Alexandra - Slandered and Hated

[ChristineM]

I must thank the cool heads of bluetoria and Greshniya.   Your points are very sensitive as well as valid.

tsaria

[mitia]

Dear Tsarfan,
Understanding that this topic is about Alexandra's enemies, may I ask you if your conclusion is that Alexandra's worst enemy was in fact herself ?

[Forum Admin]

As happens from time-to-time, this discussion has drifted into troubled waters where none of intended it to go.   Sometimes we posting things we  later regret when passions have died down.  It seem people post things on the web they would never say in person, I am not sure why this is but it happens.  I have have found looking back on postings I have put up a few days later and wondered "what must I have been thinking at the time!".

Tsarfan, you are very articulate and a great contributor.... Christine, you are passionate and without you where would the forum be today - let alone all of your other wonderful work in Russia!  You are both friends and colleagues with similar goals.... let's step back and all take a breather in this discussion.

Since it has been mentioned here - I admit to treating the site and the forum as a type of 'shrine' to the Imperial Family.  Those who have known me will also concede I am less dogmatic and passionate about defending them aws I used to be!  I hope this is due to greater tolerance and maturity (I hope).

[Elisabeth]

Personally I am always happiest when people with totally contradictory views are contributing to the same thread. It makes for a more lively discussion and occasionally, if we are very lucky, a thrilling debate! Especially lately, when the Romanov threads have seemed to suffer a bit from the doldrums (seasonal?), I for one welcome so many different voices raised in opposition!

IMO, in an ideal world Nicholas and Alexandra would have been more cautious in their decision to marry - but how do we even know that they considered a hemophiliac child a possible outcome of such a marriage? To what extent was the illness even discussed in Alexandra's family, much less outside of it? Can we even be sure that Alexandra knew her brother Friedrich was a hemophiliac? (She was only a year old when he died.) Did she actually know she was a potential carrier of the disease? Or was this most "royal" of diseases kept very much a secret, even from those it had the most chance of afflicting? Every family has its skeleton in the closet - perhaps this particular skeleton, like so many others, simply wasn't talked about?

Furthermore, what difference would it really have made if Nicholas and Alexandra had not married? No doubt a Rasputin would not have arisen to discredit the dynasty, but wouldn't Nicholas have been very much the same as a ruler, wouldn't World War I have been very much the same as an epochal crisis? Wouldn't, in fact, the end result have been very much the same? We like to think that these dynastic problems and intrigues were decisive, but weren't they actually, by the second decade of the twentieth century, to some extent anachronistic and, in the final analysis, utterly beside the point?

Just to play devil's advocate.

 

[bluetoria]

At the time of Alexandra's marriage, her only experience of haemophilia was that of her Uncle Leopold and her brother Frittie. She had many non-afflicted uncles and a perfectly healthy brother as well as numerous healthy male cousins. (Her nephew, Henry, had not then been diagnosed, had he??) I don't imagine she even thought about being a carrier herself.  :-/

[Louis_Charles]

Personally I am always happiest when people with totally contradictory views are contributing to the same thread. It makes for a more lively discussion and occasionally, if we are very lucky, a thrilling debate! Especially lately, when the Romanov threads have seemed to have suffered a bit from the doldrums (seasonal, I suspect), I for one welcome so many different voices raised in opposition!  

Elizabeth ---

Please feel free to head over to the Survivors Thread, where dissension reigns merrily supreme!  

Regards,

Simon

[ChristineM]

Alexander III and, particularly, Maria Feodorovna were strongly opposed to the match of their heir with Alix of Hesse.   Of all the reasons given for their opposition, haemophilia was never raised.   One would have thought, had they been aware of the implications of the illness, this would have to serve to enforce their opposition.

There was no understanding of the disease.   In fact in the early 20th century, haemophilia was thought to be a disease of the blood vessels - not of the blood.    Nobody appeared aware of the hereditary nature of the disease.   Indeed most of Queen Victoria's sons survived.   Of her four sons, only one was haemophilliac. Leopold lived until he was 30+ and fathered a son.  In the end, his death was due to a morphine overdose not to haemorrhage.  

Queen Victoria may even, inadvertently, had an inkling of an hereditary factor.   When she witnessed a member of her family marry 'aristocracy' rather than 'royalty', she declared this was healthier for their 'dark' blood.

tsaria

[isabel]

I am absolutly agree with Tsaria.

In that time there was not understanding of haemophilia.

In the cases of two grand daughters of Queen Victoria, Alix and Ena (Queen of Spain), i don´t think that they thought about being carriers of the illness.

