When one sees Alix in pictures, she looks distant and sad.
In her time, people did not smile in pictures as we do today and so to judge her by her expression would be wrong.
However, my husband and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary and when I compare my own photo from our wedding day to our tenth anniversary to our twenty fifth, I see a great change in my facial expression.
Where twenty five years ago, I looked excited and hopeful, by year ten, I had given birth to our only son who is Autistic. I looked distant and much sadder than I had ten years prior. Now at twenty five years (Alix and Nicky had only 24 years allotted to them) I can see even more distance and sadness in my smile. I don't do this on purpose, in fact, I don't even know I have done it until I see the pictures.
My life, with the exception of my son's ill health, is nothing like that of Alix's, but everyday disappointments and years of yearning and working for a "cure" for my son have left me looking much like Alix looks in her pictures. I, too, have days when I would rather be anywhere else than a party or in public. When my son was young, I refused to leave him, as the experts say one should do, to get some down time for myself. I was on duty 24 hours a day seven days a week.
As the years have passed, I have become a sort of "wraith" in the lives of my old friends. They became so used to me refusing their invitations that they ceased to invite me. I was always tired and not very much fun any way.
When I first began to read Russian history, I disliked Alix so completely that I couldn't understand why Nicky married her or stayed with her. Granted, she had not the training to be an empress (thankfully since I don't have that either, I am so glad that I would never have to try to be one) and she brought ideas into the Russian Court that were laughed at and derided by the family.
She was shy (but to me, that was no excuse as she knew the job requirements and should have worked more on learning them) but her constant pregnancies along with sciatica and the disappointment of not having a son and heir only served to increase her separation from the court.
Then to have that longed for son be a victim of medical fate and inherit hemophilia must have been unbearable. Some women would have just broken completely at this point. But luckily, Alix had Nicky and his support and love and the spine of a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
She dealt with her tragedies badly, but she dealt with them. That, I think, is at the center of all the controversy about Alix.
Would history have been kinder to her if she had just had a complete breakdown and retired from life? Or is it better that she stayed (with all of her "medical" problems) in the fray and fought the good fight even if she fought it badly? (And believe me fighting the "good fight" can wear anyone down and then cause that person to make hasty or bad decisions.)
So I see her not as "snobbish or sensitive". I see her as a woman, who like Jackie Kennedy Onassis, had to just keep on going, no matter how many horrible things were tossed her way.
Since I am not a public figure, I have a lot more latitude, but both of these women did what they could in relation to their times and their heartbreaks. When Jackie withdrew from life to give her children a "normal" childhood, she was judged as well.
So not "snobbish". Perhaps too "sensitive" Perhaps just women dealing and making the best of the lousy hand each got.
