Alix had six siblings, by the time her mother was finished. Victoria, nicknamed "Vicki," was the eldest, then came Elisabeth ("Ella"), Irene, Ernest-Ludwig ("Ernie" and "Ernest-Louis"), and Frederick ("Frittie"). Alix had a younger sister, too: Marie, "May." Her mother had formerly been Princess Alice of Britain, a daughter of Queen Victoria of England.

        The little Alix was a merry girl, a blue-eyed, golden-haired whirlwind. This attitude earned her the nicknames "Sunshine" and "Sunny"; "Prinzessin Sonnenschein" (Princess Sunshine) in German. Alice, who was the first to give her this nickname, wrote to her mother Queen Victoria, "Sunny is the picture of robust health," and "Sunny in pink was immensely admired." Little Alix was always pretty, too. Alice reported to the Queen,

        "Baby is like Ella, only smaller features, and still darker eyes with very black lashes, and reddish brown hair. She is a sweet, merry little person, always laughing and a dimple in one cheek, just like Ernie."

        Unfortunately, however, her early childhood was filled with tragedies.

        Firstly, when Alix was less than a year old, her brother Frittie had a tragic accident.  One fateful morning, Frittie and Ernie had come rushing into their mother's bedroom. Three-year-old Frittie climbed to see out the open window, and fell twenty feet down to unmerciful earth. He seemed to be fine except for a few bruises, but died hours later from internal bleeding. Alice, always rather morbid, greived him heartily.

        And in 1878, an epidimic of diphtheria swept Germany. At the time, Alix was only six, and still very much the smiling little Sunny. Alice jokingly remarked to a friend that wouldn't it be funny if the whole family got it, and of course, they did. But it was not funny.

        The children got sick first, and then the grand duke. Alice, warned by the doctors not to breath May's breath because she might catch the disease, obeyed as much as possible. However, one day, May began to gasp and choke, and began crying, "Kiss me, Mama, kiss me!" Alice, unable to stand any more, picked her up and kissed her. This resulted in her, too, catching the disease. Soon after, in late 1878, both Alice and May died. Alix could not understand it. Suddenly, all the toys were new - the old ones burned for fear of the diphtheria.

        These events shaped Alix for life. After her mother died, she and her brother Ernest were sent to live with their grandmother Queen Victoria in England. There, raised by governesses hand-picked by the originator of Victorianism herself, Alix's character was molded.  But her early years did something to her as well.  She had an obsession, like her mother, with death and the grave.   That early instilled sense of looming death was only added to with the many relatives she had.  With so many royal relations or acquaintances, she was always in mourning for somebody.  And, oddly enough, after the first six months of mourning, in the court at that time one could wear mauve as well as black for the remainder of the year.  No wonder Alix chose her favorite color to be mauve.

        Alix had golden hair with a tinge of red and blue eyes. She was shy, and when her 'Granny' asked if she would play the piano or sing for guests, a dreadful red blush would creep up her neck, and she would go through the ordeal with a hot face.

        After her mother's death, Alix wore a sad, twisted expression on her face, causing her cousin Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein to comment on her perpetual sadness. "Alix," she remarked, "you always play at being sorrowful; one day, the Almighty will send some real crushing sorrows; and then what will you do?"

        But it was not play; Alix was in general a tragic, withdrawn person. She followed her mother's fascination with death, and at an early age grew deeply involved with spiritual matters. She read books on theology, classics, novels, and was generally an intelligent child. A governess, Margaret "Madgie" Jackson, taught Alix about politics, and Alix grew to be interested in it.

        Another cousin, Queen Marie of Rumania, said:

        "Her [Alix's] attitude to the world was perpetually distrustful, strangely empty of tenderness and, in a way, hostile.... She held both great and small at a distance, as though they intended to steal something which was hers."

      Alix later used the word herself: she had been covered by "a cloud" of sadness and resignation, that she would suffer beneath her entire life. She covered herself in a protective shell that many perceived as coldness and hauteur. She had a lovely smile, people said, but no one but her closest friends and companions saw, in private situations. "It [her smile] lit up her face, it turned her mouth into a flower, it did something unforgettable to her beautiful eyes. It was a smile which, in the language of Russian peasants, 'was like the gift of a big silver coin.'"

