How Would History Have Rated Nicholas II if....?

[Alixz]

That is why no one, historian or not, understands Alix's rabid fight to preserve the autocracy for either Nicholas or Alexei.  She DID have her grandmother to look to and yet she did nothing at all like her grandmother had done or would do.

With out time travel and/or mind reading no one can understand her inability to let the autocracy go without a struggle.

It makes me wonder just what was in all those letters that she burned at Tsarskoe Selo after she knew of Nicholas's abdication. What was in them that she was so afraid to have others read?

[Robert_Hall]

Alexandra was blind.  Russia was the last autocracy in Europe and surely she must have seen that. Even her own grandmother was a constitutional monarch. And even then, if it were not for her longevity  and stable full of children, she would hardly be noticed  in thehistory books. What made her think she had to preserve something she did dot even understand ?
 As for those letters,  we shall most likely never know. But I have always guessed they were correspondence with her German relatives. Makes sense that she would destroy them as they might have been reason for charges of treason.

[TimM]

Maybe the fact that she and her family were almost killed would have opened Alix's eyes that this autocracy thing was not all it was cut out to be.

After all, even as a Constitutional Monarch, Alexei would still get the throne (assuming he lived long enough, that is).

[Kalafrana]

Nicholas abdicated without consulting Alexandra at a point where he had been pushed into a corner and was unable to communicate with her. Had he been in Tsarskoye-Selo, with Alexandra on the spot, things might well have been different. I can just see him saying, 'I must have a few minutes to think,' going to Alexandra, and her saying, 'Nicky, darling, you must think of Baby! You cannot possibly abdicate!'

As for burning the letters, we have to remember that this was not unusual at the time. Irene burned her correspondence, and unless she was in secret correspondence with Alexandra or VMH, I doubt that there was anything very compromising there - she was simply preserving her privacy.

Ann

[Alixz]

Wasn't that the reason that Alix chose to go to "Moscow" with Nicholas instead of staying with Alexei at Tobolsk?  She didn't want him to sign anything without her there as he had done with the abdication manifesto. She was afraid that he would sign the "Treaty of Brest Litovsk" and she was going to make sure that he didn't do anything else she didn't approve of in his weakness.

I know it was the custom to burn letters and mostly likely Irene didn't have anything to hide, but Alix went directly to burning letters even before she knew the outcome of the abdication.  I had read that some were letters to Queen Victoria and I often wondered just how much complaining Alix had done to her grandmother during her years in Russia before the death of her grandmother and just how incriminating those letters would have been.

[Robert_Hall]

Alixz, the abdication was a done deal before she could do anything about it. And I do not buy the treaty theory at all.  Nicholas was no longer emperor so whether he signed it or not would make no difference. Of course she might have had it in mind,  but she was a fool if she thought the Bolsheviks were going to give  him any legitimacy. Do you think that had not sunk in by then ?
 Who knows what was in those letters ?  A pity they are lost, however, as they might have given anyone interested in her mindset and influenced what we  think about  her and Nicholas now. Just a thought, but they might even have had something to do with Rasputin, as she considered him a saint  and revered his memory.
Again, just speculation.

[TimM]

Nicholas abdicated without consulting Alexandra at a point where he had been pushed into a corner and was unable to communicate with her. Had he been in Tsarskoye-Selo, with Alexandra on the spot, things might well have been different. I can just see him saying, 'I must have a few minutes to think,' going to Alexandra, and her saying, 'Nicky, darling, you must think of Baby! You cannot possibly abdicate!'

Even if that had happened, it wouldn't have mattered.  Nicky no longer had the support of the military.  Had he not abdicated, he would have been deposed.  He had no choice in the matter.

[Robert_Hall]

Nor the government. Tim, such as it was. Russia was falling into chaos and Nicholas was no longer a unifying  factor.  I think a lot of people wanted to get their hands on him, and probably Alexandra as well, so they were fortunate for  a while. If the worst that happened, at that time, they would have gone down as innocent martyrs of  arch conservatism,, much like Louis & Marie, instead of  murder victims in a dirty basement in  an relatively unknown outpost.

[Alixz]

Robert - I don't buy the treaty idea either, but Alexandra might still have been delusional enough to think it mattered.  She knew that Nicholas was weak and the one time he was away from her, he signs a decree of abdication!   (IMHO)She didn't trust him to walk the Imperial Park without her and not fall over his own feet.  A strange love that one. Passionate and yet smothering.

[Robert_Hall]

This is true Alixz, Alexandra was rather delusional.  However, the Moscow journey was supposedly for a trial, was it not ? IMO, she went with him [or was she forced to, I wonder, to face  a trial  herself?] for support and encouragement.  It was certainly odd, considering her devotion to Alixis that she would leave him  behind.
 I am not terribly sympathetic towards  her or Nicholas but I would have preferred that they did face a trial rather than their real fate. It may well have been a kangaroo court, but at least we could  read his side of the story, eventually.

[TimM]

Russia was falling into chaos and Nicholas was no longer a unifying  factor.  I think a lot of people wanted to get their hands on him, and probably Alexandra as well

That being the case, had the Bolsheviks failed, I think they would be happy to be Constitutional monarchs.  Let someone else worry about affairs of state.

[Robert_Hall]

Tim, they may have been happy to though I doubt it as  that would be breaking his vows. But, his reputation was shot [pardon the pun] and he was  simply not wanted. A replacement  might have been in order, but him, I doubt very much.

[Alixz]

I honestly don't think that either of them would have been happy as constitutional monarch.  Alexandra less than Nicholas as he (supposedly) didn't want to be tsar to begin with. But after he took his vows during coronation, I don't think he would have been very happy being a constitutional monarch. If that were the case, then he would have been happier to give up his powers during the 1905 revolution.

I think he would have given up the throne to Michael more happily than he would have given up his rights and prerogatives while still on the throne.

As for a trial, any trial, there wasn't much more to learn about how Nicholas reigned. Only what the Bolsheviks saw and thought about what he did.

Nicholas was weak and wishy washy around his wife but stubborn in his beliefs of what the autocracy meant to him and to Russia. He was thoroughly Slav and had no patience with any subject who wasn't. (That came from his father, I think.)

[TimM]

So getting back to my What-If scenario, if Nicky were told:  "You get your throne back ONLY as a Constitutional Monarch.  Take it or leave it."  

His reply, after talking with Alix, would be "Sorry, I can't accept those terms.  Please send us to wherever you want to send us and talk to my brother, Michael.  He might take your offer."

[Robert_Hall]

Tim, if that were the scenario, although extremely unlikely,  it might be closer to the case. After all, Nicholas did abdicate on his own terms, as it were. He did a  doubtful abdication for his son as well as himself, did he not ?
 As Michael  declined the throne, under the circumstances, that was the effective end of the monarchy.
 These "what ifs" can go on forever, in many directions and I am not immune from having my own as well, but,  as it is, they are just imagination, are they not ?