Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria

by Julia P. Gelardi

  In another letter to Vicky in 1860, Queen Victoria expanded her view of marriage: “All marriage is such a lottery—the happiness is always an exchange— though it may be a very happy one—still the poor woman is bodily and morally the husband’s slave. That always sticks in my throat. When I think of a merry, happy, free young girl—and look at the ailing, aching state a young wife generally is doomed to—which you can’t deny is the penalty of marriage.”44 Mercifully for Queen Victoria, she was unaware just how closely these thoughts mirrored the conjugal experience of her innocent granddaughter.

  Within days of the marriage, the unsophisticated Missy boarded a train and began her journey to Bucharest and a new life in an exotic land in the East—a land over which she would one day be queen. Waiting to greet her in Bucharest was “der Onkel,” the imposing King Carol I, soon to be joined from exile by his wife, the outrageously bizarre Carmen Sylva. A strange and arduous stage in Missy’s life was set to begin. And, as we shall see, the seventeen-year-old Missy would need to draw upon all her resources to keep her wits about her in a new and hostile court.

  Four

  IN PURSUIT OF ALIX

  TIME HAD NOT DIMINISHED THE AFFECTION TSAREVITCH NICHOLAS had for Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. The adolescent princess had grown into a highly attractive young woman, so that when she became of marriageable age, the tsarevitch was determined to make Alix his wife.

  For the twenty-five-year-old Tsarevitch Nicholas, the day of reckoning was fast approaching. Consumed by a conflicting mass of emotions, Nicky, heir to his father, Emperor Alexander III, boarded the imperial train bound for an unscheduled visit to Germany. Just days before, Nicholas had had no intention of joining his uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir, and other members of the imperial family for the long journey. Now, he was a member of the party, uncertain as to what lay ahead, counting the hours as the train lumbered its way out of Russia and headed eastward. Confidence and doubt consumed the tsarevitch. He was both elated and troubled—elated at the thought that he was soon to be reunited with the young woman he loved but troubled that this longed-for reunion might easily turn into disaster.

  For a day and a half, Nicholas pondered, read, and endured an uncomfortable journey, punctuated by excessive heat as the train sped toward its destination, the picturesque town of Coburg in Germany. Ostensibly, Nicky was on his way to the small duchy to attend the wedding of Ernie, the Grand Duke of Hesse, to Ducky, Missy of Romania’s favorite sister. In reality, Nicholas had seized upon the chance to leave for Coburg in order to confront the groom’s youngest sister, Alix. For the Tsarevitch Nicholas was intent on one purpose: to extract from Alix the much-coveted “yes” to his quest to make her his wife.

  When the tsarevitch left Russia, all indications pointed to a daunting task ahead. Already he had been told by Princess Alix that all was over between them; Nicholas must look elsewhere for a bride. Yet for a man who throughout his life was hampered by irresoluteness, Nicky’s single-minded determination where Alix was concerned was astonishing. Although various members of the Romanov family were already set to represent the imperial family at the wedding of Ernie and Ducky, Nicholas suddenly announced to his father two days before the departure date that he too would leave for Coburg. Granted permission by his ailing father to go and propose to Alix, Nicholas’s abrupt change in plans sent the royals gathered in Coburg for the nuptials into a twitter. But none was more affected by Nicky’s sudden appearance than the object of his visit, Alix herself. Almost from the moment the tsarevitch stepped off the imperial train, there was not to be a moment’s peace for Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt.

  For the next four days—tense days full of high drama—the twenty-one-year-old Alix set the future Tsar of All the Russias on an emotional roller-coaster ride. So resolute was she in refusing to accept Nicky’s proposal, yet so insistent was the tsarevitch, that the outcome was in question right to the very end. A sense of urgency hung heavily in the air. And so immersed were the guests in the high-stakes drama that the wedding of Ernie and Ducky, instead of being the centerpiece, was turning into a sideshow.

  Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt had long occupied the thoughts of the Tsarevitch Nicholas; the two met as adolescents in the 1880s and again at the end of the decade. By 1891, Nicky’s feelings had increased in intensity. It was easy to understand why he felt this way. At eighteen years of age, the object of his desire had blossomed into a stunningly beautiful woman. Tall and slender, with lustrous gray eyes and near-perfect features framed by masses of rich golden-red hair, Alix bewitched many.

