Alexandra Fedorovna (wife of Nicholas II) - biography, information, personal life. German princesses in Russia

Victoria Alice Elena Louise Beatrice of Hesse-Darmstadt, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, whom her husband Nicholas II affectionately called “Alix,” was distinguished by impeccable taste and was known as a trendsetter. At the same time, she herself was not interested in fashion magazines and did not follow modern trends - her Puritan upbringing and natural restraint excluded a passion for luxury and the hunt for fashionable novelties. She categorically rejected the “extremes of fashion”: if popular styles of dresses seemed uncomfortable to her, she did not wear them.

To many court ladies, Alexandra Fedorovna seemed too prim, unfriendly and cold, which they even saw as signs of illness. However, this behavior was explained only by shyness and embarrassment due to communicating with unfamiliar people, as well as the English upbringing that she received from her grandmother, Queen Victoria of England. Puritan views were reflected in her behavior, taste preferences and style. Many luxury items and fashionable outfits were rejected by her as “useless.” For example, the empress refused to wear a tight skirt because it was uncomfortable to walk in.

The last Russian empress preferred outfits from the Worth brothers (sons of the famous French couturier Charles Worth), Albert Brisac, Redfern, Olga Bulbenkova and Nadezhda Lamanova. The brothers Worth and Brizak made evening and ball gowns for her, Olga Bulbenkova made formal dresses with gold embroidery, she ordered comfortable city clothes for visits and walks from Redfern, and both casual clothes and dresses for balls and receptions from Lamanova.

Her wardrobe was dominated by clothes in delicate pastel shades, light pink, blue, pale lilac and light gray outfits of the Art Nouveau era. Fashion designer Paul Poiret called these colors the “neurasthenic range.” The empress did not like satin shoes; she preferred suede shoes with a long narrow toe, golden or white.

Her style was characterized by calm, elegant silhouettes and subtle, refined shades that corresponded to her status, harmonized with her type of appearance and at the same time were a reflection of her natural restraint and modesty. Her contemporaries noted that “she dressed very well, but not extravagantly,” and some even argued that she was not at all interested in clothes.

Alexandra Fedorovna practically did not use cosmetics, did not do a manicure, explaining that the emperor did not like “manicured nails”, and curled her hair only on the eve of big palace appearances. Her favorite scents were " White Rose"Atkinson perfume company and Verbena eau de toilette. She called these fragrances the most “transparent”.

The Empress was well versed in jewelry, of which she preferred to wear rings and bracelets. In her memoirs, one of her contemporaries, characterizing Alexandra Fedorovna’s style, says that she “always wore a ring with a large pearl, as well as a cross studded with precious stones.”

Alexandra Feodorovna treated her toilet with German pedantry and accuracy. According to the recollections of contemporaries, “the empress selected clothes in advance for the week in advance, based on her participation in certain events, as well as in accordance with personal preferences. She reported her choice to the chamberlains. Then, every day, Alexandra Fedorovna received from them a short written list of clothes planned for the next day, and gave final instructions regarding her wardrobe. Sometimes the Empress doubted what to wear and asked to prepare several sets of clothes so that she could choose.”

Plan
Introduction
1 Biography
2 State duties
3 Policy impact (estimates)
4 Canonization

5.1 Letters, diaries, documents, photographs
5.2 Memories
5.3 Works of historians and publicists

Bibliography

Introduction

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (Feodorovna) (nee Princess Alice Victoria Elena Louise Beatrice of Hesse-Darmstadt; May 25, 1872 - July 17, 1918) - wife of Nicholas II (since 1894). The fourth daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine, Ludwig IV, and Duchess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria of England.

Name day (in Orthodoxy) - April 23 according to the Julian calendar, memory of the martyr Alexandra.

1. Biography

Born in Darmstadt (Germany) in 1872. She was baptized on July 1, 1872 according to the Lutheran rite. The name given to her consisted of her mother's name (Alice) and four names of her aunts. Godparents were: Edward, Prince of Wales ( future king Edward VII), Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich (future Emperor Alexander III) with his wife, Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, youngest daughter Queen Victoria Princess Beatrice, Augusta von Hesse-Cassel, Duchess of Cambridge and Maria Anna, Princess of Prussia.

In 1878, a diphtheria epidemic spread in Hesse. Alice's mother and her younger sister May died from it, after which Alice lived most of the time in the UK at Balmoral Castle and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Alice was considered the favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who called her Sunny("Sun").

