Any adult having to address the issues that Alix was forced to address would age a person imho. Her life did change considerably as most households to in those times, as it is in the present. In most families, the role of caretaker of an invalid is primarily up to the mother, and in this case it fell on Alix. In those days hemophilia was not explored as it was later medically, so there were many unanswered issues, and with those issues unanswered it can and does produce extremes of anxiety, in that alone. Being a parent, without the other issues of being head of an empire, is considerable, then as it is now, and now even more so. Focusing just on the issues of being a family as this thread is, then for these children, much imho, love was offered generously, but with strickness as it should be for young souls. The children led lives that most children in the world are not. We as readers read everything now days after the fact on their lives, and can easily point to what we think is a problem or not. But for this particular family, they led a very enclosed life, and were more or less identifiably friends, sisters and brothers unto themselves.
With this understanding, I think they came to know their weaknesses and their strengths, and grew with this to depend greatly on their family togetherness.
That the young heir apparant was looked on as special, is not out of the ordinary, from a royal family or from an improvished family. What is of greater importance is how the children were addressed in specifics of what was deemed responsible or inadmissable behaviour, and imho, i think this was addressed in how each child's personality was. Their parents were in insufferable to them, nor at all to destroy their child's persona.
This was just the way this royal family chose to raise their children, and did to the best they knew how, imho.
Tatiana+
