Who is "red boy"?

[Lady Macduff]

Hi all-

In a letter to Anna Vyrubova dated 11/23/17, Alexandra writes, "How time flies! In two days it will be 9 months since I saw red boy for the last time!! Cannot write upon the subject!"

So she's referring to someone she said goodbye to on  2/25/17 - the tail end of her time at the infirmary? This leads me to believe she might be referring to one of her favorite patients, but since the girls were already sick with measles by then it seems unlikely. I also considered the possibility that she's using some kind of code that Pankratov wouldn't have picked up on. Can anyone help shed some light on this?

[TimM]

First time I've heard of this.

[Inok Nikolai]

Hi all-

In a letter to Anna Vyrubova dated 11/23/17, Alexandra writes, "How time flies! In two days it will be 9 months since I saw red boy for the last time!! Cannot write upon the subject!"

So she's referring to someone she said goodbye to on  2/25/17 - the tail end of her time at the infirmary? This leads me to believe she might be referring to one of her favorite patients, but since the girls were already sick with measles by then it seems unlikely. I also considered the possibility that she's using some kind of code that Pankratov wouldn't have picked up on. Can anyone help shed some light on this?

"Red Boy" was one of the Empress's nicknames for N. P. Sablin.
In other letters to A. A. Vyrubova, the Empress sometimes refers to him simply as "Boy".
It doesn't seem that it was meant conspiratorially.

And by 2/25/17 O.S., the Empress was no longer at her hospital. The February Revolution had already begun.