Alexandra's nervous habits

[Guinastasia]

As someone who suffers from anxiety and depression, I have to cut Alexandra some slack here.  I've had many a time where I was practically having the dry heaves when I had to smile and pretend all was well.  I'm sure I looked like some wooden puppet at the time as well.

[carkuczyn]

i agree guinastasia......i also have had periods of anxiety and depression, plus i am a registered nurse with several years of experience in mental health nursing.  i have felt that kind of panic, seen it in my family, and seen it in my patients.  to me, when alexandra is in a procession looking panic stricken and mechanical, she is presenting as a textbook case of anxiety disorder and panic disorder and  when you are in that state of mind, you can not connect with people.  you are just trying to get through it.  and people who have this problem typically avoid social situations and crowds.  i think the poor woman needed a good prescription for an SSRI antidepressant.  it is sad to say that some good mental health care for the empress may have made a difference in the outcome of that period of russian history.

[Mazukov]

I think she got the low end of the stick. Honestly I think Alexandra  got way too much of a bad rap during her time. And yet even still today in many ways she is still getting a bum rap.

[Tsarina_Liz]

Victoria had a tendency to think that any throne not British was in trouble.  I'll look around for her views on Alexandra's position (besides her initial fears).  Specific sources don't come to mind, but I'll do some rummaging...

The Russian monarchy was unsteady when Alexandra and Nicholas ascended but at that point there was no indication of the 1917 Revolution (and the Russian throne has never been that stable).  At the point of their beginning, Nicholas and Alexandra were facing a political situation they could have significantly altered.  Unfortunately, they were the wrong monarchs at the wrong time.  Neither smart, politically adept, or generally strong enough to avert the potential disaster.  Russian history is full of weak husband/strong wife or strong husband/weak wife monarchial pairs (is that the right phrase?), although more of the former than latter admittedly, but having two weak monarchs seems (from what I know) almost unprecedented.  Usually one could have caught the other, but in this case both fell due to the refusal to reach out and ask for aid.  Certainly Alexandra's "nervous" nature did not help.  The disaster was looming ahead of them in plain sight for many years, but she was too absorbed in her mental chaos to notice and help out Nicholas (who needed all the help he could get). 

Alexandra may not have been the most intelligent woman in the world, but she was good raw material.  Although she did have a nasty, albeit not nervous, habit of overestimating her intellectual and political abilities.  She was smart and normally I believe someone like her could have been completely aware of what was happening and made a difference.  But she was too self involved and frankly too psychologically unwound to live up to her potential (her upbringing didn't help either).     

[carkuczyn]

i am anxious to hear what you find out about queen victoria's views on alix as an empress, tsarina_liz.

[James1941]

I don't think you should make too much of the bowing of the head as she progressed along the red carpet.
This was the normal method of responding to the crowd's greetings by royalty in the early years of the the twentieth century. There is a movie of King George V and Queen Mary leaving Buckingham Palace taken during the Jubilee Year (1935, I think). In it one sees Queen Mary bobbing her head continuously in response to the cheers of the crowd. She and Alexandra were contemporaries. If you watch the movie of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation one see the Princess Royal (Princess Mary) bobbing her head to the right and left as she processes down the aisle of Westminster Abbey. This was just a normal action of royalty back then and Alexandra practiced it just right. I don't think it was a nervous habit or a fear of the crowd or any other such thing, just a natural reaction as she had been taught and observed growing up. We have become accustomed today to royalty waving rather than bobbing the head and I think this is why it looks unnatural to us.

[Janet_W.]

It's a matter of style, but that style is informed by several things, among them one's emotional health as well as general attitude toward the event in progress.

Yes, Queen Mary also showed a similar style. Her attitude, however, was different. It was obvious that, like the Tsarina, being out in public was not "her thing." (As opposed to say, her charismatic mother-in-law.) But instead of looking strained Mary seems to match the onlookers, stare for stare. When Alexandra was able to muster an imperious attitude she gave off an air of discomfort; Mary's imperiousness, on the other hand, came from a stronger inner core and was respected.

I think that whenever publically on view Alexandra generally did what she could, within her own personality limitations. I've frequently had to speak in public and making direct eye contact is a skill that I'm still working on; it's difficult to look out upon a crowd and see individuals rather than a sea of faces. The "head bobbing" observed on that film is, I think, related to that.  How many of us can feel absolutely comfortable being under the scrutiny of hundreds, maybe thousands, of potential critics? Queen Marie of Romania didn't have a problem with such a scenario, but she also had exceptionally strong self-confidence plus a desire to be on exhibit. (Something of the Madonna of her time, if you will!) 

[carkuczyn]

to me alexandra looks more than "strained"....she looks like she is either going to burst into tears or throw up.  i call that panic and cite it as a reason for her being so reclusive.  check out the A&E documentary called  "Nicholas & Alexandra"....she is looking straight towards the camera in the opening footage and the anxiety and panic is obvious.

