Was Alix of Hesse disliked by British royals?

[darius]

I think it would be interesting to discuss what other closely related Royal Families thought of the Empress - the Greeks and Danes for example (I always think it rather strange that neutral Denmark didn´t offer asylum to the Imperial Family.  Also, what interaction there actually was between Alexandra and Queen Victoria´s other grandchildren.

[Kalafrana]

Feodorovna

I think you make a useful point that many of Alexandra's relations simply didn't know her all that well. I come from a geographically spread-out family and have never seen much of my various first cousins, certainly not in adult life. We get on all right when we meet, but we are rather on our best behaviour. We should also remember that there was a huge age range among Queen Victoria's grandchildren, from the Kaiser, born in 1859, to Maurice of Battenberg, born 1891.

Alexandra and Marie Louise seem to have been close as girls, but didn't see much of one another as adults. The visits to the Danish relations seem to have stopped after Nicholas succeeded - any idea why this was?

Ann

[Helen]

Alix spent the larger part of the year in the Darmstadt area, and I believe that the cousins she saw most of were Princess Helena's children, who often stayed in nearby Wiesbaden.  

Alix and Marie Louise being close is something I've read in several sources. They were of the same age, but Alix mentioned Thora more often than Marie Louise in her letters to her brother. She seems to have seen Thora more often and got along quite well with her. Thora visited Alexandra in Russia from the end of October 1897 till the end of February 1898, during which period Alexandra alas fell ill with measles, I believe.  Judith Poore described this visit in detail in “The Memoirs of Emily Loch – Discretion in waiting”. She also came over to Darmstadt one or more times when Nicholas and Alexandra stayed at Wolfsgarten.

The visits to Nicholas' Danish relatives didn't entirely stop after Nicholas succeeded, but apparently they were not as frequent as before. They visited his mother's family in September 1896 (NS), and in September 1899 on their way to Darmstadt, and after a visit from the Danish to Russia, a return visit to Denmark was planned for 1911, but there may have been more visits.

[historyfan]

I think it would be interesting to discuss what other closely related Royal Families thought of the Empress - the Greeks and Danes for example (I always think it rather strange that neutral Denmark didn´t offer asylum to the Imperial Family.  Also, what interaction there actually was between Alexandra and Queen Victoria´s other grandchildren.

Given Christian X's treatment of the Dowager Empress and GD Olga when they arrived there several years later, it doesn't surprise me that he would not have offered any help to the deposed Emperor and his wife who he may or may not have had any positive feelings for.

[Alixz]

I hadn't thought about Christian X and the fact that he was king from 1912 onward. Of course, he wouldn't have offered asylum to the Russian imperials. He was a "cheap" monarch and didn't even care about his aunt.

[Robert_Hall]

I doubt that was all of it, Alixz. His priority was not to get involved in the war at any cost. Denmark was still very resentful over the Schelswig-Holstein  affair and he did not want another reason to antagonise Germany. Nor did he want his country to be a pawn for the allies.
 After the fall of Germany, all of Europe was in dire circumsatnces and catering to an defunct autocracy, albeit a relative, was not popular anywhere. Denmark was no exception.
 As witness later, Denmark was not a war nation and suffered Nazi occupation with much resistance, which would have been futile in any case. Denmark had sent monarchs to Norway and Greece, as well as Russia, it would be very difficult to be impartial in a family situation.
 I think [just my take on it] was his resentment to the Empress Dowager, was because she insisted  on living as an Empress of Russia, not on reduced circumstances. She was a rather eccentric old lady, after all.

[Alixz]

She certainly was "eccentric"  LOL

But we have looked at most of the relatives, George V, Marie of Roumania, Christian X, Constantine of Greece who was married to Sophie of Prussia, as well as the Spanish who would have taken them in.

Everyone had their hands full and hardly had time to worry about their Russian relatives after the abdication of 1917.

[Robert_Hall]

I think "taken them in" is an operative term. More likely it would have meant to "assist in their refuge". The Spanish monarchy itself was not all that stable always verging on civil war itself,, but as a neutral country, it may have been able to assist in transit.
 I have no insight at the moment on Sweden's position, being the closest to rescue, geographically. Despite the bad taste Olga left, I do not think they would have totally  sent the  rest of the family to the wolves, so to speak. There must have been something else, hidden in yet unopened archives and letters. I suspect, the  Grand Duchy of Finland might have been an issue, as it once belonged to Sweden.
 This whole scenario did not revolve around a  family of bereft Romanovs facing unknown fate, it was an issue of nations, facing a situation the would affect their own borders and fates.
 Whilst the other countries were reassessing their positions,  the Romanovs would to have seen to be  "you made your nest, now lie in it"
 It is unlikely that we will ever see written "Alix was a bitch"  simply because that would not have been  written in the society of the times, not matter how  someone may have felt. Especially in official papers. In private paper, the same and many of these were destroyed for various reasons.