In June 1884, at age 12, Alice visited Russia for the first time when she elder sister Ella (in Orthodoxy - Elizaveta Fedorovna) married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. She arrived in Russia for the second time in January 1889 at the invitation of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. After staying in the Sergius Palace (St. Petersburg) for six weeks, the princess met and attracted the special attention of the heir to Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich.

In the early 1890s, the latter’s parents, who hoped for his marriage to Helena Louise Henrietta, daughter of Louis-Philippe, Count of Paris, were against the marriage of Alice and Tsarevich Nicholas. A key role in the arrangement of Alice’s marriage with Nikolai Alexandrovich was played by the efforts of her sister, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, and the latter’s husband, through whom correspondence between the lovers was carried out. The position of Emperor Alexander and his wife changed due to the persistence of the crown prince and the deteriorating health of the emperor; On April 6, 1894, a manifesto announced the engagement of the Tsarevich and Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt. In the following months, Alice studied the basics of Orthodoxy under the guidance of the court protopresbyter John Yanyshev and the Russian language with teacher E. A. Schneider. On October 10 (22), 1894, she arrived in Crimea, in Livadia, where she stayed with the imperial family until the death of Emperor Alexander III - October 20. On October 21 (November 2), 1894, she accepted Orthodoxy through confirmation there with the name Alexandra and patronymic Fedorovna (Feodorovna).

On November 14 (26), 1894 (on the birthday of Empress Maria Feodorovna, which allowed for a retreat from mourning), the wedding of Alexandra and Nicholas II took place in the Great Church of the Winter Palace. After the wedding, a thanksgiving prayer service was served by members of the Holy Synod, led by Metropolitan Palladius (Raev) of St. Petersburg; while singing “We praise you, God,” a 301-shot cannon salute was fired. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich wrote in his emigrant memoirs about their first days of marriage:

The family lived most of the time in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. In 1896, Alexandra and Nikolai went to Nizhny Novgorod to the All-Russian exhibition. And in August 1896 they made a trip to Vienna, and in September-October - to Germany, Denmark, England and France.

In subsequent years, the Empress gave birth to four daughters: Olga (November 3 (15), 1895), Tatiana (May 29 (June 10), 1897), Maria (June 14 (26), 1899) and Anastasia (June 5 (18), 1901 of the year). On July 30 (August 12), 1904, the fifth child and only son, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, appeared in Peterhof. Alexandra Feodorovna was a carrier of the hemophilia gene; the Tsarevich was born a hemophiliac.

In 1897 and 1899, the family traveled to Alexandra Feodorovna’s homeland in Darmstadt. During these years, the Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene was built in Darmstadt, which is still in operation today.

On July 17-20, 1903, the Empress took part in the celebrations of the glorification and discovery of the relics of St. Seraphim of Sarov in the Sarov Hermitage.

For entertainment, Alexandra Feodorovna played the piano with the professor of the St. Petersburg Conservatory R.V. Kündinger. The Empress also took singing lessons from Conservatory professor N.A. Iretskaya. Sometimes she sang a duet with one of the court ladies: Anna Vyrubova, Alexandra Taneyeva, Emma Fredericks (daughter of V.B. Fredericks) or Maria Stackelberg.

In 1915, at the height of the First World War, the Tsarskoye Selo hospital was converted to receive wounded soldiers. Alexandra Fedorovna, together with her daughters Olga and Tatyana, completed training nursing with Princess V.I. Gedroits, and then assisted her during operations as surgical nurses.

During the February Revolution, Alexandra Fedorovna was placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace. Yu.A. remained with her. Den, who helped her look after the Grand Duchesses and A.A. Vyrubova. At the beginning of August 1917, the royal family was exiled to Tobolsk by decision of the Provisional Government. Later, by decision of the Bolsheviks, they were transported to Yekaterinburg.

Alexandra Fedorovna was shot along with her entire family on the night of July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg.

2. State duties

Empress Alexandra was the chief of the regiments: the Life Guards of Her Majesty's Uhlan, the 5th Hussars of Alexandria, the 21st East Siberian Rifle and Crimean Cavalry, and among the foreign ones - the Prussian 2nd Guards Dragoon Regiment.

