Re: What and Who is Alexei to you?

[nena]

Excuse me, I find the adjective 'normal' very not suitable in this case. What are even parameters for being normal? The boy was ill, believe me me, if he had had any choice, he would have chosen healthiness and more peace to sadness. I really don't know how long he would have lived further, but I wonder sometimes 'Did it have to be like that?'.

Not to be topic -off now; Alexei is simply one human enigma, person and brave boy who admired happiness and love and life. Despite his illness, he adored to help the others and knew some qualities of life...and existence.  And sometimes he found the death as his the only save.

[Kalafrana]

I am using 'normal' in the sense of healthy, and not unduly cosseted. Because Alexei was haemophiliac, he not only spent far more time with his parents and other adults than was usual at that time for upper-class boys, but what little time he spent with other boys must have been very closely supervised. This, in my view, would exacerbate his less pleasant tendencies as he would not get the rough edges knocked off him, or learn the hard way that there were some things that would earn him a bloody nose.

Ann

[rosieposie]

Sorry Ann,  as someone that has  a medical condition such as myself I think using terms as "NORMAL" is degrading to people who have physical problems etc.   From my experience I see myself as "NORMAL" but with a physical condition that doesn't stop me doing "NORMAL" things.   So it makes me mad when people such as yourself see people with problems as posting as In a sarcastic tone "Well you know he did have a condition, and he was a brave little boy despite it and I bet that a would be a lot stronger if he was physically normal in personality wise."


I have put up with people like your view  a lot and in the years I have basically ignored it,  being from a small community I already have an image that defines me in their view of what I am like because of my weak muscle condtion.  I have had people patronize me and condesend me in public ie a post office worker who actually asked if they could write on the envelope for me.  After I gave her a look she looked embarassed and said "People have asked me to write on the envelope for them".  Yes I do have hands and I can write well enough that it is legiable.   I also hate when people go up to my grandmother (whom I was raised by) and they go "Oh she is doing so well for herself."  Or they ask how I am going only that they saw me the day before and didn't even bother asking me but go running to my grandmother asking.    

Same can be said about my grandmother,  who likes to bring it up about how she would never have thought that I would get my licence (I have a full licence) or I couldn't do other things such as working my way to my last two years of University and working part time.   It really hurts when she goes on about it and then laughs at my uncordination on Wii which actually I am pretty good on.    Or the fact she point out blank said I should have my tubes tied.   Which was horrific and made me feel like I should be ashamed of my condition.  Hence why I am so outspoken on forums such as this,  because in the real world if they know me they treat me as either a) Healthy person or b) a person who is defined by their physical illnesses.

My boyfriend's mother recently spoke to me and said "I know you have a physical condtion,  people do talk."   I just rolled my eyes at her and said "So it doesn't stop me being who I am."  


Yes I see you mean as a sense of health, but a plain way to have put it out there is On due to Alexei's condtion of Hemophillia blah blah blah blah.

This people is why in to answer this topic about Alexei.   To  me I can see where he was coming from, when he couldn't go out and play like the others.  The fraustration of having constant people watching his every move and how he spent a lot of time with his parents and sisters.  

You don't physically need to be bopped on the nose or rough up physically to have your personality shaped.  I believe he was an observer and thinker and being babied because of his condtion made him reliease that not only did he have a problem that most children he knew didn't have, but he was also very important for the world he lived in.   He wanted to be healthy and play like the other boys. (I used to hate having physical thearpy to loosen my muscles and wondered why none of my peers had to go through it.)    I saw a photograph of him riding his special built tricycle while his friends rode bicycles.   It would have made him feel like just another thing drawing attention to his condtion.   Of course he was most likely out having fun.
That is why he is what he is to me.   Another kindred spirit whom had to endure similar circumstances with other people.

[Kalafrana]

Rosieposie

Apologies for my careless use of 'normal'.

For the record, I am not being sarcastic about Alexei. I do not see him as a 'brave little boy' blah blah blah. (Incidentally, I detest the use of 'little' for anybody over the age of three).