  Some observers, however, were put off by a decidedly melancholy air that already hung about the princess. This, coupled with her intense timidity, made her appear gauche and cold. But where others might view this as a strike against Alix, the Tsarevitch Nicholas was enchanted. To him, nothing marred his impressions of the princess from Hesse: Alix was perfection.

  In his diary, Nicholas wrote toward the end of 1891 that his dream was “one day to marry Alix H[esse]. I have loved her for a long time, but more deeply and strongly since 1889.…For a long time I resisted my feelings, and tried to deceive myself about the impossibility of achieving my most cherished wish! But now that Eddy has withdrawn or been rejected, the only obstacle or gulf between us—is the question of religion!”1

  The “Eddy” Nicholas was referring to was none other than Princess Maud’s brother. Efforts to educate this young man who was expected to become King of England came to naught. One glance at Eddy said it all: he was a sorry specimen. Not only did he lack any sort of intellectual prowess; Eddy also possessed a short attention span.

  Even into young adulthood, Eddy did not impress, as the Duchess of Edinburgh discovered when she and her family visited Sandringham in January 1885 in order to celebrate her nephew’s twenty-first birthday. When the time came for Eddy to receive his birthday gifts and congratulations, the duchess found him “pale” and “horribly timid.” “In a word,” wrote his aunt, Eddy “is still a real child in spite of his twenty-one years.”2 In time, Eddy also grew increasingly debauched. In fact, so bizarre was his scandalous behavior that years later the theory that he was Jack the Ripper was seriously bandied about. In the eyes of his family, the only answer was to marry him off to a suitable and sensible woman. Such, then, was the peculiar creature that Queen Victoria was foisting on her dearest of granddaughters. Eddy did not take much persuading to warm to the idea of having Alix as his wife. Just as everyone thought, he could not resist the lovely princess, duly fell in love, and proposed.

  Alix, however, was not interested in marrying the most unprepossessing of Queen Victoria’s grandsons, prompting the queen to ask, “what fancy has she got in her head?”3 That “fancy” was none other than the Tsarevitch of Russia, with whom Alix was already in love. This scuttled any plans for fulfilling Queen Victoria’s great wish.

  By the autumn of 1889, Queen Victoria had resigned herself to the fact that there was little hope of seeing her two grandchildren united in matrimony. Yet however much Alix loathed Eddy, and despite the fact that she was in love with Nicky, she was also imbued with a strong sense of duty, a result of Queen Victoria’s hands-on “mothering.” So, despite her professed dislike of Eddy, Alicky was not obstinate enough to defy orders. But Queen Victoria did not wish to force Eddy on Alix and regretfully accepted the princess’s refusal.

  Alix’s decision, in May 1890, was “a real sorrow” to Queen Victoria. However, the girl’s boldness in speaking her mind touched a chord of admiration in a woman long accustomed to getting her way. It was commendable that her darling Alicky was not swayed in her decision by the glittering prospect of the crown of England. Alix’s refusal was, in her grandmother’s eyes, evidence of courage and integrity. “This shows great strength of character” was how the queen summed up her granddaughter’s obstinacy4

  As for Eddy, soon after Alix’s rejection, he set his heart on the twenty-one-year-old Princess Hélène d’Orléans. But as a Roman Catholic, Hélène was debarred b
y English law from marrying an heir to the British throne. Even though she was willing to convert to Protestantism, her father and the Pope forbade it, putting an end to that romance.

  The choice of a wife for Eddy finally fell on the unfortunate Princess May of Teck. But weeks before the wedding, May and and members of the Wales family watched in disbelief at Sandringham by his bedside as Eddy struggled for his life. By the morning of 14 January 1982, he was dead from influenza. Maud had joined her family to bid her brother farewell, his last hours shrouded in delirium. Eddy was just twenty-eight years old.