The Empress also worked charitable activities. By the beginning of 1909, under her patronage there were 33 charitable societies, communities of nurses, shelters, orphanages and similar institutions, among which: the Committee for finding places for military ranks who suffered in the war with Japan, the House of Charity for crippled soldiers, the Imperial Women's Patriotic Society , Trusteeship for labor assistance, Her Majesty's school of nannies in Tsarskoe Selo, Peterhof Society for Welfare of the Poor, Society for Assistance with Clothes to the Poor of St. Petersburg, Brotherhood in the Name of the Queen of Heaven for the charity of idiotic and epileptic children, Alexandria Shelter for Women and others.

Policy impact (estimates)

Count S. Yu. Witte, former Chairman of the Council of Ministers Russian Empire(1905-1906) wrote that Nicholas II:

General A. A. Mosolov, who was from 1900 to 1916 the head of the chancellery of the Ministry of the Imperial Household, testified in his memoirs that the empress failed to become popular in her new fatherland, and from the very beginning the tone of this hostility was set by her mother-in-law, Empress Maria Fedorovna, who hated Germans; According to his testimony, the influential Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna was also opposed to her, which ultimately led to society’s aversion from the throne.

Senator V.I. Gurko, discussing the origins of the “mutual alienation that has grown over the years between society and the queen,” wrote in exile:

The Empress' chamberlain M. F. Zanotti showed investigator A. N. Sokolov:

Review of the Empress ballerina M. F. Kshesinskaya, the former mistress of Tsarevich Nicholas in 1892-1894, in her emigrant memoirs:

4. Canonization

In 1981, Alexandra Feodorovna and all members of the royal family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and in August 2000 by the Russian Orthodox Church.

At canonization, Alexandra Feodorovna became Queen Alexandra the New, since Queen Alexandra was already among the saints.

Literature

5.1. Letters, diaries, documents, photographs

· August Sisters of Mercy. / Comp. N.K. Zvereva. - M.: Veche, 2006. - 464 p. - ISBN 5-9533-1529-5. (Excerpts from the diaries and letters of the queen and her daughters during World War I).

· Album of photographs of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, 1895-1911. // Russian Archive: History of the Fatherland in testimonies and documents of the 18th-20th centuries: Almanac.. - M.: Studio TRITE: Ros. Archive, 1992. - T. I-II.

· Empress Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova. Wonderful Light: Diary entries, correspondence, biography. / Comp. nun Nektaria (Mac Lees).- Moscow: Brotherhood of St. Herman of Alaska, Publishing House Russian Pilgrim, Valaam Society of America, 2005. - 656 p. - ISBN 5-98644-001-3.

· Reports on cash inflows and outflows. amounts received at the disposal of Her Majesty G.I. Alexandra Feodorovna for the needs of the war with Japan for 1904-1909.

· Report on the activities of Her Majesty's Warehouse in St. Petersburg. for the entire period of its existence, from February 1, 1904 to May 3, 1906.

· Report on the activities of Her Majesty's Central Warehouse in Harbin.

· Letters from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to Emperor Nicholas II. - Berlin: Slovo, 1922. (In Russian and English).

· Platonov O. A. Russia's crown of thorns: Nicholas II in secret correspondence. - M.: Rodnik, 1996. - 800 p. (Correspondence of Nicholas II and his wife).

· The last diaries of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova: February 1917 - July 16, 1918 / Compiled, ed., preface, introduction. and comment. V. A. Kozlova and V. M. Khrustalev - Novosibirsk: Sibirsk. chronograph, 1999. - 341 p. - (Archive of Contemporary History of Russia. Publications. Issue 1 / Federal Archive Service of Russia, GARF).

· Tsesarevich: Documents, memories, photographs. - M.: Vagrius, 1998. - 190 pp.: ill.

5.2. Memories

· Gurko V.I. King and queen. - Paris, 1927. (And other publications)

· Den Yu. A. The real queen: Memoirs of a close friend of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. - St. Petersburg: Tsarskoe Delo, 1999. - 241 p.

Archivists and researchers of her life, both in Russia and abroad, it would seem, have long ago studied and given an explanation not only of her every act, but also of every turn of her head, and every letter of her writing. But... But no one has ever comprehended the strange, almost mystical secret of this woman, the essence of her nature and her character. No one has ever fully understood the true role of her personality in the tragic history of Russia. No one imagined clearly and accurately what she really was like: Alice - Victoria - Helena - Louise - Beatrice, Her Grand Ducal Highness, Princess of Hesse - Darmstadt and Rhineland, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Prince Albert, daughter of the Great Duke of Hesse Ludwig, goddaughter of the Russian Emperor Alexander III and wife of his eldest son, Nikolai Alexandrovich, heir to the Russian throne? The last Russian empress.

