Alexander II_ The Last Great Tsar - Edvard Radzinsky [5]
Nicholas’s mother was the Danish Princess Dagmar; his grandmother, the Danish queen. He called his grandmother “the mother-in-law of all Europe”: her numerous daughters, sons, and grandchildren had allied nearly all the royal houses, uniting the continent in this entertaining manner from England to Greece.
Princess Dagmar was first engaged to the elder son of Alexander II—Nicholas. But Nicholas died from consumption in Nice, and Alexander became heir to the throne. Along with his title, the new heir took his deceased brother’s fiancée for his wife: on his deathbed Nicholas himself joined their hands. The Danish Princess Dagmar became Her Imperial Highness Marie Feodorovna.
The marriage was a happy one. They had many children. Nicholas’s father proved to be a marvelous family man: his main precept was to preserve the foundations of the family and the state.
Constancy was the motto of Nicholas’s father, the future Emperor Alexander III.
Reform—that is, change and quest—had been the motto of Nicholas’s grandfather, Emperor Alexander II.
His grandfather’s frequent enthusiasms for new ideas found a unique extension in his many romantic involvements. Alexander II’s love affairs followed one after the other, until she—the beauty—appeared: Princess Catherine Dolgorukaya. To everyone’s astonishment, Alexander II was faithful to his new mistress. Children were born. An official second imperial family appeared, and Alexander II spent nearly all his time with them. And when the revolutionaries began their tsar hunt, Nicholas’s grandfather took an extravagant step: for their safety he settled both his families in the Winter Palace.
In 1880 Nicholas’s grandmother, Marie Feodorovna, Alexander II’s official wife, died, whereupon Nicholas’s grandfather married his mistress. Although the intelligent and punctilious Princess Catherine was quick to renounce all rights to the throne for her eldest son, who knew? Today, perhaps tomorrow, the impossible.… Alexander II was sixty-two years old, but he was at the dawn of his powers and health. Nicholas’s father took a marked step into the background. But now, just a few months after Alexander II’s shameful marriage, a bomb exploding on the Ekaterininsky Canal carried Nicholas’s grandfather to his grave. Naturally, Nicholas heard what people around him were saying: divine retribution for the sinful tsar!
In the fall of 1882 Nicholas sang a song which so impressed him that when he got home he wrote it out on the inside cover of his very first diary (“The song we sang while one of us hid”). This folk song about the old hag death combing out the curls of the slain lad opens his diary. Yet another mysterious portent.
“Began writing my diary on the 1st of January 1882. In the morning drank hot chocolate, dressed in my Life Guard reserves uniform.… Took a walk in the garden with Papa. We chopped and sawed wood and made a great bonfire. Went to bed at about half past 9.… Papa, Mama, and I received two deputations. Presented me with a magnificent wooden platter inscribed ‘The peasants of Voronezh to their Tsarevich.’ With bread and salt and a Russian towel.”
Games at Gatchina, visits with his cousins the grand dukes, who were his age. The large Romanov family.
“This morning the canaries were moved into a small wooden cage.… Sandro [Alexander] and Sergei … skated and played ball, and when Papa left we started a snowball fight.”
Boys at play. A carefree life. Sergei and Sandro were the sons of Grand Duke Michael, his grandfather’s brother.
Nicholas (or Nicky, as everyone called him) was especially friendly with Michael’s sons. Sergei, Sandro, and George Mikhailovich were his diary’s favorite characters, the comrades of his childhood games, his youth. The eldest was also a Nicholas, later the distinguished liberal historian Nicholas Romanov, who looked bemusedly on their play. He would always regard Emperor Nicky with gentle irony.
Later, outside at the Fortress of Peter and Paul, Nicholas Mikhailovich and George Mikhailovich would be executed, and Sergei