  Once Alix rejected Eddy, Tsarevitch Nicholas redoubled his efforts at making Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt his wife, much to Queen Victoria’s horror. She loathed the Romanovs, whom she viewed as morally corrupt as well as “false and arrogant.” Moreover, Russian expansionist aims concerning Turkey and Afghanistan, which directly challenged Britain’s interests in both regions, served to inflame further Queen Victoria’s views against the tsarist empire. Neither did memories of the Crimean War help to alleviate the British monarch’s entrenched Russo-phobia. As the queen once put it succinctly: “Russia is our real enemy & totally antagonistic to England.”5

  Since Alix’s sister, Ella, had done the unforgivable by marrying Grand Duke Serge and hence gone over to the enemy camp, Queen Victoria watched Alix carefully. When the queen found out that Ella was doing all she could to promote the match between Alix and Nicky, she fumed with indignation, telling Ella and Alix’s sister, Victoria: “Behind all your backs, Ella & S. [Serge] do all they can to bring it about, encouraging & even urging the Boy [Nicky] to do it!…this must not be allowed to go on. Papa must put his foot down & there must be no more visits of Alicky to Russia—”6

  The strength of Nicky’s love for Alix can be seen in his open defiance of his parents’ opposition to the match. For just as Alexandra, the Princess of Wales, was an ardent anti-German, so too was her sister, Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia. As Danish princesses, the sisters’ anger with Prussian attempts to swallow up their father’s duchies of Schleswig-Holstein turned them into rabid Germanophobes.

  Alix’s German blood was not the only strike against her in the eyes of Empress Marie. She also knew the young woman was excruciatingly shy and more than likely ill-equipped to play her part as tsarina at the court of St. Petersburg. The demanding public role of an empress required adroit skills, which Marie was certain Alix did not possess. The princess’s aloofness and cold demeanor were bound go down badly in the Russian capital. Better that Nicky find himself a more gregarious wife than the beautiful but introverted Alix.

  Like a caged animal awaiting its release, the tsarevitch bided his time, hoping that he would be permitted to marry Alix. But more worrisome to Nicholas was the object of all this expended energy, his adored Alicky for it became evident that the greatest opposition to the match came from Alix herself! And this was all because of her steadfast refusal to forsake her religion. It was beginning to appear as if the anguished lovers were destined never to marry.

  Well aware that any future tsarina needed to belong to the Russian Orthodox faith, Alix, to whom her religion was a sincerely and deeply felt spiritual commitment, was too attached to her Protestant faith to contemplate converting. Like her mother before her, Alix had imbibed deeply the teachings reinforced by her own strong sense of faith—one honed skillfully by her spiritual mentor, Dr. Sell. Sell advised the princess that her refusal to forsake Lutheranism for Orthodoxy was truly the only option. To do otherwise was to commit apostasy, which was equivalent to spiritual suicide. The princess from Darmstadt who had already said no to the throne of England was set on rejecting the throne of Russia as well, surrendering to Dr. Sell’s admonition that “when heart and conscience are at war, it is God’s will that conscience should win.”7

  Marie Feodorovna’s own misgivings over Princess Alix as a future daughter-in-law colored the views of her husband. With his wife so implacably against Alix of Hesse as a wife for Nicky, it was not surprising to find Emperor Alexander III in agreement about his son’s choice. But even if his wife had not been so opposed, it was likely Alexander III would have found the Hessian princess too German for his taste as well, for the highly Slavophile emperor himself harbored strong anti-German sentiments, which were further exacerbated when Kaiser Wilhelm II ascended the throne in 1888. The Russian emperor found Willy excessively loud and nothing but “an ill-mannered, dishonest rogue,”8 further fueling his own suspicions about Germany. Undeterred by his failure to charm the tsar, Wilhelm II nevertheless proceeded to woo Russia in an attempt to keep the empire allied to his. Securing a German wife for the future Nicholas II inevitably became part of the Kaiser’s plan to contain imperial Russia.

