Confessions of the Czarina. Princess Catherine Radziwill
Kaiser, who somehow appeared regularly in Russia whenever this was considered necessary.
People, and there were some, who happened to be in the secret of this intercourse pretended that one of the things which William II. urged upon his cousin was the necessity of getting rid of the influence of the Empress Marie, who, by reason of her avowed French sympathies, constituted a danger to German expansion and to German progress in the Muscovite Empire. The fact that for the present Alexandra Feodorowna was still considered a nonentity at the Russian Court was not of much importance because it was thought that if she were once to become the mother of a son she would immediately be raised to the position of an important personage in her husband’s house and country. And it must not be forgotten that in the course of the summer of 1895 the Empress was known to be about to give birth to her first child, who of course had to be a boy and an Heir to the Russian Throne.
Alas, alas for these hopes!
It was a Grand Duchess, Olga Nicholaiewna, who saw the light of day on a November morning in the Imperial Palace of Tsarskoye Selo. The disappointment was intense and extended to all classes of the nation, except among the members of the Imperial Family, who made no secret of the fact that they were delighted the little Hessian Princess they all disliked so intensely had not fulfilled her husband’s and her subjects’ expectations. The news of their joy reached the ears of Alexandra Feodorowna through the channel of the Kaiser, and added to her bitterness against her Russian relatives, which made itself felt in the affected manner with which she continually made allusions in their presence to her regrets at having accepted the position of Empress of All the Russias. She openly spoke of her contempt for this “land of savages” as she called it, and more than once her attendants heard her give vent to the exclamation of “My country, my beloved country, why am I parted from Thee?”
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