In the appearance and nature of this Woman, many things came together: light and shadows, smiles and tears, love and hate, farce and tragedy, Death and Life. She was strong. And - the weakest woman the world has ever seen. She was proud. And shy. She knew how to smile like a true Empress. And cry like a child when no one could see her tears. She knew how to adore and give affection like no one else. But she could hate it just as much. She was very beautiful, but for more than seventy years, after 1917, novelists and historians tried to discern devilish, destructive reflections in her flawless, refined features and the profile of a Roman cameo.

A lot of books have been written about her: novels, plays, studies, historical monographs and even psychological treatises! Her surviving correspondence and pages of diaries that were not burned in the fire of the palace fireplaces have also been published. Archivists and researchers of her life, both in Russia and abroad, it would seem, have long ago studied and given an explanation not only of her every act, but also of every turn of her head, and every letter of her writing. But... But no one has ever comprehended the strange, almost mystical secret of this woman, the essence of her nature and her character. No one has ever fully understood the true role of her personality in the tragic history of Russia. No one imagined clearly and accurately what she really was like: Alice - Victoria - Helena - Louise - Beatrice, Her Grand Ducal Highness, Princess of Hesse - Darmstadt and Rhineland, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Great Britain and Prince Albert, daughter of the Great Duke of Hesse Ludwig, goddaughter of the Russian Emperor Alexander III and wife of his eldest son, Nikolai Alexandrovich, heir to the Russian throne? The last Russian empress.

She grew up in a region where queens never depended on the will of their favorites, and, if the good of the state required it, they calmly sent their heads to the chopping block. “Personal things should not be higher than the good of the country!” – she firmly grasped this unspoken “edict of monarchs”, after all, it was not for nothing that she was a granddaughter great Queen, which gave its name to an entire era in history - “Victorian”! Alice of Hesse was German only by her father, and by spirit, upbringing and blood of her mother she was English. To your fingertips. Only now, having gotten married and converted to Orthodoxy, she became, at the behest of her heart, out of madness of love for her husband, and perhaps out of a hidden thirst to be understood, not only “more Russian than all the people around her, more even than herself her husband, heir to the throne and future Emperor Nicholas II." (Greg King).But also, having fallen into heavy captivity own grief, loneliness, suppressed ambitions and illusions dozing at the bottom of her soul, she became an involuntary hostage, a tragic toy in the hands of a favorite - a sectarian, the greatest hypnotist and charlatan, a sly and a simpleton rolled into one - Grigory Rasputin. Was she aware of this? It’s difficult to say, especially since everything, if desired, can be justified. Or, on the contrary, denial.

Forgetting and rejecting in the whirlpool of her inexpressible maternal despair the first ethical law of any monarch: “First the country, then the family!”, instilled in her from a young age by her great grandmother, the queen, she pushed herself, her Crowned husband, and children onto the death circle of the scaffold , power.. But was it only her fault? Or for the huge panel of History there are no separate destinies, no small “faults”, but everything immediately merges into something large, large-scale, and a consequence already follows from it? Who knows?...

Let's try to separate a small piece of smalt called Life from the mosaic layer of History and era. The life of one person. Princess Alix of Hesse. Let's trace the main milestones and turns of her Destiny. Or - Fates? After all, it multiplied, as in a mirror. Had several appearances. Several destinies from birth to death. Happy or unhappy, that's another question. She was changing. Like any person, throughout life. But she couldn’t change unnoticed. This is unacceptable in families where children are born for the crown. Whether it’s big or small, it doesn’t matter.

Destiny One: “Sunny Girl.”

Alice - Victoria - Elena - Louise - Beatrice, little Princess - Duchess of the Hesse - Darmstadt family, was born on June 6, 1872 ( a new style), in the New Palace of Darmstadt, the main city of the duchy, which is located in the green and fertile Rhine Valley. The windows of the New Palace looked out onto the market square and the town hall, and going down the stairs into the courtyard one could immediately get into a huge shady park with linden and elm alleys, ponds and pools with goldfish and water lilies; flower beds and rose gardens filled with huge fragrant buds. Little Aliki (as she was called in the house), having barely learned to walk, spent hours walking with her nanny, Mrs. Mary Ann Orchard, in her favorite garden, sitting for a long time by the pond and looking at the fish flashing in the streams of water.

