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He asked his mother for a diamond brooch, which he gave to Alix. She accepted it. Nicholas was happy, but he did not know Alix H. Her consciousness had been formed in the puritanical English court. Uncompromising, militantly stern, and proud—these were the necessary attributes of an English princess. Alix decided she had acted improperly. The next day, while dancing with him at a children’s ball in Anichkov Palace, she stabbed the brooch into his hand. Silently, without a word.

Also without a word, Nicholas gave the brooch to his sister Xenia.

Only to take it back ten years later.

This brooch would know a terrible fate.

It would be five years before Alix H., now seventeen, would appear at the Russian court again. Ostensibly she had come to see her sister Ella. In fact, she was being inspected as a prospective bride. All those years he had clung to his memory of the young beauty, and now he had got his way.

“Devoid of charm, wooden, cold eyes, holds herself as if she’d swallowed a yardstick”—this was the court’s obliging sentence. It was made known that the empress-mother did not like the princess. The voice of the empress-mother always rang out when the emperor-father did not want his own heard.

It was all a simple matter of politics. Alexander’s policy was alliance between Russia and France. The princess from the house of Orléans, the daughter of the Comte de Paris—that was the desired party right now. Moreover, Alix’s English upbringing (England, the eternal symbol of liberalism) might revive the hopes of the liberal party, which Alexander and Pobedonostsev had smothered.

No one in the country or the family dared cross the powerful emperor. Especially the soft-spoken Nicky, who hated conflict. Father and son had a serious talk at Peterhof, and Nicky meekly agreed not to insist on marrying Alix, but.… But he adamantly rejected the Orléans princess. He chose a third path: to wait, silently, without complaint or hope. To wait until the Lord joined him to Alix. That was the only possible way: very quiet and meek—but rebellious.

His diary of 1889 opens with a photograph of the young Alix, which he pasted in after she was gone. He had begun to wait.

Her sister Ella (after her conversion to Orthodoxy, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna) helped him out of his unpleasant situation with the rejected Alix. It was announced that there could be no question of any prospective marriage: Alix had no intention of converting.

Alix returned to England. But what was most surprising was that she did so with a strange relief. She told herself: My sister is right, I cannot convert so simply. Faith occupied too great a place in her life.

On the blond princess’s next visit, a year later, the unhappy Nicholas was not permitted to see her.

Alix H. stayed with her sister Ella at Ilinskoe, Ella’s estate outside Moscow.

“20 August 1890. Lord! Am dying to go to Ilinskoe.… Otherwise, if not now, then I might have to wait an entire year to see her, and that is hard!!!”

Ilinskoe exists to this day, outside Moscow. Alix stayed at the estate a few weeks and watched with astonishment. The ties between Darmstadt, London, and Petersburg were too close not to know the details about each other: Ella’s marriage was fictitious because of her husband’s inclinations, and she was never to have a child. At the same time Sergei Alexandrovich tormented her with his drinking bouts and groundless jealousy. Alix was astonished to see that her sister nonetheless was happy; her eyes shone. Ella loved her husband because the Lord so ordained. Her love for her unlucky husband was the fulfillment of the Lord’s commandments. The transitory joys of life and the eternal joy of serving God.

The church still stands at Ilinskoe. Then candles burned there, singers’ voices rang out, and the two sisters stood in the sanctuary.

Nicholas continued his meek rebellion. He carried out Papa’s order, but.… He could be forbidden to see her but not to wait for her.

“21 December 1890. This evening with Mama we discussed the family life of today