The spring of 1895 brought few changes in the existence of the young Empress.
For one thing, she contrived to influence the Czar to take up his residence in the small Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, which later on they were to inhabit permanently, but which at that time was still badly furnished and rather forlorn in appearance, owing to the fact that no one had ever lived there since the death of Alexander II. It had been a favorite resort of his, and of his morganatic wife, the Princess Youriewsky, and for that reason had been shunned by his successor, who had elected to establish himself in the huge castle of Gatschina. This place was left to the Dowager Empress for life, and thither she repaired in the beginning of the spring, not, however, without having made a feeble attempt to influence her son and daughter-in-law to accompany her. But for once Nicholas II. did not react, and ignored the invitation. His wife was expecting the birth of her first child, and this circumstance gave her more influence, and to her wishes more weight, than would perhaps have been the case under ordinary circumstances.
Though at Tsarskoye Selo Alexandra Feodorowna obtained more liberty than had been the case throughout the weary months of the preceding winter, yet she found that she had to keep in mind the necessity not to give any reason for the criticisms which she knew but too well were directed against her from every side. Needless to say, she might have avoided these criticisms by the display of some elementary notions of tact. In her way she was a very truthful woman; she even carried her love for veracity sometimes too far. She had no experience of the world, and her life at Darmstadt had not prepared her for the responsibilities of her position as Empress. She did not care for St. Petersburg society, which she considered frivolous, and she made no secret of this fact. Of course people resented it.
Her mother-in-law, the Empress Marie, though she had always kept herself very well informed as to all that was going on in the select circles of those privileged beings who were received at Court, yet had taken good care to appear to ignore the many love-affairs which were either known or suspected in regard to these people. She had so much tact that whenever anything she disapproved of occurred, among these Upper Ten Thousand of people, she let them see that such was the case, but never mentioned it in public.