Tsar Alexei was a tall, handsome man 'of good impulses'. Unfortunately, he was ineffective as a ruler and allowed his favourites to administer the country as though it were a private concession. Corruption became so rampant that, no matter what taxes were raised, the Treasury was always empty. However, Russian historians praise his 'gentle and amiable character'.
Throughout Lent he fasted for three days each week and on the other days ate only one meal composed of cabbage or mushrooms; 'he often prayed for five or six hours at a time and was said to prostrate
himself between a thousand and fifteen hundred times daily.'
When Alexei was angered his wrath assumed a distinctly Tartar complexion. This happened in 1662 when the currency had become so debased that thousands of starving people decided to petition the
Tsar. They forced their way into the grounds of Alexei's estate at Kolomenskoye, a few miles from Moscow, and begged the sovereign to punish the men responsible for their wretched condition. Some of the leaders even had the temerity to catch hold of the buttons on the Tsar's long coat.
Although Alexei promised to look into the people's grievance, he had undoubtedly had a bad fright; and when his troops arrived from Moscow, commanded by foreign mercenaries, he ordered them to fire 
on the unarmed crowd. Hundreds were killed and wounded but the matter did not end there. Although the great mass of demonstrators were village folk who had merely followed the rest through curiosity, he sentenced seven thousand people to death and ordered that another fifteen thousand should have their arms and legs cut off.
The Church continued to praise the pious Alexei for his God-fearing ways. Alexei responded by indulging the whims of the Patriarch, who believed that merriment was diabolical, and persuaded
the Tsar to sign a Ukaz proscribing musical instruments and oulawing jugglers. Church on Sunday became obligatory, soothsayers were outlawed, and cards, draughts and knucklebones declared an offence against the State. It is not surprising that drunkenness and homosexuality, two pleasures not outlawed by the Church, increased by leaps and bounds.
Alexei was a responsive patron. He ordered upholstered carriages with glass windows, and planted the asparagus and roses introduced by a Dutchman and a Dane in his gardens at Kolomenskoye. He was delighted by the mechanical toys offered by the German craftsmen, and bought canaries that sang and dolls that walked. However, what pleased him most were two copper lions dressed in sheepskin which flanked his throne at Kolomenskoye. They rolled their eyes, wagged their tails, and opened ferocious jaws. Their life force was supplied by a man behind a curtain operating a pair of bellows.
The Tsar's sister and daughters, too exhalted to become the wife of one of the Tsar's subjects, were doomed to a life of excruciating boredom in the 'terem', or women's quarters, where they passed their
lives embroidering and praying and supervising the children of their brothers. As it was not the custom for girls to be educated, Tsar Alexei took a radical step when he allowed his precocious daughter,
Sophia, to share lessons with her brother Alexis. 
Alexei was not quite forty when his wife died. During twenty-one years of married life, Maria Miloslavskaya had provided him with thirteen children. But by 1670 death had taken such a severe toll that only two sons remained. The heir, Theodore, was intelligent but disfigured and sickly; and the second son, Ivan, was not only defective in speech and sight but a semi-imbecile. Alexei decided to marry again.
Custom decreed that two hundred of the most attractive females in the kingdom should be assembled for the sovereign's inspection. However, before the assembly had taken place, he had made his choice
and the 17-year-old Natalia Naryshkina became his second wife. However, the marriage was postponed for half a year and, when finally it took place, Natalia was five months pregnant. She gave Alexis a
fine, healthy son who was named Peter, later to become known as Peter the Great.
Alexei was so enamoured of his bride that he insisted on her accompanying him at all times, even when he went hawking. This suited Natalia who had been brought up by Artarmon Matveyev's Hamilton
wife, and entertained firm ideas about what she should be allowed to do. Soon she was driving to the country with the Tsar in an open carriage.Alexei's happiness was short-lived for, in 1676, after being married to Natalia for only six years, he died. His ailing son, Theodore, was proclaimed Tsar.
 

Source: "The Romanovs" by Virginia Cowles.