She herself looked like a flower or a small, nimble fish: cheerful, affectionate, extremely active, with golden hair, dimples on her plump, rosy cheeks!

Aliki was known as the favorite of the whole family, her father, the always busy and gloomy Duke Ludwig, her mother, Duchess Alice, and her formidable grandmother, Queen Victoria, who could not draw a portrait of her mischievous granddaughter when, in the summer, the ducal family visited her in England ! Egoza Aliki never sat quietly in one place: either she hid behind a high chair with a gold rim, or behind a massive cabinet - a bureau.

Often in the austere, coldly luxurious rooms of the grandmother's palaces in Osborne, Windsor and Balmoral, the cheerful, infectious laughter of the baby granddaughter and the tramp of her fast children's feet were heard. She loved to play with her brother Frederick and sister Maria, whom she affectionately called “May” because she could not yet pronounce the letter “R” to call her Mary. Aliki was forgiven for any mischief, even long walks on a pony - this is at four years old!

Under the guidance of her mother, she easily learned to draw and inherited from her a subtle artistic taste and a passion for transparent watercolor landscapes. With her strict nanny, Mrs. Mary Ann Orchard, Aliki diligently studied the Law of God and did handicrafts.

The early years of her childhood flowed quite cloudlessly and happily. The family also called her “Sanny”, which means “sunshine”, “sunny girl”. Her grandmother, the queen, called her “my ray of sunshine” and in her letters every now and then affectionately chided her for her funny pranks. She loved and singled out Aliki from her grandchildren - the Hessians more than anyone else.

Aliki, the favorite, knew perfectly well how to make her silent grandmother or her mother, Duchess Alice, who was prone to frequent depression, smile. She danced and played the piano for both of them, painted watercolors and funny animal faces. They praised her and smiled at her. First - through force, and then - on their own. Aliki knew how to infect everyone around with the cloudlessness of childhood. But suddenly thunder struck and she stopped smiling. She had barely reached her fifth year when her brother Frederick died of a cerebral hemorrhage caused by an accident. They tried to cure the mother, who had fallen into despair and melancholy, by traveling around European countries: France, Italy, Spain. We stayed for a long time in the summer of 1878 with our grandmother in Osborne. Aliki liked it there. She could play as much as she could with her Prussian cousins ​​and her beloved cousin, Prince Louis of Batenberg. But everything comes to an end someday. This sad summer is over too. The mother felt better, she came to her senses a little. We decided to return to Darmstadt, which my father insisted on: business could not wait!

But as soon as they returned home, cold autumn How the cozy duchy was struck by a diphtheria epidemic. And then Alika’s childhood ended. Sudden, bitter, scary. She was not at all ready for this, despite the fact that her mother often talked to her about Heaven, about future life, about meeting his little brother and grandfather Albert. Aliki experienced vague anxiety and bitterness from these conversations, but she was quickly forgotten. In the autumn of 1878, this bitterness filled both the mind and heart of the little girl. The sunbeam in her soul gradually faded away. On November 16, 1878, her older sister May died of defteritis. The others were dangerously ill: Ella, Ernst, and Aliki herself also began to fall ill. The grief-stricken mother, the duchess, while caring for her sick children, hid the terrible news from them as long as she could. There was a quarantine in the palace due to the epidemic. May was buried quietly, and the children found out about it only a few days later. Aliki, her sister Ella, and brother Ernie were shocked by this news and, despite all the quiet persuasion of their mother, began to cry in their cribs. To console her son, the Duchess went up to him and kissed him. This was impossible to do, but...

Ernie was recovering, and the duchess’s body, weakened from sleepless nights, was struck by a dangerous virus. Having been ill for more than two weeks, alternately losing consciousness from intense fever and then regaining consciousness, Duchess Alice of Hesse, the eldest, died on the night of December 13-14, 1878. She was only thirty-five years old.

Destiny two: “Thoughtful Princess or “Cameo – Bride”.

Aliki was orphaned. Her toys were burned because of quarantine. The sunny girl who lived in her disappeared. The next day they brought her other books, balls and other dolls, but it was impossible to return her childhood. In the mirrors of the ancient ancestral Rhine castles of Seenhau, Kranichstein, Wolfsgarten, a different princess was now reflected: melancholy and thoughtful.

In order to somehow overcome the pain of losing her mother, the unconscious childhood melancholy, Aliki went into the courtyard with an artificial lake - a swimming pool and there she spent a long time feeding her favorite fish. Tears dripped directly into the water, but no one saw them.

