Victoria, then seventy-five, was coming from England with her son Edward, Prince of Wales. Kaiser William II, Victoria’s thirty-five-year-old grandson, was arriving from Berlin. And Nicholas, having wrung from his father permission to propose to Alix, was coming to represent Russia.
On a warm April night, Nicholas boarded a train in St. Petersburg accompanied by three of his four uncles, Grand Dukes Vladimir, Serge and Paul. When he arrived in Coburg a day and a half later, dressed in full uniform, Alix was waiting at the station. That night, they went to dinner and an operetta with the family. The following morning, unable to wait any longer, Nicholas went straight to Alix and proposed. In his diary and in a letter to his mother he described what happened.
“What a day!” he wrote in his diary. “After coffee about ten, I went with Aunt Ella to Alix. She looked particularly pretty, but extremely sad. They left us alone and then began between us the talk which I had long ago strongly wanted and at the same time very much feared. We talked till twelve, but with no result; she still objects to changing her religion. Poor girl, she cried a lot. She was calmer when we parted.”
In his letter to Gatchina, Nicholas wrote: “I tried to explain that there was no other way for her than to give her consent and that she simply could not withhold it. She cried the whole time and only whispered now and then, ‘No, I cannot.’ Still I went on repeating and insisting … though this went on for two hours, it came to nothing.”
But Nicholas was not alone in his suit. As the relatives gathered from all over Europe, there were so many people present that family dinners had to be divided into two sittings, one at seven, the second at nine. A few hours after Nicholas’s first talk with Alix, Queen Victoria arrived, escorted by a squadron of British Dragoons. The Queen favored the Russian marriage and had a talk with the reluctant girl, taking the somewhat original tack that Orthodoxy was not really so very different from Lutheranism. The following day, the Kaiser appeared. Not at all unhappy at the prospect of marrying a German princess to the future Tsar of Russia, he too pressed Nicholas’s suit with Alix. Above all, it was Ella who calmed Alix’s fears and encouraged her ardor. Ella had not been required to change her religion to Orthodoxy when she married Serge, since her husband was not in line for the Russian throne. But she had accepted Orthodoxy voluntarily. She insisted to Alix that a change of faith was not really so enormous or unusual an experience.
Long before it took place, Grand Duke Ernest’s wedding had been thoroughly overshadowed by the matter of Nicholas and Alix. During the wedding ceremony, Nicholas watched Alix closely. “At that moment,” he wrote, “how much I would have liked to have been able to look into the depths of Alix’s soul.”
The very next day Alix capitulated. Nicholas wrote exultantly in his diary: “A marvelous, unforgettable day. Today is the day of my engagement to my darling, adorable Alix. After ten she came to Aunt Miechen* and after a talk with her, we came to an understanding. O God, what a mountain has rolled from my shoulders.… The whole day I have been walking in a dream, without fully realizing what was happening to me. William sat in the next room and waited with the uncles and aunts till our talk was over. I went straight with Alix to the Queen [Victoria].… The whole family was simply enraptured. After lunch we went to Aunt Mary’s Church and had a thanksgiving service. I cannot even believe that I am engaged.”
To his mother, Nicholas wrote: “We were left alone and with her first words she consented.… I cried like a child and she did too, but her expression had changed: her face was lit by a quiet content.… The whole world is changed for me: nature, mankind, everything, and all seem to be good and lovable.… She is quite changed. She is gay and amusing, talkative and tender.”
Later, everyone present remembered the moment that this fateful match was made. “I remember I was sitting in my room,” recalled Princess Marie Louise of England. “I was quietly getting ready for a luncheon party when Alix stormed into my room, threw her arms around my neck and said, ‘I’m going to marry Nicky!’ ”
Nicholas awoke the next morning to the clatter of horses’ hoofs on cobblestones and the hoarse shout of military commands. Under his window, Queen Victoria’s Dragoons were executing a drill in his honor. “At ten o’clock,” he wrote in his diary, “my superb Alix came to me and we went together to have coffee with the Queen.” While they remained in Coburg, every day began with “coffee with Granny.” Victoria was delighted with the young couple. An incurable romantic and an indefatigable royal matchmaker, she loved to surround herself with soft-eyed young people in love. Alix was her special pet, and now that the match was made, she wanted to revel in it.