I belive that Alix was proposed to marry Eddie, Prince of Wales,...if the risk was knowing, it seems me very improbable that Queen Victoria wanted her to be the future Queen of England, and mother of the future descendents of the Windsor´s.

In my opinion, Nicholas and Alfonso XII were not warned about the risk of have haemophiliacs children.

[Tsarfan]

From the hemophilia.org website:

"In the U.S., the transmission of hemophilia from mothers to sons was first described in the early 1800s.  In 1803, a Philadelphia physician named Dr. John Conrad Otto wrote an account of 'a hemorrhagic disposition existing in certain families.'  He recognized that a particular bleeding condition was hereditary and affected males. [my emphasis)"

Leopold (Alexandra's maternal uncle) had the disease, which was reported in the British Medical Journal in 1868.  In 1873 her brother Frederick died of the disease.

So . . . transmission to males through the female line was well understood in Alexandra's youth.  Leopold's condition indicated Victoria was a carrier.  And Frederick's condition indicated Alexandra's mother was a carrier.

The existence of hemophilia in the British royal family was clearly public knowledge.  There was no "well kept secret" to it.

[Louis_Charles]

Both of her sister Irene's sons were born before Alexei, and both were haemophiliacs.

[lexi4]

Alex and Nicky were desperate for a son, that is true. I wonder if they might have been prey to the thinking "it can't happen to us." I know I have fallen prey to that at thinking at times in my life. Especially when I was younger. My father had an illness that is hereditary, did it stop my or my brother from having children? Nope. Did any of them inherit his illness? Yep. Did we think it would happen to one of our children? Nope. See what I'm getting at.
As for keeping their son's illness a secret, I don't think that is so out of the ordinary. For those of us who remember Jackie Kennedy, how long was it after she left the White House that you first knew she was smoker? Some things are just private, even to the most public people.
Someone posted earlier, can't remember who, that the thought Nicholas should have listened to his parents and refrained from marrying Alex. I have thought that at times too. But all that did was probably push them together. They were, after all, young at one time too.

[Tsarfan]

As for keeping their son's illness a secret, I don't think that is so out of the ordinary.

I don't either, at least as it applies to the period soon after Alexei's birth.  But the situation was very different after, say, Spala.  For one thing, Alexei had to be carried in public appearances.  People nearer to the throne were aware that something was seriously wrong.  His obvious illness was the source of much public and diplomatic speculation.

More importantly, Alexandra's dependence on Rasputin was moving from becoming a source of comment to a source of vicious rumors about Alexandra's personal conduct and Nicholas' inability to deal with it.  As it began to cut away at the reputation of the monarchy, the choice became one of trying to conceal the cause of a very visible illness or tolerating the widespread and hugely damaging misunderstanding about why Rasputin was admitted to the inner circle.

At this juncture, I suspect concealing the cause of the illness had more to do with protecting Alexandra than with protecting Alexei.  People would not have blamed Alexei for having hemophilia.  Many, whether justifiably or not, would have blamed Alexandra for it.

Someone posted earlier, can't remember who, that the thought Nicholas should have listened to his parents and refrained from marrying Alex. I have thought that at times too. But all that did was probably push them together. They were, after all, young at one time too.

Alexander III was young, too, when he abandoned his romance to marry his brother's fiancee.  Russian history was rife with tsars who married for state reasons instead of for love -- and with tsarinas who refrained from marrying (at least publicly) for state reasons.  This particular piece of self-denial came with the job.

To get back closer to the original topic of why other Romanovs were Alexandra's enemies, I think we have to remember the various objections Nicholas and Alexandra raised to marriages elsewhere in the family for the very reason that they damaged the interests of the dynasty.  Dmitri and Maria Pavlovna, for instance, were removed from their father's care and sent to Ella and Serge for raising when their father was exiled for an inappropriate marriage.  Yet when it came to Nicholas and Alexandra, the rule seems to have been "follow where love leads, the consequences be damned."

I agree with all the other posters who have said that an illness such as hemophilia was viewed as something akin to a character flaw in that era and was something that a family would naturally try to keep as private as possible.  That very secrecy would make it an unlikely topic to have been captured in written sources from the era.  It's one of those areas that, I fear, will always be the subject of speculation and dissent.

But some things are known.  We know that hemophilia, though misunderstood clinically in that era, was accurately understood to run in families from female carriers to male offspring.  We know that the hemophilia in the British royal family was reported in medical journals as early as 1868.  In 1873, it was confirmed that Alexandra's mother Alice was a carrier.  We know that all members of the imperial family had private physicians drawn from the most qualified ranks of the profession.  We know at least some of those physicians corresponded with their colleagues in Britain and Germany where the hemophilia of the British royal family was well known.

