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She had calmed down. Love filled her, and she longed to proclaim it. With him.

——

When he ascended to the throne, so much was expected of him. Russia’s unfailing expectation of a good new tsar! His image had already been created: as heir he had tried to slip out of the palace to have a good time (he thirsted for freedom); he had been in love with a Jewess (he would not oppress national minorities); he had put a police chief in the guardhouse for twenty-four hours (an end to police tyranny). These hopes produced endless requests from local elected councils for all manner of reform.

Pobedonostsev decided it was time to put a halt to all of this. Nicholas had to deliver an appropriate speech (written for the tsar by Pobedonostsev himself).

On January 17 (!), 1895, the young emperor and the new empress (who was baptized in St. Feodor’s Cathedral, becoming Alexandra Feodorovna) showed themselves to the country for the first time.

Representatives of the local councils, the cities, and the Cossacks gathered at Anichkov Palace. The sight of this multitude of people, who Pobedonostsev asserted harbored treason and whom Nicholas must now put in check, threw the timid Nicholas into confusion. The speech lay in the emperor’s lambskin cap.

He begins reading too loudly, in a breaking falsetto: “Recently at certain meetings of local councils we have heard the voices of people carried away by senseless dreams.” Out of his confusion and tenseness, he suddenly shouts this last sentence while staring at the representative of the Tver nobility. The tsar’s shout startles the old man, so that the gold platter with bread and salt which, according to ancient custom, members of the local councils prepared to offer the new sovereign flies from his hands.

The platter rolls across the floor, clanging, the bread falls off, and the gold salt cellar embedded in it rolls behind the platter. The impeccably well bred tsar does what any young man should do when something falls from an old man’s hands: Nicholas tries to pick the platter up, which embarrasses everyone dreadfully. The minister of the court, old Vorontsov-Dashkov, hastily chases after the platter, which is caught.

Aficionados of omens sigh grievously, anticipating sadness in the coming reign.

From the diary of Vladimir Nikolaevich Lamsdorf, a statesman who would become a minister to the tsar:

“January 19, 1895. In town they are directing harsh attacks against the emperor’s speech of the day before yesterday, which made the most distressing impression.… They are also blaming the empress for holding herself as if she had swallowed a yardstick and for not bowing to the deputations.”

Alix was just as shy as her spouse. She fended off embarrassment with her regal bearing.

“A DAUGHTER SENT BY GOD”

In the summer they went south, to the Crimea, to the Livadia Palace, where the dead emperor had so recently sat in his armchair. The dowager empress, Nicky’s brother Misha, his childhood comrade Sandro, and Sandro’s wife, Nicky’s sister Xenia.

Both Xenia and Alix were pregnant.

“31 July, 1895. After tea I was busy when suddenly I learned that a daughter, Irina, had been born to dear Xenia. Alix and I flew to the farm immediately. We saw Xenia and my little niece. Praise God, it all ended for the best.”

This Irina crying in her cradle would become the wife of Felix Yusupov, Grigory Rasputin’s chief assassin.

In the fall they returned to Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. From 1895 until the end of his reign, Tsarskoe Selo would be his family’s principal residence—“that charming, dear, precious place.” In the park, set among small artificial lakes, not far from the opulent Catherine Palace, stood the smaller Alexander Palace half hidden by trees. Here they lived. On the night of November 3, the dowager empress was summoned there from Gatchina.

“3 November. Friday. A day forever memorable for me, during which I suffered much! At 1 in the morning dear Alix began having pains that would not let her sleep. All day she