The weather was cold and gray that day, Nicholas wrote, “but everything in my heart was bright.” Uncle Bertie suggested that since so large a part of the family was present, there ought to be a photograph. The thirty members of the family trooped down to the garden, and the result was a remarkable panorama of royalty. The old Queen, tiny and indomitable, sat in the middle of the front row, holding her cane. The Kaiser was there, the only man seated, dressed in a uniform and his fierce mustache. Nicholas, small and mild in a bowler hat, stood next to Alix, who appeared pretty but unsmiling.
From everywhere came congratulatory telegrams. “We answered all day,” Nicholas complained, “but the pile grew rather than diminished. It seems that everybody in Russia has sent flowers to my fiancee.”
Whatever their opposition to the match, Tsar Alexander III and his wife responded gallantly, once it was made. Alix wrote the Empress calling her “Aunty-Mama,” and Marie wrote back to Nicholas: “Your dear Alix already is quite like a daughter to me.… Do tell Alix that her … [letter] has touched me so deeply—only—I don’t want her to call me ‘Aunty-Mama’; ‘Mother dear’ that’s what I am to her now.… Ask Alix which stones she likes most, sapphires or emeralds? I would like to know for the future.” As a start, Marie sent Alix an emerald bracelet and a superb Easter egg encrusted with jewels.
Spring came suddenly to Darmstadt, and the park was filled with flowers, the air perfumed and warm. Nicholas couldn’t believe what had happened. “She has changed so much these last days in her relationship with me, that I am brimming with pleasure. This morning she wrote two sentences in Russian without error.” When the family went for drives in carriages, Nicholas and Alix followed behind in a pony cart, taking turns at the reins. They walked, gathered flowers and rested beside the fishponds. They dined together at every meal. “It isn’t easy to talk with strangers present, one has to give up talking about so many things,” Nicholas complained. In the evenings they went to concerts in the local theatre. At Nicholas’s request, the choir of the Preobrajensky Regiment of the Imperial Guard arrived by train from Russia to sing for his fiancee and the other assembled guests.
Nicholas began spending the end of each day with Alix in her room. “We were together a long time, she was remarkably tender with me.… It is so strange to be able to come and go like this without the least restraint.… What a sorrow to part from her even for one night.”
Finally, after ten days of bliss, the time came for Nicholas to say goodbye. He spent the last evening in Alix’s room while warm spring rain fell on the trees outside her window. “What sadness to be obliged to part from her for a long time,” he wrote. “How good we were together—a paradise.”
The following day, as he traveled eastward to Russia, Nicholas’s heart was suffused with love and sadness, and he wore a new ring on his finger. “For the first time in my life, I put a ring on my finger. It makes me feel funny,” he said. At Gatchina, he found his family gathered to meet him, Tsar Alexander III still wearing the knickers in which he had just returned from shooting ducks. There were telegrams waiting from Alix and Queen Victoria to be answered. Then Nicholas took a long walk in the park with his mother and told her everything that had happened.
The month of May seemed interminable to the Tsarevich. He spent his days pacing among the lilacs in the park, then rushing off to write another letter to Alix. At last, in June, he boarded the Imperial yacht
Together, the pair went to a cottage at Walton-on-Thames belonging to Alix’s eldest sister, Princess Victoria of Battenberg. For three memorable days, they relaxed on the banks of the gently flowing river. They walked on the bright green lawns and gathered fruit and flowers from nearby fields. Under an old chestnut tree in the cottage garden, they sat in the grass and Alix embroidered while Nicholas read to her. “We were out all day long in beautiful weather, boating up and down the river, picnicking on the shore. A veritable idyll,” Nicholas wrote his mother. Years later, both Nicholas and Alix remembered every detail of those three shining days in the English countryside, and the mere mention of the name Walton was enough to bring tears of happiness to Alix’s eyes.
When the three days were over, the young couple emerged from their private cocoon of happiness. “Granny” waited to greet them at Windsor Castle. Tsar Alexander III had sent his personal confessor, Father Yanishev, and the priest was anxious to begin Alix’s religious instruction. At Windsor, Nicholas presented his formal engagement