        In 1884, twelve-year-old Alix's eighteen-year-old sister Ella was going to marry Grand Duke Sergei of Russia, a brother of Tsar Alexander III. Princess Alix was swept up into the gaities of the Russian court during the time she was there for the wedding. The opulence of St. Petersburg society stunned her, and, being shy, usually only took part in dancing at the balls she attended.

        At Peterhof, a tsarist resort in the Gulf of Finland, Alix met sixteen-year-old Tsarevich Nicholas, the son of the emperor. He, "Nicky," and she, "Sunny," etched their names on a window in the Winter Palace with the stone on Alix's ring. Alix developed a crush on the young tsarevich, but it did not develop into a true love until five years later.

        In 1889, the now blooming, seventeen-year-old princess visited her sister Ella and brother-in-law Sergei at their estate, Ilinskoe. There, Nicholas held a ball just before Lent. Alix began to have more of a passion for Nicholas, instead of a fleeting crush.

        When Nicholas proposed to her, Alix wanted to agree with all her heart. Unfortunately, the marriage required changing her Lutheran faith to Russian Orthodox. Queen Victoria, who was scandalized by the looseness of St. Petersburg society, did not recommend it. Kaiser Wilhelm, Alix's cousin, was thinking more of a German-Russian alliance - he advised it. Alix decided for herself on account of the religion: "No."

        For the next few years, Princess Alix took the position of Darmstadt's grand dame, as her brother Ernie - now Grand Duke of Hesse - was unmarried. She thoroughly enjoyed this role, and people began to think she would be a spinster. However, she still loved her "Nicky."

        In 1894, all that changed. Ernest-Louis announced his marriage to the dull-looking Princess Victoria-Melita of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, called "Ducky." Alix was horrified. Victoria-Melita was her exact opposite: tasteless, outgoing, and unattractive.  She began to reconsider her rejection of a Russian marriage.  Her sister Ella, married to Nicholas's uncle Sergei, consoled her, saying that Orthodoxy was not so different than Lutherism.

        So on the day of Ernie and Ducky's wedding at Coburg Castle, 1894, Tsarevich Nicholas proposed to her once again.  With many tears, Alix accepted.

        Shortly after that, also in 1894, Alix visited the Imperial family with her fiancee at Livadia Palace, in the Crimea. While she was still there, Tsar Alexander III died. She assured him that as soon as possible she would become Orthodox. (She did - she changed her name to Alexandra and, until her coronation, was known as "The Truly Believing Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna.") When he passed away, Alix went about conducting herself "like a little angel of comfort," according to her sister Ella. Her wedding was only days later.

        This was terribly unfortunate for the new Alexandra Feodorovna. The peasants proclaimed "she has come to us behind a coffin," and foreboded dire predicaments for both Russia and the new tsaritsa.

        During that first year of marriage, Alix did not make a good impression on St. Petersburg society at all. She had been raised by the very conservative Queen Victoria, and considered herself English. English was the language she spoke, and she was still learning Russian, taught to her by Mlle. Ekaterina Schneider. At receptions and parties, the lovely but nervous young empress would glance anxiously down the line to see how many more were coming. She was the opposite of her frivolous society butterfly mother-in-law. Russians immediately dismissed Alexandra as a bore and a prude: "The heads of young ladies," she declared, quite correctly, "are filled with nothing but thoughts of young officers."  The story went that at a party, she saw a woman whose neckline she considered too low. A lady-in-waiting was sent to the offender. The conversation went as follows:

        "Madame, Her Majesty wants me to tell you that in Hesse-Darmstadt we don't wear our dresses that way."

        "Really?" came the reply, as the lady in question pulled her dress still lower. "Pray tell Her Majesty that in Russia we do wear our dresses that way."

        And Alexandra's choice of the Alexander Palace at the tsarist estate of Tsarskoe Selo, 15 miles from St. Petersburg, the smaller of the two Tsarskoe Selo palaces and certainly not as large as the Winter Palace in the capital, did nothing to help it. She preferred a private life to being a social butterfly. She decorated the Alexander Palace in chintzes and plants - charming decor, but out-of-date.  And last but certainly not least, Alexandra furnished the palace through - horrors! - mail-order catalogues that delivered assembly-line couches, chairs, and tables from Maples in London. That atrocity left no doubt in the Russian peoples' minds. They moved on without her, and joined the still lively Dowager Empress Maria.

