Alexandra's Personality Traits - Good & Bad

[Azarias]

Empress Alexandra has certainly captured a great deal of attention, good and bad.

I have explained already on another thread that I believe we must be careful about history. Whose version is it? Is it fair or accurate? Understanding history (to me anyway) is to attempt to enter the time period with it's own norms and values as well as the personalities involved. Far too often people would judge according to their own personal standards and today's convictions.

Reading from the begining of this thread there are indeed many wonderful things to say about Alexandra Feodorovna. Is it possible that history has not always been fair to her? Have some of us here been even worse?

As I wanted to point out when I began the thread, if we could see life through her eyes, perhaps she wouldn't appear as she has been "made into" in other threads.

[imperial angel]

We can't really know a persn's intentions unless we are them, true, but if we can see clearly based on their known chracter in history, we can sort of see, if not completely, and we should try to be unbiased, because Alexandra did have positive chracteristics, the whole point of this thread, after all.

[Tsarina_Liz]

Anyways... I'm not a big fan of Alexandra either but I even I can admit she had many saving graces.  Three of my personal favorites: her extraordinary talent at embroidery, her ability at caricature (which I thinks proves she had a sarcastic side   )and her genuine love of animals.

And many of you hit the nail on the head about the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  The road to Ekaterinburg was littered with them.

[RomanovFan318]

It always does seem that we tend to focus on Alix's negative charactersitics rather than her positive ones myself included.  But as any human being she had both. As for postive traits I think that she was a faithful and loving wife and a devoted mother to her children. She was caring and compassionate working as a nurse during the war and she loved animals.  

[Tania]

 "I believe that Nicholas and Alexandra's love was
  abiding and remained strong to the end"    

Tatiana+

[lilavanderhorn]

Did they know that it was the father who determined paternity back then?  It is so ironic how everyone kept on popping out boys except for Alexandra.  The Czar had one neice, Irina.  Xenia had boys, Olga had boys, Michael had a boy, cousin George, even Cousin Willy had lots of boys.  The poor woman must have been going out of her mind with all those births.  Ella had no children, Irene had sick boys as well,  I wonder if people were looking at her sisters to add to her "failures."  

[Alixz]

I have asked that same question in other threads.  Did anyone know that having a ton of girls was not the woman's fault?

Also, it is important as our Native Americans would say, not to judge another without having walked many moons in his mocassins. (I'm sure that is a terrible paraphrase.)


And also, Alix was not "evil".  She was reactive to a lot of the situations she encountered and her reactions were unfortunate.

When she became pro-active, she chose to defend and support questionable people (Rasputin) and policies.

She didn't move to Russia with the intention of bringing down the House of Romanov.  She wasn't ploting or planning, she was just trying to get through.

She became haughty and overly "regal".  She refused to see what she didn't want to see, but she did have love and compassion for people and animals.

She is probably one of the most misunderstood women of the twentieth century.  But history is indeed written by the survivors and the victorious. Historians are only now digging deeper into the written accounts and finding out that the established and published accounts have been slanted or spun.

I picked up a book in the Springfield MA public library about 30 years ago that even then made me laugh.  I don't remember the title or the author, but I will never forget that the first page began (I can't quote exacatly) "The fault for all of the problems that befell the House of Romanov and the Russian people lay directly at the feet of the Empress Alexandra."

How's that for twisted history???

[Tania]

Dear Alixz,

Thank you for your objective sharing. I wonder how it would be for the many of us to have total strangers, offer a public statement about our own lives. How well would we stand up to such scrutiny?

As the book you chanced to pick up some years ago, entitled "The fault for all of the problems that befell the House of Romanov and the Russian people lay directly at the feet of the Empress Alexandra." I think this statement is unfounded, certainly untrue. If that was some 30 years ago, and we have posters still finding fault, based on those writings, how sad, and certainly twisted ! They barely knew her then, and we still barely know her now.

As Azarias started off the thread, I also wonder, how many have considered how her life was, through her eyes ?

Tatiana+

[Tsarina_Liz]

I picked up a book in the Springfield MA public library about 30 years ago that even then made me laugh.  I don't remember the title or the author, but I will never forget that the first page began (I can't quote exacatly) "The fault for all of the problems that befell the House of Romanov and the Russian people lay directly at the feet of the Empress Alexandra."

How's that for twisted history???

Wierd, I just read something about a book like that on the last thread I was on.  It was, I believe, by a man named Radizwill.  

[Alixz]

You know it may just have been Radziwill.

The Radziwill family has been connected to a lot of European Royality.

I don't think I read the whole book, but I remember thinking "what a concept" at the time.

.

Tania  That book, I think, was written in the 1920s.

T Liz What is the other thread?

[Alixz]

I am sorry to post twice, but I had another thought about Alix's life through "her own eyes".

It reminds me of the early 1970s when women were just beginning to break through the glass ceiling.  I was promoted to Assistant Branch Manager at the bank I was working for.  Today, that is nothing, but back then it was a big step.

About 6 months after my promotion, the "big guys" decided that my branch didn't need an assistant and brought me back to the main office to   ----- answer the phones!!!!!!!!!

I had gone into a new position (country) expecting to be recognized for my strengths and training and within six months, I was being used as a "utility".

I was hurt and felt underappreciated.  I was devestated by their callousness and thoughtlessness.  Not one of those men would have accepted that having been done to them, but as a woman, I was expected to take whatever they gave me.

With new prespective, I wonder if Alix didn't feel somewhat similar to me.  She came into the country to marry the heir and to be raised up to the position of Empress.  In many ways, she was just as underappreciated as I was.  I would imagine she was also just as hurt.

I have not always been a supporter of Alix's.  In fact, there are times when I feel she was a "jerk", but when I think of my humiliation over the "empty" promotion, I think she could have seen her rise to Empress as just as empty when Marie refused to give her precedence and treated Nicholas as a little boy.

Those "slights" would have begun to shape her future responses and future reactions.  That added to her considerable shyness and pension for fatalism might have caused her to begin to withdraw.

I quit the bank altogether after nearly 8 months of this humiliating treatment, but I had already given 5 good years to that bank.  But I wasn't married to it and I didn't love it.  Alix was married to Nicholas and loved him and his country.  Even if she didn't truly understand it.

[Azarias]

Thank you Alixz, there is alot of food there for thought!

[Alixz]

That's one thing about this forum.  I have had second thoughts about a lot of my opinions since I began to read and post here.

This is about as nice to Alix as I have ever gotten.

Obviously a job at a bank and the position of Empress which Alix took to be with the man she loved is not quite the same thing.  And I doubt that she ever thought of "quitting".

Can you imagine, though, if they had not been so deeply in love?  Alexander II had his Catherine.  I am sure that divorce would have been out of the question, but who knows what else might have happened?

[Tsarina_Liz]

I do believe Georgiy mentioned it (Radizwill) on the "Alexandra as a Mother" thread.

[imperial angel]

Sometimes it is true that we can understand the emotions of people in history better if we can look at them through our eyes, because human emotional is universal, across the ages, and it never changes, but is forever new. And I think that is a good way to understand it, what Alixz posted.