[historyfan]

I have no insight at the moment on Sweden's position, being the closest to rescue, geographically. Despite the bad taste Olga left, I do not think they would have totally  sent the  rest of the family to the wolves, so to speak.

I apologize for taking the thread momentarily off topic, but by Olga, do you mean Olga Alexandrovna? I thought she got along well with her Swedish relatives?

All right, back to our regularly scheduled programming. The more I read, here and elsewhere, the more I feel that it would not matter one iota what the British or anyone else thought of Alix, or Nicholas, for that matter (who was generally liked, on a personal level, by most of his foreign extended family). They had their own (shaky) thrones and restive populations to think of.

[darius]

Perhaps we could find some information about who the Empress disliked among her family, from diaries, letters etc.  I seem to recall her writing to the Emperor making disparaging comments about the "ridiculous fat boy in a sailor suit" - I can´t find the exact quote or remember where it appeared but think perhaps she was referring to one of the Greek cousins.  Anybody?

[Kalafrana]

Could it have been Marie Pavlovna who left a bad taste in Sweden by divorcing Vilhelm?

I'm not aware of either Olga having much to do with Sweden.

As far as offering refuge is concerned, we have to bear geography in mind. A journey to Sweden or Norway could have been accomplished entirely by land, and to Denmark mainly by land, with a short sea crossing from Sweden (were U-boats operating in the Baltic?) Getting to Britain by sea from Murmansk or Archangel was possible but there was the risk from U-boats in the North Sea (I think Nicholas and Alexandra would have resisted asking for safe conduct from the Germans!) Romania was under German attack, if not occupation by that stage of the war. Getting to Greece would involve a passage through the Dardenelles, controlled by Turkey, or crossing Bulgaria, which was also an enemy power. Crossing German territory under safe conduct was out of the question as far as Nicholas and Alexandra were concerned.


Ann   

[Alixz]

Kalafrana:

I believe you are right that it might have been Marie Pavlovna (jr) who left a bad taste with Sweden.

And by 1917, even though the war had about a year and half to go the ground conditions were bad and transit from one country to another would have been quite a problem.

But I wonder why Kerensky would only have negotiated with the UK for safe haven and not tried all of the other related Allied monarchies? It seemed that once the UK said "no" no other negotiations were even tried.  Was Kerensky's government that shaky and Lenin and Co that strong by the summer of 1917 to make even trying another route too dangerous?

Or is it that, by then, all of the others were also too involved with keeping their own thrones to pay much attention to the fate of the Romanovs? And who knows, to get back to the topic, maybe the others did not like Alix enough to care and felt that she had "made her own bed" and done enough hurtful and stupid things to them - by design or by accident - that she and her family were too far down on their list of priorities to be important?

They probably knew that taking the young people without their mother was not an option that Alix would even consider and, if they didn't want the mother (for whatever reason) they just would not bother trying to negotiate for the release of the rest of the family.

[Robert_Hall]

My mistake, it was indeed Marie Pavlova. I do not know why OA came into my head. And, that is what I have been saying all along- other thrones had larger concerns.

[Thomas_Hesse]

Or is it that, by then, all of the others were also too involved with keeping their own thrones to pay much attention to the fate of the Romanovs? And who knows, to get back to the topic, maybe the others did not like Alix enough to care and felt that she had "made her own bed" and done enough hurtful and stupid things to them - by design or by accident - that she and her family were too far down on their list of priorities to be important?

This "question" is far to polemic to my taste...

"did not like Alix" might not be a possible reason not to safe the IF from being murdered. To my knowledge the Kaiser also tried to convince at least Alexandra her daughters and Grand Duchess Elisabeth to flee.

[Kalafrana]

I would agree with Thomas. Personal dislike of Alexandra would not, in my view, be sufficient to prevent royal relations from offering refuge. The realities of wartime politics are a different matter. Just to take the example of the Greeks; they were having a terribly difficult time, with Constantine being accused by the Allies of German sympathies, and problematic relations between him and Venizelos. Did the burning of Tatoi take place in summer 1917?

I also agree with Alixz about Christian X's attitude to Marie Feodorovna.

Ann