I have mentioned misogyny before not because of forum members comments but because people at the time were horrified that a WOMAN had been elevated to such a position. That really went against the grain in Russia and is largely why Nicholas was seen to be so weak as his use of his wife in an official capacity effectively emasculated him in the eyes of many.
You do seem quick to draw the sexism card from the bottom of the deck, Vanya, but I really think sexism had little to do with this.
Empress Elizabeth took great pains to keep her marriage to Alexei Razumovsky a secret because she knew that serious issues would arise if a person below her station was thought to be influencing her in matters of government. And Razumovsky, indeed, took great care to avoid entanglement in politics or court intrigue. No one seemed then to have a problem with which sex was in control. They wanted the anointed ruler in control.
Catherine the Great, who almost certainly married Gregory Potemkin, never allowed any confusion to arise as to who was in charge, despite her giving wide-ranging authority to Potemkin on many matters. No serious problems arose from this arrangement because Catherine had garnered respect far and wide for her work discipline, her judgment, her predictability, and her temperance -- in short, her ability to govern effectively. Potemkin was viewed by most as a wise choice to be her counsel, not as the man a woman ought to have beside her to carry the weight of rule. As talented as Potemkin actually was at government, neither he nor Catherine allowed the impression to arise that he would attempt to eclipse Catherine in any way.
Vanya, the damage Alexandra did to the dynasty and its chances of hanging on through a storm was not in her choice of ministers or in her bad decisions. I have not argued that she wrested or wheedled control of these things from Nicholas. The damage she and he both did was in allowing the
perception to arise that he was an irresolute tsar whose unstable religious hysteric of a wife had succeeded in exerting undue influence over him.
I will not argue that her letters (or his, for that matter) prove she actually ruled Russia through him. What I have argued is she helped foster the impression that Nicholas was weak and she was moving into the vacuum.
That was the damage she did to the dynasty as the thread by which its fate hung unraveled month by month after 1915. And her letters amply illustrate how that impression arose.
Her dogged protection of Rasputin -- which is crystal clear in her letters -- gave him the air cover to run all over St. Petersburg bragging about his influence at court with impunity. And these escapades became the kernels of the underground press campaign against the dynasty that was to bear its fruit in the army and the Church in 1917. Institutions that once would have rallied to the defense of their tsar were no longer sure it was him they were defending.
The difficulty that Nicholas' ministers already had in working for him directly was compounded when she became the intermediary between them and him during the war, and it became the impetus for many of them to come to prefer working with the Duma representatives rather than the tsar and his lieutenants to get things done during the war.
This was not sexism at work. It was far, far more.