        And that was another trouble with Alexandra. Maria Feodorovna, who did not take kindly to being relegated to dowager empress. It was she who went to the parties, who danced at balls, who went out of the room first, who had her name announced before the real tsaritsa's, who took the arm of Nicholas and left his wife to be escorted by a grand duke. She still wanted to control her son, and it was a battle. Somewhat like a typical, clingy mother-in-law today, treating her son as if he were still a child, and in essence trying to have herself be the main woman in his life, not his wife. Poor Alix was disgusted with "motherdear," and desperately wanted to get away from her.

        But even at the Alexander Palace, Maria's shadow fell over her. The old empress refused to give the crown jewels to Alexandra, and Alexandra merely retorted that if she wouldn't give the jewels to her, she wouldn't take them. It threatened a minor scandal, and, unhappily, Maria handed over the jewels. From that point on, society followed either one of two people: either the pretty older empress, still gay and sociable, or the serious, Victorian, English young empress. Needless to say, not many joined up with Alexandra.

        Among the few that the tsaritsa trusted were Julie "Lili" Dehn and Anna Viroubova. Viroubova, called "Anya," was a young noblewoman upon whom the whole of St. Petersburg society did not look favorably on.  Anya was fat ("the big cow"), tasteless, not even a lady-in-waiting, simple-minded, subservient to the empress and willing to do anything for her. Alexandra treated her like a younger sister, a child almost. Anya would pout when she could not for some reason see the Imperial family, and Alexandra teased her about this by calling her "our little daughter."  Lili Dehn was another of Alix's confidantes.

        Alexandra was delighted to have her first child, a girl, and happily named her Olga. Even though her primary task as tsaritsa was to produce a boy, an heir to the throne (under the Pauline law, created by Tsar Paul, only males could inherit the throne), there seemed infinite time to have more children.

        But then followed, at almost exact two-year intervals, three more daughters: Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. Even though Alexandra loved these children, she desperately wanted a boy. It would raise her status in the eyes of the people, and maybe she would not be such an outsider.

        So Alexandra, deeply interested in mysticism, sought out any type of religous or mystical doctor. She was extremely religious, and assured that these "men of God" (most often frauds) could help her.

        Two friends of hers, the former Montenegrin princesses Militsa and Anastasia, introduced her to a French "doctor," Philippe Vachot, who they claimed would be able to produce a boy.

        A desperate Alexandra followed his every command. She bathed by moonlight, drank herbal mixtures, did literally anything in the hope that somehow, some way, she could have a male child.

        In 1903, Alexandra began to think that she was pregnant.  However, one day she suddenly fainted, the doctors were called, and it was discovered that the empress had had a miscarriage.  It was called a "phantom pregnancy" at the time - meaning that she had simply believed it was real - and today, some say that it was premature, or that it was spirited away.  In any case, because of this miscarriage or "false pregnancy," Alexandra was deeply disappointed.

        And then, on July 30, 1904 (August 12 New Style), the tsar and tsaritsa were overjoyed. Alexandra was ecstatic. She delivered an heir, Alexei Nikolaievich Romanov, at Peterhof.

        Poor Alexandra seemed fated for tragedies. Only days after his birth, Alexei began bleeding from the navel. Doctors diagnosed him with hemophilia, a potentially life-threatening condition that had been passed on in the descendants of Queen Victoria. (That same year, 1904, Alix's sister Irene's son died from it) Hemophilia, which can be passed on only through women and can only affect males, causes the blood to not clot properly. The slightest bruise, cut, or scrape can cause a hemophiliac to die, at the very least be in great pain.

        Alexandra's gaiety turned to sorrow overnight. Only mothers of hemophiliacs can truly understand her pain, and how it grows throughout the years. To know that your child - in her case, not only child but her heir - could die any day from the simplest of accidents, is one of the worst things that could happen. A mother's natural instict is to protect, and Alexandra did just that, but maybe went a little too far.