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was still unmarried. When Alix went with her father and sister to London to join in the celebrations surrounding Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1887, she was
reunited once again with most of her many cousins, although she was still too young to attend the balls and parties given for the sixty-eight-year-old queen.
    By the time Alix turned sixteen, in the year following her grandmother’s Jubilee, she had grown into a complex young woman with austere tastes, romantic aspirations and a unique nature
that was too challenging for most of those who knew her to fathom. Her cousin and childhood friend Marie-Louise, Aunt Helena’s daughter, described her as ‘a most wonderful person’
with ‘a curious atmosphere of fatality’ about her. ‘I once said in the way that cousins can be very rude and outspoken to each other: “Alix, you always play at being
sorrowful; one day the Almighty will send you some real crushing sorrows, and then what are you going to do?”’ 10 The response was not
recorded.
    Sir George Buchanan, who knew Alix well in her youth, wrote of her as ‘a beautiful girl, though shy and reserved’, and took note of the ‘sad and pathetic expression’ her
face took on at times. 11
    But her shyness, reserve and melancholy were counterbalanced by a strong strain of impetuousness and passion, a capacity for stony anger and iron resolve, and at the same time a gift for levity,
even frivolity. With a close friend, or with her brother Ernie, she could be bright and cheerful, full of light conversation. One girlhood friend, Minnie Cochrane, remembered that Alix liked to
play the banjo, and that the two girls sang duets by the hour. 12 Sunshine and shadow seemed to alternate in Alix’s ardent nature, and she
withheld herselfwarily from anyone she did not know well, repressing the more vulnerable and appealing side of her personality and becoming ill at ease. Signs of this
discomfort were evident; a flush spread across her face and down her neck, and her cheeks became blotched with red.
    Alix’s sixteenth birthday arrived, in May of 1888, and with its advent she crossed an important threshold. Once a girl reached sixteen she underwent a series of rituals marking her formal
entrance into adulthood. For the first time, she pinned up her hair; she abandoned her girlish clothing for low-necked full-skirted gowns; she became confirmed in the church; and, if she was of
high birth or wealth, she was formally presented to society at a ball or party. It was understood that at sixteen a girl was ready to become engaged, preferably as quickly as possible so that she
did not risk appearing undesirable.
    With Orchie’s help, Alix began pinning up her long, thick reddish–gold hair each day and wore the new gowns her dressmakers provided. Coached by Dr Sell, she prepared successfully
for her confirmation in the Lutheran church and by Ella, who came from Russia for the occasion, and by her new lady-in-waiting Gretchen von Fabrice, she prepared for her coming-out ball.
    Perhaps because the many guests at the ball were all familiar to Alix, she was at ease on that evening – or, if she was not at ease, no one recorded her anxiety. Dressed in a simple gown
of white tulle, with a string of pearls around her neck and fresh orange blossoms arranged like a crown in her hair and scattered on her gown, she made her entrance into the ballroom and was much
admired, presiding alongside her father at the banquet and dancing to the music of the seventy-piece Darmstadt theatre orchestra.
    No one who saw Alix that night could have been in any doubt that she would soon become engaged, for she had beauty, breeding, taste and accomplishments, chief among which was her musical
ability. Over the following months, from autumn 1888 to spring 1889, Darmstadt society waited for the expected announcement that the grand duke’s daughter Alexandra had agreed to become the
wife of some fortunate man.
    But no announcement was made, and by