Princess Alix’s allowance of pocket money was twenty-five cents a week up to the time of her confirmation, when she received double that amount. Alix was the youngest born of the Grand Duke and Duchess and was called “Alix” because Queen Victoria had always been annoyed at the way Germans pronounced Alice. And so at her suggestion Alice was changed to Alix to simplify it for the people of her own country. “Alicky” she was frequently called by her mother, but the neighbours and friends of the family early came to call her the “Little Princess Sonnenschein,” and from this came the name of endearment which she carried for so long--“Sunny.”
“Baby is a sweet, merry little person, like Ella (her sister), but her features are smaller,” her mother once wrote to Queen Victoria, “and her eyes are darker, and she has very long lashes and auburn hair. She is always laughing, and with a deep dimple in one cheek just like Ernie.” (Ernie was her brother who is now Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine.) On another occasion her mother wrote: “She is indeed the personification of her nickname ‘Sunny.’” During all this time Empress dreams were far off, and the big world with its infinite possibilities, its large joys and burden of days, but visions of twilight hours. When she was only six years old her mother died. This was the first deep shadow of her life, and from that time on she carried little responsibilities that tended to weigh upon her, to drive her more and more into herself, and perhaps to plant the seeds of moroseness which some say is now a quality of her character. At twelve the True Romance of her life came to her.
Princess Elizabeth, the older sister of Alix, had been courted by Grand Duke Sergius, of Russia, an uncle of the present Tsar and brother of the then reigning Emperor. In 1884 Sergius came to Darmstadt for his bride, and young Nicholas was of the Royal party. Nicholas here met Princess Alix for the first time and in her saw his future bride--the future Empress of his country. Nicholas, though nearly four years older than she, was only sixteen, but sometimes hearts can choose their own at sixteen as surely as in later years, and if love has since been the dominant element in the family life of this royal couple, it entered in, there in Darmstadt at this early time.