Maria's letters & notes

[Belochka]

But it is important to be absolutely clear what the belief actually is Sarastasia. There may be some things, for example, which an Orthodox and a Anglican share as common belief, but there is a huge amount that is different - and the gulf seems to widen by the day. For this reason - that we don't share the same beliefs, that we are not a community of like-minded believers, we can not have Communion with other 'denominations', only with those who share our beliefs and particular Faith. Margarita is absolutely correct, the translation of 'Tsar Pravoslavniy' is "The Orthodox Tsar." It shows that the Tsar holds the ancient Christian Faith that has been passed down unchanged from our forefathers from the time of the Apostles.

Just to add to what Georgiy has confirmed (Thank you! , the Emperor was also head of the Orthodox Church.

Margarita

[Sarastasia]

Well, in all fairness they have the same jist, even though православный means orthodox.
And of course I know Tsar Nikolai was a devout orthodox christian.
I bet if you went up to a Russian and said "Царь православный" and asked if the two english translations we have produced can both have the same meaning, they'd say yes.
People clump different denominations of Christianity all together all the time, as it is more important to believe the belief than be picky about the denomination.
Either way, no need to jump down my throat so quickly! 

There's a second verse apart from "Царствуй на страх врагам..."?? ??

Mne. I'm still learning so I'm allowed to make mistakes. Either way, as a half RO and half CofE, through my eyes, the two denominations are the same - but perhaps if you are not both, you cannot see such a join.

[grandduchess_42]

umm if i may
can somebody translate the second verse please? 

[Sarastasia]

What second verse do you mean? Do you mean this one:
"Царствуй на страх врагам,     
Царь православный!
Боже, Царя
Царя храни!"

[grandduchess_42]

yes that one!
thanks so much!

[Georgiy]

That's the second part of the one which has been posted already. You know, the one about him being the fear of our enemies, the Orthodox Tsar, God save the Tsar!

[Sarastasia]

Yeah - I posted it first, and then Margarita posted it, both with translations.

[Romanov_fan]

Indeed that is true. It is hard to judge some history in general because there might well have been things left out, or things that we don't know of that were left out. We judge on what we know, and that is itself something of an error, because there is much we don't know. Marie was a great child, and Akexandra a good mother. I am sure she tried to her best for her daughter, and that she loved her, and communicated with her in the best way possible.I think she did, and that these notes are more than evidence of it.

[Raegan]

I want to quickly jump in here and share a little insight into the note passing issue.

A century ago, it wasn't unheard of for family members to pass notes to each other when under the same roof. Alexandra didn't do anything unusual by writing notes to her daughters. This practice wasn't limited to mother and daughters either. In fact, the entire family passed notes. For example, Anastasia wrote notes to Tatiana and Nicholas wrote notes to Alexandra, etc. This is one of the very first things a person notices in the archives. I think that because A Lifelong Passion included mostly Alix/OTMA notes and almost no others, it has given some people the wrong impression. There is one example, however, of a note Nicholas passed to Alexandra when they were both home at the Alexander Palace. You can see this example on page 166.

Nicky to Alix -- November [no date] -- Tsarkeo Selo

Come to me for a moment, I want to show you several beautiful things. Let me kiss your enchanting little face.

I love, love you madly.

[Elisabeth]

A century ago, it wasn't unheard of for family members to pass notes to each other when under the same roof. Alexandra didn't do anything unusual by writing notes to her daughters. This practice wasn't limited to mother and daughters either. In fact, the entire family passed notes. For example, Anastasia wrote notes to Tatiana and Nicholas wrote notes to Alexandra, etc. This is one of the very first things a person notices in the archives. I think that because A Lifelong Passion included mostly Alix/OTMA notes and almost no others, it has given some people the wrong impression.

