Baby in the Palace - PART I

From the start, Aleksei was a cheerful and sweet-tempered baby, with “an expression of intelligence so rare for an infant” (Anna Vyrubova). Pierre Gilliard called him “his parents’ pride and joy, the center of this loving family, the focus of all its hopes and affections.” At his first meeting with him, Gilliard wrote:

“I was just finishing my lesson with Olga Nikolaievna when the Tsarina entered the room, carrying the son and Heir. She came towards us, and evidently wished to show the one member of the family I did not yet know. I could see she was transfused by the delirious joy of a mother who at last has seen her dearest wish fulfilled. She was proud and happy in the beauty of her child. He was certainly one of the handsomest babies one could imagine, with his lovely fair curls and his great blue-gray eyes under their fringe of long curling lashes. He had the fresh pink color of a healthy child, and when he smiled there were two little dimples in his chubby cheeks. When I went near him a solemn, frightened look came into his eyes, and it took a good deal to induce him to hold out a tiny hand...”

The parents were overwhelmed with love and protectiveness for this little bundle of smiles and diapers, of baby coos and delightful little laughs. Alix rarely left his side, even when his nurse was feeding him, and she bathed and dressed him herself. In the spring of 1905, she began taking him out on carriage rides through the streets, unguarded save for two or three Cossacks. All through the city, men, women and children spotted their little Tsar-to-Be, and bowed, and if a regiment happened to cross the carriage’s path, they cheered “Hurrah!” and Aleksei giggled.

The Tsar never missed an opportunity to show him off. He would bring him to the unlikeliest places -- banquets and regiment reviews, cabinet meetings and court gatherings. Beaming, he would hold up the baby and ask, “Don’t you think he’s a beauty?” No one ever hesitated to reply assertively that he was, indeed, a beautiful little boy. Once, as the director of the Court Chancellery, A. Mosolov, requested to see the Tsar, he was led directly into the nursery, where the baby was being given his daily bath. Mosolov remembers that “he was lustily kicking out

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