[Guinastasia]

to me alexandra looks more than "strained"....she looks like she is either going to burst into tears or throw up.  i call that panic and cite it as a reason for her being so reclusive.  check out the A&E documentary called  "Nicholas & Alexandra"....she is looking straight towards the camera in the opening footage and the anxiety and panic is obvious.

Exactly, and as I've said, I've experienced exactly that feeling.  It's horrible, it's embarassing, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

[carkuczyn]

i have too, guinastasia, and i agree it is awful.  and the more you try to fight it, the worse it gets.  it does not surprise me that alexandra withdrew and avoided court life.  i would have done the same thing.  and i can understand why she stayed in her room so much....some people get what is known as agoraphobia (fear of open places) and can't come out of the house without becoming panicky.  i wonder if she ever tried to explain this feeling to her husband?  i know from my reading that others, besides her husband, noticed.  i think it was either a grandduke or grandducchess who remarked once that they could actually see the empress trembling and her chest rising and falling as if she could not catch her breath.  also people who have this problem, unless they are educated about it, imagine themselves to be having everthing from a heart attack to a complete "nervous breakdown".  this would explain alexandra's thinking that she had a "bad" or "weak" heart.

[Georgiy]

We are removed both culturally and in time from all of this. To our modern (and possibly for the most part) western eyes, the head bobbing looks strange, it looks like it reflects the strain and panic of the Empress. It is therefore interesting to read an account of it from a Russian eyewitness, which I found in the Moscow News, July 23 1998 issue. It had extracts from author Yuri Olesha's 1950s diaries in it. He wrote about his youth, and the several occassions on when he saw the Tsar and his family. "...During one of the visits to Odessa, the Tsar's daughters, the Crown Prince, the mother (i.e. Empress Alexandra) and the Tsar himself appeared before the people ...Responding to the cheers from the crowds, the female part lowered and lifted their heads; this proceeded in a rather rhythmical, undulating manner and produced a rather pleasurable impression, the more so because they wore white hats with black velvet bands hanging down their shoulders." So to contemporary eyes, it looked nice. I think it could well be that we read to much into things through hindsight about this. It is possible that she did have strain and it made her movements more pronounced, but the comment we get from someone who saw it as a youngster (and remembered it) was favourable.

[carkuczyn]

very interesting, georgiy.  thank you for the diligent research.  i am sure that there were good days and bad days for the empress.  it sounds as though the time that you speak of was a good day.  i still cannot dismiss the terrified look in her eyes in some of the documentaries.  also, i have read much about it in various books.  " a lifelong passion"  is particularly good.  i guess you have to have experienced true panic disorder to understand it.  being a psychiatric nurse, i just wish i could slip back in time and give her just one dose of an SSRI antidepressant to see what would happen.  most psychiatric illnesses are chemical imbalances in the brain.  SSRI's increase the level of serotonin in your bloodstream.  serotonin is a natural chemical which we all have.  when we don't have enough of it, we are nervous and irritable.  serotonin  gives us emotional balance.  there are too many other symptoms which the empress exhibited that all point to severe emotional problems for me to just dismiss the picture i am seeing of her.  not only did she avoid social situations, but she at times she would not even come out of her room.  that is why her children had to communicate with her through notes and letters.  a very sad picture.  and as a mental health nurse, it makes me wish that she could have had the help that she so obviously needed.  thanks again for that great eyewitness account from the moscow newspaper.  now i think i would like to read yuri olesha's diaries.  are they still available, i wonder?

[Romanov_fan]

Well, bowing the head was something she was supposed to be doing. I guess, we are considering the way she did that, and whether there was anything strange or different about the way she did it. I have never really seen old films of her, although I am aware that old films tend to be jerky. This may not account for all of it though. Alexandra was certainly never comfortable in public, although you can't blame her, and she did try. But being a public figure was not something she shined at, and she was uncomfortable, and this could certainly have showed in the way she bowed her head. She did have some days better than others, and some films might show this. We can't read too much into this, although it is certainly true.

[Alixz]

I read just lately, that Alexandra had problems with a stiff spine and that was the cause of the way she "bobbed" her head.  She could only move her head so far forward before it hurt.

I will have to look for the source. 

But then Alix had so many "illnesses" it is hard to know which are real and which are not.

[Terence]

I read just lately, that Alexandra had problems with a stiff spine and that was the cause of the way she "bobbed" her head.  She could only move her head so far forward before it hurt.

I will have to look for the source. 

But then Alix had so many "illnesses" it is hard to know which are real and which are not.

Indeed.  What has caught my attention is the mention that she had sciatica.  Who knows what the terms of the time are referring to, but if it's anything like I experienced a few years ago it's devastating.

I know that smiling wasn't the norm for photos back then, but Alexandra seems to always look somewhat miserable.  The burden of her son's condition must have complicated things terribly.

My take on it is that people w/ legitimate physical problems can easily become hypochondriacs of sorts.  Her heart ailments seem odd to us, but in reality the knowledge then was so little as to what we know today.

T