I have no means to prove it, but I cannot imagine Alexander III and Marie Feodorovna would not have been apprised of the risk of hemophilia in this marriage and would not have raised the issue privately -- and far off any sort of written record -- with Nicholas.

[ChristineM]

It shows an uncharacteristic determination on the part of Nicholas II that he fought so vociferously against the self denial which went with the job.

It is remarkable that there is no documentary evidence whatsoever - either from within the Imperial Family, the Court or Government, in memoirs or in papers, that amongst the, rather limp, excuses given as to the unsuitablity of Alix of Hesse as a bride to the heir of the Russian throne, when there was so powerful and valid a reason as the known hereditary implications associated with haemophilia.

I contend that Victoria and her offspring were not fully aware of the implications of this disease.   Even had the, then, rudimentary (see history of haemophilia) scientific conclusions been spelled out to Queen Victoria (if indeed the doctors dared), she would not necessarily have grasped the full implication in terms of her personal legacy.   How often do people hear only what they want to hear - in so far as medical diagnoses are concerned.

Only after the birth of her EIGHTH child (Leopold) was it obvious there was a link between Queen Victoria and haemophilia.     Given there was no previous family history, Queen Victoria was an example of spontaneous mutation. Amonst her descendants, the haemophilia gene has now died out.

Opinion should not be misconstrued as fact.

tsaria

[bluetoria]

I agree, tsaria. I don't think that any members of the family up until the time of Henry of Prussia's death were fully aware of the nature of this disease. It may have been written of in medical journals but how many medical journals does the average person (royal or otherwise) read.

Princess Alice, writing of Frittie, said, "I trust he will outgrow this illness." She clearly, for all her medical knowledge, did not understand the nature of the condition.

Queen Victoria, too, as you say, seemed rather surprised to discover that more than one member of the family had the same 'tendency to bleed' as she called it.

While Waldemar of Prussia was born before Alix's marriage, both Sigismund & Henry were born later - so Alix would not have known that one of her sisters carried the condition. Nor would she expect it in her own child, if she looked at Victoria whose children happily escaped it.

[Tsarfan]

Valid observations.

When dealing with an area that will probably never admit of definitive proof one way or the other, I think it's helpful to argue various potential scenarios and, at the end of the day, see which ones seem most tenable.

I think there's a timeline to this argument, too.  I agree that when Leopold's hemophilia was publicized in the medical press in 1868, it would probably have been of interest to but a few specialists.  However, the fact that the diagnosis warranted publication in one of the leading medical journals of the day indicates that it was viewed as significant by those specialists.

When Frederick was diagnosed five years later, however, I think the situation would have changed.  The disease, which was usually fatal in that era, was known by the medical community to be passed hereditarily.  Now two of Victoria's progeny had the disease.

Then Waldemar (who bled to death at age four) was diagnosed.  At that point, two of Alice's progeny were known to have had the disease -- i.e., one of her three sons and the first of her grandsons.  So there could have been no doubt by the time of Alix' engagement that her mother was a carrier.  In fact, fully half of Alice's male descendants had presented with hemophilia by the time of Alix' engagement.  (Eventually three of Alice's six grandsons were to have the disease.)

How likely is it that the community of doctors who took care of the royal family would not have understood the significance of that and at some point raised the issue with Victoria and others in the family?  I think it very unlikely.

The more difficult question for me is whether Alexander III and Marie Feodorovna would have been alerted.

I do not know what specific inquiry they ordered into Alix' suitability.  What I do know from studying European monarchical history is that it was almost universal practice to thoroughly investigate the backgrounds of candidates for marriage into the direct line of succession to a throne.  Geneaology was examined.  The diplomatic corps was asked to scour the landscape for rumor and innuendo that might signal incipient problems that could later erupt into significance.  Direct and lateral lines were checked for hints of such "family" diseases as madness or "melancholy".  (Remember that, even as early as Leopold's diagnosis, when Victoria protested that the disease could not have come from her, rumors became widespread in diplomatic circles about the "curse of the Coburgs".)


Would it have really gone unnoticed and unreported to Alexander and Marie that Alix' uncle, brother, and first-born nephew had the "bleeding disease"?


I admit it's possible.  But I think it more likely that they were apprised of the situation and, given the attitudes of that era, included it in the discussions with Nicholas that did not make it into the record.

The notions put forward for Alexander's and Marie's very strong objections to the marriage just don't wash with me.  A dislike of England?  Marie's own sister was the crown princess of England.  A preference that Nicholas marry into the line of Bourbon pretenders for political reasons?  What weight would that have carried on the world diplomatic stage?

Something is missing from this puzzle.