Was Alix of Hesse disliked by British royals?

[Helen]

I'm not necessarily thinking that Ena herself would find Alexandra tiresome, but that those who knew them both were likely to make comparisons between them.

Then I misunderstood your words. Thank you for the clarification!

[Janet Ashton]

Janet

This is my take on what you've written, which is not necessarily what you set out to write. As a writer of fiction myself, I've had people make comments on points in my writings which have never occurred to me!

And that's fine as a reading of fiction - more than happy to discuss the book and what's true and what isn't and so on on its own thread. My point here for this therad about other royalty's feelings on Alexandra was that there isn't any evidence of Alexandra feeling she was worse off than other people - or even that she noted the irony of being the only royal mother of a haemophilic child who had no other son without it, at least until her cousin Alice of Albany had Rupert (the haemophilia status of Alice's younger son Maurice being unknown, as he died in infancy).

[Janet Ashton]

As to Princess Beatrice, there is some circumstantial evidence that her son Leopold was a haemophiliac, but I find it very surprising that anyone should suggest that Maurice was - after all, he attended Wellington, as very physical public school, then Sandhurst, and was an ordinary junior officer at the time he was killed. If it is correct that Leopold was haemophiliac, then Beatrice had that to cope with while being a widow from when Leopold was seven. I'd be interested to see the evidence that Beatrice was not close to her children and not much concerned with their suffering.

Ann

It used to be very widely assumed that Maurice had haemophilia - I have no idea why, as I agree with your reasoming on him, and have never seen a source that mentions any ill-health in childhood. But even O-Level biology textbooks included him in family trees showing the inheritance of haemophilia in royal fmailies, and Massie -for example - did the same.

As to Beatrice's qualities as a mother: the only book on her I've read recently enough to recall well is Matthew Dennison's, which endorses what I thought was a common view: that Beatrice had a troubled relationhsip with her children as a result of her extreme closeness to the Queen. Dennison attributes poor performance at school and bad behaviour to this difficult relationship. There's a certain amount of material I can quote from memory from people in the Queen's circle, including one lady (and I'm afraid I don't recall who this was; it may have been Louisa Antrim) who was partcularly upset by Beatrice's apparent coldness to Leopold during a bleed (reflecting a general distance which this source had also noted), and wrote: "Leopold is an angel child, so sweet and attractive; he pines for someone to cling to; needs petting and spoiling."

Whether difficult behaviour was a result of their relationhsip with their mother or not, the two elder Battenberg children don't seem to have been very well-liked by their young cousins (perhaps the cousins in turn were jealous of the attention they got from the Queen?); in fact, it's hard to find ANYONE with a nice word to say about Alexander Carrisbrooke throughout his life: time and time again the same remarks about pompousness and affectation come up from sources as diverse as the Duke of Windsor and Dmitri Pavlovich.

[Kalafrana]

I will need to read Matthew Dennison's book before I pontificate further on Princess Beatrice.

I don't know much about Beatrice's elder children, but Maurice was very fondly remembered by Princess Marie Louise.

As to Maurice's health, I can only suggest that an assumption that he was haemophiliac may have been made if he bled to death when he died from wounds. But at a time before blood transfusions, plenty of entirely healthy young soldiers bled to death.

I was impressed with 'The German Woman' - can't say I enjoyed it because I found Alexandra so tiresome - but well-written and a compelling read.

Ann

[Eddie_uk]

I believe it was Marie Mallet that remarked on Princess Beatrices mothering skills, or lack of.

[darius]

Ena's eldest son was indeed near contemporary with Alexei. However, as Alexandra and Ena didn't know each other well and hardly ever met each other after 1894, it seems rather unlikely that Ena's personal contacts with Alexandra gave her much reason to think that Alexandra was 'tiresome' because of an alleged "air of martyrdom, her self-righteousness and obsession with her children".

We might also bear in mind that in some ways Ena was under an even greater imperative to produce healthy sons, ... I can't help thinking that the adjective some of Alexandra's relations might have used of her was 'tiresome' - her air of martyrdom, her self-righteousness and obsession with her children.

Added to this the fact that the Empresses portrait gazed down ominously at Victoria Eugenia from the wall of Madrid´s royal palace on the night of her flight and that Alfonso XIII was one of the crowned heads who actively tried to secure the Imperial Family´s escape would seem to point to the fact that Victoria Eugenia had a high regard for the Empress.

[Janet Ashton]

I was impressed with 'The German Woman' - can't say I enjoyed it because I found Alexandra so tiresome - but well-written and a compelling read.