Her soul matured instantly, but somehow in a broken way: she became quiet and sad beyond her age, restrained her mischief, became passionately attached to Ella and Ernie, and cried when parting with them even for half an hour! She was afraid of losing them. Grandmother Victoria, with the permission of her widowed son-in-law, the Duke, almost immediately transported the children to England, to Osborne Castle, and there teachers specially hired and carefully selected by her were engaged in their education.

Children studied geography, languages, music, history, took lessons in horse riding and gardening, mathematics and dancing, drawing and literature. Aliki received an excellent education for those times, serious and unusual for a girl: she even attended a course of lectures on philosophy at Oxford and Heidelberg. She studied excellently, subjects were easy for her, with her excellent memory, only with French there were sometimes slight embarrassments, but over time they were smoothed out.

She was unobtrusively but strictly taught by her grandmother to play the piano, brilliant, complex - she could play Wagner and Schumann! - Director of the Darmstadt Opera. She was raised to be a Princess, she was destined to be like that and this did not frighten her at all. She mastered the “court science” easily and gracefully, as if jokingly. The queen-grandmother only cared about the fact that “sweet, clever Aliki” seemed to have lost her former charm and spontaneity in the whirlwind of losses: she could not smile in public, as openly as before, she became too shy and timid. She blushed easily. She was silent a lot. She spoke sincerely, sincerely, only in a narrow circle of loved ones. She played and sang too... Now, alas, there was only a reflection in her, an echo of the former Alix - “a ray of sunshine”.

Restraint undoubtedly adorned her, a tall, slender brown-haired woman with huge, gray blue eyes, which reflected all the shades of her emotional experiences - for those who knew how to observe, of course -, but she did not know how and did not look for a way to please, immediately, from the first word, look, smile, gesture.. And this is so necessary for a royal person !

The queen sadly and tirelessly instructed her granddaughter in the art of pleasing, and she was perplexed: why should she talk kindly and listen to the pompous opinions of court flatterers, when she has too little time for that: a book has not been read, a panel for the church altar has not been completed, orphans are waiting for her arrival at the shelter to have breakfast with her? Why?! Why should she strive to please everyone, when this is simply impossible, and not necessary in her position as a young duchess, mistress of Darmstadt?

Aliki willfully clutched the fan in her fragile hands and it cracked and broke. The grandmother looked at her reproachfully, but the granddaughter quietly continued to do her best. She was stubborn. She has no time to give flattering smiles! She, who celebrated her sixteenth birthday in June 1888 and took over the responsibilities of her late mother, the Duchess, has too many other concerns: charity, libraries, shelters, music and ... her father, the Duke...

Her father instilled in her the most serious fears. After his obsession with marrying Madame Alexandra de Colmin, the former wife of the Russian envoy at his court, suffered a crushing fiasco, encountering the unbending will of the ex-mother-in-law, the queen, who immediately angrily rejected this misalliance, Duke Ludwig’s health began to fail . He, however, also arranged a grand confirmation, pink ball for Alika, which was attended by all her relatives: aunts, uncles and cousins, and her beloved sister, Ella, who in 1888 married her brother Alexander III, Emperor of Russia, Grand Duke, also came Sergei Alexandrovich.

At that ball, Duke Ludwig brought the new princess - the duchess on the arm of the guests, and introduced him to the refined society. He said that from now on she is officially the first lady of the small duchy, and that he is proud of his daughter. The sovereign duke, however, quickly got tired, and spent the rest of the celebration in an armchair, watching his daughter dance and talk with the guests. She was very good that evening, caused everyone's delight, but she could not wipe off the light veil of sadness from her face. And she herself could no longer decide whether that sadness was “invented,” as her cousin Mary of Edinburgh always said, or whether it was real?

Alika's slight thoughtfulness and aloofness gradually became second nature, a constant companion even during exciting travels: in 1889 - to Russia, in 1890 - to Malta, in the winter of 1892 - to Italy. On board the British mine cruiser Scout, off the Maltese coast, she found among the officers very subtle connoisseurs of her beauty. They tried to please her in everything, laughingly called her “Maltese pages”, taught her to play tennis on the deck and throw a life preserver from the side. Aliki smiled charmingly, her eyes shone, but her manners remained reserved and slightly cool.