I think that it was inevitable that his personality was to a considerable extent shaped by haemophilia and the cosseting and spoiling that resulted from it. Obviously physical conditions, or whatever we call them, will have different effects on different people. One of my maternal uncles was partially deaf from birth, another deaf to about the same degree as a result of being blown up in WW2 at the age of 15. Both got progressively much deafer as they got older. They were completely different people. The first had, to use that horrible modern phrase, 'come to terms' with his deafness, and had what might be called a sunny disposition, although he had the particular misfortune that his great passion and ability was for music (he was a very gifted pianist, even though he could not hear 40% of the notes on the piano). The other was a very ruthless and driven individual (could be charming, but definitely not a man to cross). To what extent the difference was innate and how much was due to one being deaf from birth and the other from a teenager is an open question, but I think Uncle No.2 (actually the elder) was going to be much the same anyway. Losing his hearing (and his original career as a Merchant Navy officer) exacerbated his existing traits. With his brother, we simply cannot know (incidentally, he wasn't treated in any 'different' fashion as a boy because of being deaf, because nobody realised he was all that deaf until he was turned down for military service because of it).

Back to Alexei. I have to admit that some of my view of Alexei is a backlash to the 'sweet little darling' view which largely prevailed until fairly recently. I think he was frustrated by his illness, and not being able to do things like riding a bike. I  am quite clumsy and uncoordinated (got kicked out of a karate class as 'unteachable', I am an Army Cadet Force instructor but a disaster on the drill square), and get thoroughly frustrated over the time and effort it takes me to pick up any new skill. Maybe undiagnosed dyspraxic, I don't know. Being laughed at because of it doesn't help, nor does the fact that my brother is sufficiently well-coordinated to have been a budding gymnast in his younger days. I'm 50 now, but the humiliation is still there.

With Alexei, on the one hand you have the cosseting, the spoiling, the being babied, on the other the frustration. Plus when he died he was an adolescent.


Ann

[rosieposie]

Ann, you story of your uncle being rejected by the military reminded me of my own great grandfather,  he really wanted to go overseas to do his thing for the war.   He got rejected because he had a lazy eye and one of the medical memebers said to him "If you went you wouldn't be able to see if your shooting the enemy or us." 
So they put him on packing and shipping off creates of supplies.   

Oh yes the spoiling,  I can sympathise with Alexei on that one too,    as mentioned I was raised by my grandparents and I too got spoiled by my Aunt who was 12 when I was born, my uncles etc.     I was the one at Christmas who had the most presents (sometimes still do) but I was disiplinced accordingly if I did something wrong which I think Alexei wasn't. 

I don't know if you have seen a picture there is around here of Maria looking like she is being scolded by the nanny (Maria and nanny's expression looks like this scenerio) while Alexei (I think he is 5/6) is standing there looking at a toy.  Could be that Maria took the toy off Alexei and the nanny made her give it back to make Alexei happy.

Oh yes by the time he was a teen,  he would have become fully aware of his condtion and not sure how to come handle it with the events going around.

[Kalafrana]

I don't know what my uncle thought about being turned down by the army in 1945, but apparently his father was mightily relieved that he was found unfit for any kind of service. By that time 10% of conscripts were being sent into coal mining; according to my mother, my grandfather wasn't worried about Uncle Gerald in the army, but he was having sleepless nights at the thought of Uncle Gerald down a coal mine!

I think the big problem with Alexei was that there was no counter to all the spoiling he got.

I don't think I've ever seen the picture you're referring to, but as an eldest I had plenty of experience of being told off for not being 'nice' to my brother (who was a perfect pest a lot of the time!)

Ann

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After my message on Alexandra Feodorovna, a message about Alexei Nikolaevich.

Many anecdotes in this thread, few sources. For my part, I will put the link of a book that seems little known:

Jules Legras, Memoirs of Russia

https://archive.org/stream/mmoiresderussi00legr#page/96/search/allumettes

Jules Legras is a French ethnologist, specialist of Russia. In 1916 he gave military lectures in Russian armies, and even became an officer in the Russian army.

