There is very little epic and fairy-tale material about Alyosha (usually called Popovich). And the one that exists is extremely contradictory. The author was faced with the task of reconciling the irreconcilable: on the one hand, his hero is characterized extremely negatively (if you look down on his behavior from the past centuries), on the other hand, not only is the memory of him preserved among the people, he stands next to such heroes as Ilya Muromets and Dobrynya Nikitich... So the author thought: suddenly, Alyosha had evil envious people who tried to tarnish his good name, giving his actions a completely different meaning, not the one that was actually hidden behind them? And if we try to look at them from a different point of view, won’t we see a hero who deservedly takes his rightful place among the “younger” heroes? And he is no Popovich (according to one of the little-known versions of the epic).