In 1892, in Florence, which captured her imagination forever, Aliki - Alix seemed to thaw a little in the company of her beloved grandmother, and her laughter sounded, as before, infectious, but... But on March 1, 1892, from a heart attack in her arms Father, Duke Ludwig IV of Hesse - Darmstadt, died. Death again changed Alix's fate.

Destiny three. “The royal bride or the shadow behind the coffin..”

Brother Ernie became the heir to the crown and ducal standards. And Alix... She was orphaned for the second time. She completely withdrew into herself, avoided society, fortunately mourning allowed. In general, she began to strongly remind Victoria of her late melancholic daughter Alice, the eldest. And then the grandmother became worried and hurried. She planned to marry Aliki to Prince Edward of Wales, her cousin, and already saw in her dreams her beloved granddaughter as the Queen of England, who came to replace her...

But Aliki suddenly violently resisted. She didn't like that lanky, foppish Eddie, whose neck was always tightly constrained by starched collars and his wrists by cuffs. She kept calling him: “Eddie – cuffs!”

He seemed to her somehow false, prosaic, he often smelled of wine, and most importantly: he was absolutely not interested in anything except his appearance. She refused Edward, decisively and firmly, citing the fact that she already had a fiancé in Russia. This is the heir to the Russian throne, Tsarevich Nicholas, the son of the Emperor’s godfather, Ella’s “nephew”! They met back in June 1884, when little Aliki went to Russia to attend her older sister’s wedding.

The shy princess immediately liked the modest, serious Tsarevich, who surrounded the then twelve-year-old Aliki with warm attention and care. On walks she held his arm, at dinner, during meetings, she tried to sit next to him. He showed her the palace in Peterhof, gardens and parks, they rode boats together and played ball. He gave her a brooch. True, Aliki returned her the very next day, but from that moment she believed that she and Niki were engaged.

Then she once again visited Ella in Ilyinsky (* Romanov family estate near Moscow, estate of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Ella’s wife - author.), five years later. I met Niki at balls and promenades, in theaters and at receptions. And I realized that their feelings only strengthened. She somehow knew in her heart that Nicky loved only her and no one else. Ella was also convinced of this. And she tried her best to persuade Aliki to change her faith. Grandmother the queen was amazed. She already found Aliki too romantic and deep in strange dreams, and now she was completely alarmed!

The Russians never enjoyed her special sympathy, although once, in her youth, she was almost in love with the sovereign reformer Alexander II. Almost. This does not mean - seriously!

Victoria tried several times to talk to her granddaughter alone, but it was impossible to break her stubbornness. She showed her grandmother her correspondence with Niki and sister Ella..

In her letters to Ella, Aliki sadly said that there was only one obstacle insurmountable in her love for the Tsarevich - a change of religion, everything else did not frighten her, she loved the Tsarevich so strongly and deeply. The Tsarevich sincerely admitted to Aliki that one of the ways to overcome the despair that gripped him upon receiving the news of the Prince of Wales's matchmaking with her was a trip to the Far East and Japan, which he, Niki, undertook, and which almost ended in tragedy! * ( * In Japan, in the city of Otsu, a failed attempt was made on Tsarevich Nicholas on April 29, 1892 - author.)

The wise queen immediately realized that the feelings of the young people were quite serious. And she backed down. For her, the main thing was the happiness of her granddaughter, and, in addition, as a very insightful person, she perfectly understood that it was in snowy, distant, huge and incomprehensible Russia that her intelligent, powerful, capable of strong feelings and passions, possessing a “purely masculine mind "(A. Taneyev.) beloved "beauty - a ray of sunshine" Alix will find use for her great ambitious ambitions, which she unconsciously hides under a veil of sadness and thoughtfulness.

In addition, Alix, like any girl, was time to start her own family and have children. At twenty-one years old, she was an example of a captivating young lady who could make the most sophisticated heart tremble! But how could Victoria console her granddaughter? According to the information that reached her from the ambassadors, she knew that Nika’s parents were resolutely against their son’s choice. Not because Aliki was a poor German princess, far from it. Nobody thought so. Just dynastic marriage the heir to a huge empire required healthy children in his family, and Aliki, by the blood of her mother and grandmother, was a carrier of the insidious hemophilia gene - incoagulability of blood, inherited by future sons, the successors of the family. And Queen Victoria, and Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria, his wife, Nika’s mother, and he himself, and the stubborn Aliki, understood perfectly well that if this marriage was concluded, then at the birth of the future heir to the throne, his natural title would be “Prince of the Blood.” "will take on an ominous sound and create a number of problems for Russia, where historically it has so happened - since the time of Paul the First - that the throne and crown belong only to descendants in the male line. True, the law on succession to the throne can always be changed, but reforms are very fraught with violent consequences. Especially in such an unpredictable and spontaneous country as Russia. Everyone understood everything. But the young people were irresistibly drawn to each other. Nicky stubbornly refused, when talking with his parents about the future, the parties offered to him, in particular, the hand of the daughter of the Count of Paris, Helen of Orleans or Princess Margaret of Prussia. He informed “dear dad and mom” that he would marry only Alix of Hesse and no one else!

