in the days after Alexander III’s death. Vladimir and Serge bullied and commanded,
trying to organize the funeral cortege. A temporary casket had to be made, the imperial train ordered. Officials in Petersburg had to be given detailed instructions about the funeral so that they
could make preparations. The body could not be transported over the mountains, it would have to go by sea to Sebastopol. The Black Sea Fleet had to be contacted, with orders to despatch a vessel to
Livadia at once. So much had to be done, and so quickly.