The vast bedroom smelled of sickness. There were oxygen bags in a corner of it, and a bedspread embroidered with double-headed eagles hid evidence that the bed had only recently been vacated. Seated in an armchair in the centre of the room was the waxen, wasted figure of what had once been an all-powerful bear of a man.

Minny moved to the side of his chair and rested a hand tenderly on a shrunken shoulder. Once, long ago, when the imperial train had become derailed and the roof of the carriage the family were travelling in had collapsed, her husband had taken the colossal weight of it on his back and had lifted it sufficiently to allow her and their children to scramble to safety. Now he looked as if a puff of air would be more than he could survive.

Fighting for breath between each word, he formally welcomed Alicky, telling her that although she was German by birth, on her marriage to Nicky she would become Russian by adoption. Just as his Danish-born wife had become Russian by adoption. And then, as she and Nicky kneeled before him, he had valiantly given them his blessing.

For the next few days Alicky rarely saw Nicky. That his distraught mother and his dying father needed his presence was something she understood. But it meant she had no one, other than Ella, to help her accustom herself to a foreign court – one that was in uproar and in a near-hysterical state of panic.

‘Bertie and Alix have been sent for,’ Ella said to her. ‘Minny needs Alix at a time like this. As sisters, they have always been close. And Bertie will bring a sense of order to things.’

That it was going to be up to English Uncle Bertie to bring order to a disarrayed Russian court bewildered Alicky and she felt indignant, on Nicky’s behalf, that Ella should think Uncle Bertie was needed.

It didn’t take long, however, for her to begin seeing things differently, for although it was obvious to everyone that Nicky would be the Tsar within days – possibly hours – no one treated him with the respect that, as his father’s heir, was his due. Instead of coming to him with the latest findings on his father’s condition, the doctors bypassed him and gave their reports to Minny. Government officials also ignored him, bringing state papers to Minny and not to him. Even Sergei didn’t seek Nicky out in the way Alicky felt he should have, and neither did the Tsar’s other two brothers, Vladimir and Paul. Instead, the three of them were constantly to be found in close, secretive huddles, always falling silent if anyone walked too near them. Whatever Alicky had expected on her long journey to Livadia, it hadn’t been that she would be sidelined when she arrived; and that Nicky would be equally sidelined shocked her deeply.