He has met the emperor many times, and he is a very frank man. His memoirs are fascinating because he honestly says all that was wrong in Russia at that time. One feels he was rather sensitive to the revolution, but he says very nice things about the emperor.

Jules Legras meets Alexey at the stavka (pp. 97-98). He dines with the emperor and his son.

He says that:

He was "lively and cheerful like a chaffinch"

When smoking, Alexei plays with matches. Contrary to what Jules Legras thought, Alexei, at the end, put the matches in their box.

He says he was a very kind, polite and orderly boy.

Of course Alexey was mischievous, he made mistakes, he was not always nice. But all those who knew him at the stavka say good of him. I am also thinking of Hanbury-Williams.

Some information that I have read here reminds me of several French articles I read in revolutionary newspapers. Others remind me of Marie from Romania. Apart from Nicholas II, this woman hated the Russian imperial family, so that's not surprising.

[DNAgenie]

Some information that I have read here reminds me of several French articles I read in revolutionary newspapers. Others remind me of Marie from Romania. Apart from Nicholas II, this woman hated the Russian imperial family, so that's not surprising.

Marie of Rumania was the daughter of Prince Alfred of Saxe-Coburg, and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, so she was Nicholas II's first cousin, and Empress Alexandra's second cousin. She would have been double cousins with Alexis and probably knew him quite well. There were all sorts of political and family issues involved in their relationship and these should be kept in mind when analyzing family comments. But of course that applied to all the European Royal families.

I am related to them all, though more distantly, so that helps to see all sides of the picture. Alexis was my fourth cousin once removed, 5th cousin, 4C2R, 5C1R, 5C2R, 5C3R, etc.

[PAGE]

"She would have been double cousins with Alexis and probably knew him quite well"

Unfortunately, even in Russia, many Romanovs barely knew Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna.

The so-called espionage of the Empress is a good proof. For example, I think of Countess Vorontsova-Dashkova's memories of the 1916 conspiracy against the Empress.

So I doubt that the Romanian royal family knew the imperial family very well. I could be wrong (I do not have the exact words in mind), but his words about Olga for example are not representative of the Grand Duchess.

In general, the Romanian authors' remarks are violent against the imperial family. I am also thinking of Princess Bibesco, who was present in 1914 during the visit of the imperial family to Romania.

The failure of the union between Olga and Prince Karol was, I think, perceived as an affront in Romania.

[PAGE]

But, I may have been a bit harsh with Queen Mary.

For my part, I read his "Pensées et images", a small book very rare, a collection of articles published in French just after the war (1922 crossing information)

Also, it is possible that she shows less severe with the imperial family thereafter.

[DNAgenie]

So I doubt that the Romanian royal family knew the imperial family very well. I could be wrong (I do not have the exact words in mind), but his words about Olga for example are not representative of the Grand Duchess.

In general, the Romanian authors' remarks are violent against the imperial family. I am also thinking of Princess Bibesco, who was present in 1914 during the visit of the imperial family to Romania.

The failure of the union between Olga and Prince Karol was, I think, perceived as an affront in Romania.

Marie was only part of the Romanian Royal Family by marriage, and she did not get on with her husband Crown Prince  Ferdinand. In her youth her attitudes would have been shaped by her Russian Mother (only daughter of Tsar Alexander II) and her British father (son of Queen Victoria). However in later life Marie of Rumania was very much her own woman. It is unreasonable to equate traditional 'Romanian' attitudes with those of Marie of Romania.

This is rather off the topic of 'What and Who is Alexei to you?'

[PAGE]

It is not me who has drifted from the subject. I was talking about Alexei, you reacted on Marie of Romania.

But I do not believe that there is any Romanian tradition in the Romanian aristocracy. The Princess Bibesco that I quote was more Franco-Belgian than Romanian and has lived less in Romania than abroad.