In fact if you read John Galsworthy's trilogy of novels, The Forsyte Saga, set in Victorian and Edwardian England, you'll see that this practice of passing notes between family members was quite common even amongst the English upperclasses of the time. In Forsyte's novels the old aunts, who live under the same roof and see and talk to each other on a daily basis, nevertheless also pass notes to each other via the servants.

[Romanov_fan]

Well, I think people who say otherwise, say the notes were negative don't know much about history. They are talking about history, but looking at it from a much too modern perspective. We have to understand history just as much in history as using history to understand other things. Marie was, I would think, very appreciative of these notes, especially as it was common in the background of the time. I don't think Marie was that difficult of a child, it strikes me she would have been one of the better behaved of Alexandra's children, an angel.

[Sarushka]

They are talking about history, but looking at it from a much too modern perspective.

That's only part of the problem. No matter from what angle we look at the situation, we're looking at incomplete information. (Which seems to be my theme for the day! )

Even if we found the complete text of these notes between Maria and her mother, there's still a great deal of contextual information missing. The only way to get the full picture of the situation is to have been a fly on the wall at the AP that day. We will likely never know if this series of notes were the only communication between Maria and her mother over this issue, or if they were in fact supplements to a verbal conversation. We will likely never know how Maria felt about getting these notes from her mother. We can speculate one way and another, but unless Maria explicitly wrote down her feelings regarding her mother's habit of note-passing, it's all just guesswork.

At any rate, it seems a bit rash to conclude from a single day's worth of notes that Maria spent her entire childhood feeling unloved. It's entirely possible that this short series of notes is in fact representative of Maria's long-term feelings, but at present, not enough infomation has been made available (in English, at least) to support a definitive answer.

Personally, it's my opinion based on these notes that Maria felt left out by her *siblings* from time to time. This becomes evident when you read the full text of Alix's replies, instead of the few phrases excerpted in one source. The complete text of the two notes from Alix can be found in A Lifelong Passion. They were written March 7-10, 1910. As far as I know, Maria's portion of the correspondence has never been fully published in English. You can read my translations of Alix's letters from a Russian source in reply #71 and 72 of this thread, which discusses the matter MUCH more fully:
Alexandra as a mother

This thread was started in the midst of that discussion, simply as a way of trying to locate the missing letters. If we continue discussing the *content* of the notes, and Maria's relationship with her mother, it would be more appropriate (organiztionally speaking) to do it on the thread I linked above.

[Elisabeth]

Personally, it's my opinion based on these notes that Maria felt left out by her *siblings* from time to time.

While it's very sad that she felt this way, it also seems entirely normal for a third child and daughter in a large family to feel "left out" by her siblings and even, dare I say it, by her parents. Since Raegan has shared this new information with us about the family's habit of passing notes to each other, even or especially when they were under the same roof, I can't help but think that Maria's feelings of estrangement from her family have been greatly exaggerated by recent authors. There's no reason to conclude that Maria's sense of isolation was anything more than momentary.

[Sarushka]

There's no reason to conclude that Maria's sense of isolation was anything more than momentary.

I agree. If/when someone can show there was a consistent pattern of Maria feeling shunned by her family -- particularly her parents -- I'll be prepared to accept the idea that she "believed she had been unwanted and was unloved", as one source puts it. But in the absence of further evidence, this appears to be an isolated - and dare I say normal? - incident in the life of any child.

[Elisabeth]

Something else has also suddenly occurred to me. It's not entirely clear, but it seems likely that Maria was the first to bring up these painful emotional issues with her mother, not in person but in a note or letter which Alexandra responded to. That Maria would write to her mother instead of talking to her directly makes sense to me, because even amongst family members it would be difficult to have this sort of direct emotional confrontation face to face - especially for a child. It's so much easier to write down one's innermost fears and concerns than to speak of them aloud... And if we take all these factors into account, then perhaps Alexandra was being a very considerate and sensitive parent in responding to her child's fears in the way her child felt was most comfortable - in writing. In other words, it's possible she was only following her daughter's lead in writing these notes.