He comes off as a basically well-meaning (in a bourgeois "alms for the poor" way) but mind-blowingly incompetent and out of touch with reality.

He was probably aware that he was in over his head. When he became tsar at the age of 26 his reaction was an 19th century version of "oh shit oh fuck!":

Nicholas may have felt unprepared for the duties of the crown, for he asked his cousin and brother-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander, "What is going to happen to me and all of Russia?"