Sorry for bringing back a dead topic but I recently finished Maria Pavlovna's memoir and despite everything said about Sergei's possessiveness and need to control everything around him, I don't think she once mentioned Sergei controlling what Ella read or wore which are two things that seem to be thrown against him.
Maria says when it comes to Ella's reading:
The things they read (Ella and her ladies) must have been childish, for I will never forget the difficulties my aunt had with Recollections of a Dead-House, her first attempt to appreciate Dostoievsky. She did not know enough Russian to read it herself; one of the ladies read it aloud to her. And so great was my aunt's fear of details too realistic that she would permit no one to attend these readings!
She had no admiration for French literature; once she said to me, apropos of a persona whose life she found somewhat frivolous, that it was the French novels with yellow covers that had corrupted her ideas. At this period she read only English books and chose her authors with great caution p. 27
So in my opinion based on this if Ella never read something like Anna Karenina it was because she herself chose not too, not because Sergei forbid her. It sounds like she stuck to what most upper class English ladies of her period read and didn't stretch too far from it although she did give it a try.
She goes into great detail about Ella's ritual of dressing as well. I won't quote the whole thing because its pretty long but to summarize she pretty much says that Ella designed many of her own clothes and took great pains to dress up each day trying on multiple outfits, dinner especially. What she chose to wear depended on what mood she was in and picked out the jewels she would wear with great care according to what dress she had chosen. She read the French fashion magazines and cut out what she liked and used them as inspiration in designing her own.
Maria also talks about Ella's very old fashioned views on ladies and how they should act and behave. Again nothing strange or out of the ordinary for a woman of her age when talking to a much younger girl, something Maria herself pretty much says. Their not beliefs forced on her by a controlling husband but her own from how she grew up.
The worst I can remember her saying is that Sergei disapproved of her increasing religious devotion and that she was taking it too far. Also if one of Sergei's orders could not be carried out Ella would have them quietly changed behind his back so as not to bother him and he would get upset with her over it when he found out. Lastly, Sergei controlled how they spent every hour of the day and that Ella became accustomed to it without saying anything, but that honestly sounds like something she could have picked up from Queen Victoria who in a way let Albert do the same in their home.
I didn't read anything about Ella being some great victim of Sergei but instead two people who lived as others of that era did except in their own way. They appeared very much on the same wave length.
In regards to why they did not have children I'm guessing it was due to a medical problem from either Sergei or Ella. Both of them knew about it and accepted it because they loved each other. Sergei was very duty conscious and surely he knew that having children was part of his duty to the dynasty. So if he could have had children he certainly would have and even if he was gay he would have done it just as KR did. A medical problem makes the quote attributed to Alexander III make more sense.
