From what I've observed in others around me, it must be very, very difficult, not to say annoying, to be married to a very passive person----in this case, Nicholas. (Of course, there were reasons why he was so passive, but that's for another topic!)
I think this might have been the reason for all the nagging in those letters that Alexandra sent him.
On the one hand, this passivity might be viewed by others as 'saintly', however Saints are very difficult to live with.
Generally, a passive person resists making decisions. They wait for someone else around them to make their decisions for them; and if those decisions turn out to have been the wrong course, the person who made the decision (or the person who did all the nagging) is the one who is blamed.
Now Nicholas must have been verbally nagged at by not only Alexandra but by the generals, his relations, etc. If so, he was probably psychologically frozen, by the time WWI came to be.
But those generals, his relations, etc didn't write down every conversation they had with Nicholas, at the time; whereas we have Alexandra's letters .
Can you imagine, being married to someone who can't make a decision, who is totally passive in this way, and here you have a social situation where you can see clearly what is happening; that the world you know is crumbling around you and you are totally powerless (you are 'just the wife' ) to do anything about it and here is the TSAR!!!!, the one who does have the power to do something.....and he does nothing!
I think we would have done the same kind of nagging if we were Alexandra. What was her alternative? She had to try to do something.
As for her other negative traits: she was an Introvert. It's just as difficult for an Introvert to become an Extrovert (and thereby please Society; parties, etc)---as it is for an Extrovert to become an Introvert.
I may have mentioned this before, but occasionally my friends try to get me (and Introvert) to attend parties. I tell them (the extroverts), 'sure, if you promise, first, to sit still in my living room with me, for 2 hours and read a book'. At that point with the look of horror in their eyes, they usually leave me alone.
--Adele