  As the suspicions between Wilhelm II and Alexander III grew through the early 1890s, so too did relations between their two countries rapidly sour. Not wishing to be isolated, and in need of the foreign currency that France offered, Alexander III and his ministers set about aligning Russia with the French Republic. In no time, the unthinkable had emerged: a rapprochement between autocratic Russia and republican France, an alliance that was cemented in January 1894 by a military agreement. The Kaiser smelled danger. Germany was suddenly flanked by two powerful countries allied to each other with little sympathy for Berlin. Thus did Wilhelm pounce on the chance to play Cupid to Nicholas and Alix in an effort to secure some influence in Russo-German relations. But before that could happen, Emperor Alexander urged Nicky to divest himself of his obsession with Alix and set his heart instead on another princess in the interest of cementing the Russo-French entente. This princess proved to be none other than Princess Hélène d’Orléans—the very same Hélène who had briefly been Prince Eddy’s fiancée. For the emperor and Empress of Russia, a marriage between the tsarevitch and the French princess was a political match made in heaven, a perfect culmination of years of friendship between France and Russia.

  Thus, where Alexander III and Wilhelm II were concerned, the question of Nicholas’s choice of a bride took on added urgency. For Nicky’s wife, whoever she may be, was to become a potential weapon in the ongoing diplomatic battle brewing between the two empires. Yet there was never any doubt where Nicky’s heart lay—Hélène never stood a chance against Alix.

  Not all the pleadings of his mother or the gruff pronouncements from his huge, bearlike father intimidated the slightly built tsarevitch one bit. All their arguments fell on deaf ears. Always the dutiful son, this good-natured and Godfearing young man had never truly caused his parents much concern. However, his open defiance of them over his choice of a bride startled Alexander and Marie. For the first time, and in the most important issue of all for their son, and for Russia—the choice of a wife and future empress—Nicholas was adamant.

  Emperor Alexander grew impatient, telling his stubborn son, “She won’t have you. She’s a confirmed Lutheran.” Then, wondering what Nicholas found attractive in the intensely shy and awkward princess besides her looks, Alexander asked, “And what in the world do you see in her?” The tsarevitch shot back, “Everything.”9

  Nicholas received the same kind of comments from his mother. “Alix of Hesse,” insisted Empress Marie, “does not wish to have you. You are the heir. It is your duty to marry.” “And I shall,” replied an exasperated Nicky. “And she’ll have me yet,” he added defiantly10 Nicky declared: “It’s Alicky of Hesse—or nobody—for me!”11

  But so inflexible was Alix on the religious question that her aunt, Empress Frederick, wrote to Sophie of Greece: “I hear (and only tell you in confidence) that Alix of Hesse has now decided not to entertain the idea of marrying Nicky of Russia, though he wished it deeply, and Ella took great pains to bring it about. Alicky likes him very much, but will not change her religion on any account…I am sorry for the poor girl, and I am sorry for Nicky, as I fear he had set his heart upon it.”12

  Amidst all this, Nicky was dallying with a young ballerina, Mathilde Kschessinksa. Yet he was moved to confess, “What a surprisin
g thing our heart is!” How was it that he could carry on with Kschessinksa and long for Alix at the same time? The affair with the ballerina was just that—an affair—but it was not true love. In reality, Nicky’s heart was firmly fixed in Darmstadt. No matter how much he tried to amuse himself in order to temper his thoughts about the beautiful Hessian princess who had captured his heart, he could not succeed in eradicating thoughts of his Alicky—nor did he want to. Finally admitting defeat, he confessed: “I never stop thinking of Alix!”13

  Queen Victoria was winning this game of tug-of-war, but only just, and only because of Alix’s strong affinity to Lutheranism. Thanks to Alix’s religious convictions, there appeared little hope that this Hessian granddaughter would be sacrificed to Russia. When Ella converted to Russian Orthodoxy after several years of marriage, Alix could not understand her sister’s actions. “I’ll live and die a Lutheran,” she told Ella. “Religion,” said Alix, “isn’t a pair of gloves to pull on and off.”14 Her abiding commitment to her Lutheran faith was unshakable. If this meant that marriage to Nicky was impossible, so be it.

  But Nicky would not give up. Displaying a tenacity that surprised those who knew him intimately, he refused to countenance a future without Alix. He plied her with letters pledging his love and devotion. By November 1893, Alix was still not budging on the religious issue. She even went so far as to send Nicky’s sister, Grand Duchess Xenia, a letter explaining that all this wishing for marriage had to come to an end. “I cannot become untrue to my own confession,” Alix explained. And because this was so, “I don’t want him to go on hoping.”15