Ann

Thanks - I'm glad it works as literature, because that was the aim. I am suspicious of fiction which tries to instruct the reader and ends up sounding desperately bland - thinking here of the "X's diary" type thing, which is usually aimed at children, admittedly, but deprives the "narrator" of any character remotely resembling the historical person they represent.  The intention of "The German woman" was to capture Alexandra's own voice. Some readers probably don't like this, because she was very distinctive and her sentences ran on and on, but you can't please all readers all the time! :-)

Best of luck with your own novel!

[Kalafrana]

Janet

Thanks.

I'm not worried about Alexandra's sentences running on and on! Rather that she was terribly self-righteous, adopted double standards (you have her complaining about being called Baby when she was small, but look at what she called Alexei!), and spoilt her younger children to an appalling degree (I see her as being just like these modern mothers who sit smiling indulgently as their adored offspring run round restaurants shrieking!).

I'm never going to find her a sympathetic figure but I liked the book.

Regards

Ann

[Alixz]

I know how fiction can be misinterpreted as not everyone sees the point that the author is trying to make.  I read Janet's book a long time ago and, frankly, don't remember much. I know I liked it well enough when I read it.

But fiction isn't what we are talking about here.  We need to find sources who might have said (besides George V) that Alexandra was not liked by everyone in the extended British Royal Family. 

We know that most of Russian Society didn't like her for various reasons.  Perhaps those same reasons applied to her other royal connections and relatives.

I guess I will never see her as a sympathetic figure either, although I can understand the confusion and self doubt that must have plagued her after the birth of Alexei.  It is her reaction and then the road she took to find answers that leaves me not liking her.

[feodorovna]

My mother was always most emphatic that "Nobody likes him/her." This, of course, as I was to discover much later, was merely her way of asserting the correctness of her own viewpoint, and at the same time relieving her of sole responsibility for it, so it is well within the realms of possibility that George V, once remarked that "Nobody likes Alexandra, she is/says/doesn't.....," since when, the general impression has been that the BRF disliked her. Seeing so little of her, I wonder how he could have jumped to such a conclusion..........but knowing little of a person never stopped my mother!!!!!

[Eddie_uk]

Please could someone be so kind as to post any quotes George V wrote about Alexandra? I have searched and not found any.

I am finally reading Lady Lyttons Court Diary, she is full of praise for Alexandra, how nice and charming she is. Interestingly Alexandra was concerned her Aunt Beatrice didn't see enough of her own children.

[Kalafrana]

THe British royal family then was quite a large extended family, and included some fairly forthright people. On that basis, it is pretty much inevitable that they would not all have liked one another. Alice of Athlone, for example, wasn't keen on the Empress Frederick (see her book).

I can't help wondering whether Princess Beatrice was a more realistic sort of parent than Alexandra, who was Smother Mother personified!

But we do need some evidence. I will try to look up Alice's book when I get home, but from memory I don't think she has much to say about Alexandra, not having known her well.

Ann

[Alixz]

We know that Alexandra and her mother-in-law were not on the best of terms and since Empress Marie was the sister of the Princess of Wales, Princess Alexandra (until 1901) I wonder just how much of her opinion she expressed and how much of it was passed on to the Prince of Wales and therefore into the Wales family?

George V was, of course, a Wales.

I have been trying to find out where the George V info came from and who else, besides the Russian relatives, made disparaging remarks about Alexandra.

[Eddie_uk]

 Queen Alexandra wrote to George V in 1917 that the death of Rasputin was "only regretted by poor dear Alicky who might have ruined the whole future of Russia though his influence" & went on to add that "Alicky thinks herself like their Empress Catherine"

All I have found so far.   

 Interestingly included in "Edward VIIs Children" there is a sweet letter that Alexandra wrote to George V on the death of his father.

[Kalafrana]

As I suspected, Alice of Athlone says almost nothing about Alexandra and expresses no opinion. A pity - I would love to know what the no-nonsense Alice really thought of her!

Alice was clearly a much less obsessive mother than Alexandra. Around 1912-13 she and Alexander left their children behind when they went to the Far East for three months to attend the coronation of the King of Thailand, and later left Rupert at Eton when Alexander became Governor General of South Africa. She did go home in 1926 to 'get him settled into Cambridge' and was most impressed that he had worked as a railway fireman during the General Strike!

Incidentally, Alice met Boris Vladimirovich on the Thailand visit, and says, 'He was very agreeably, but he drank too much'.

Ann