What ultimately influenced Alexander III's decision to give his blessing to his son and see him betrothed to a shy and easily blushing German princess with the chiseled profile of a Roman cameo? Sharply and suddenly deteriorating health? The desire to see the son - the heir in the role of a determined one, family man? Experience of personal happiness of the emperor himself, who lived with Danish princess Daggmar - Maria Feodorovna, happy 26 years? Or simply respect for the inflexibility of someone else's will and someone else's decision? I think it’s both, and the other, and the third. Everything turned out so that on April 20, 1894, in Coburg, where representatives of almost all European powers gathered for the wedding of Alika’s brother, Duke of Hesse, Ernie and Princess Victoria - Melita of Edinburgh, her own engagement to the Russian Tsarevich Nicholas was announced.. On the glasses The windows of the “green office” of the Coburg castle, on the second floor, preserved two letters carved with diamond edges of Alix’s family ring, intertwined into an intricate monogram: “H&A”. And in the correspondence of Nikolai and Alexandra, this day is often mentioned by them as one of the happiest in their lives. That day he returned to her the brooch that he had given her at their first meeting, at Ella’s wedding. She now considered it the main wedding gift. The brooch was found in the summer of 1918 in the ashes of a large fire in the wilderness of the Koptyakovsky forest. Or rather, what was left of it. Two large rubies.

During the days of her beloved granddaughter’s engagement, the Queen of England wrote to Alix’s elder sister, Victoria: “The more I think about the marriage of our dear Alix, the more unhappy I feel. I have nothing against the groom because I like him very much. It's all about the country and its politics, so strange and different from ours. It's all about Alix. After her marriage, her private love life will come to an end. From an almost unknown princess, she will turn into a person revered and recognized by everyone. Hundreds of appointments a day, hundreds of faces, hundreds of trips. She will have everything that the most spoiled human soul desires, but at the same time thousands of eyes will meticulously watch her, her every step, word, deed.. An unbearable burden for dear Alix.. After all, she never particularly liked the noisy life in light.

In order to get used to their brilliant position, some Russian empresses, I know, needed years. Alix will hardly have a few months, alas!

The old, wise “Queen Vicky”, as always, was not mistaken. The wedding of Alix and Nikolai was scheduled for the summer of 1895, but Fate seemed to be in a hurry for Alix. Already at the end of September 1894, she received an alarming telegram from the Tsarevich with a request to urgently arrive in Russia, in the Crimea, where Emperor Alexander the Third was fading in the Livadia Palace amid the colors of the lush southern autumn. In the last month of his life, which the doctors allotted to him, he wanted to bless his son and his bride for marriage officially, already in Russia. Alix hastily left Darmstadt for Berlin. From there, by express, head east. Ella met her in Warsaw. And already on October 10, 1894, she was in Crimea, at the gates of the Livadia Palace. As soon as he heard about the arrival of his future daughter-in-law, the dying emperor, suffering from kidney edema and heart weakness, nevertheless wished to receive her standing and in a ceremonial uniform. Life physician N. Grish resisted, but the emperor abruptly interrupted him: “It’s none of your business! I do this according to the Highest command!” Having met the eyes of the Emperor, Grisha fell silent and began silently helping him get dressed.

The young, shy princess was so shocked by the affectionate reception and the boundless respect shown to her by the dying father of her beloved Niki, that many years later she recalled this meeting with tears. She was warmly received by the entire groom's family, although there was neither time nor energy for special courtesies. But Alix didn’t demand them. She understood that everything was ahead.

Exactly ten days later, on October 20, 1894, the powerful Russian Emperor Alexander III passed away. He died quietly, sitting in a chair, as if he had fallen asleep, having previously received Holy Communion from the hands of the famous Father John of Kronstadt. Five hours after the death of the Sovereign, in the palace church of Livadia, Russia swore allegiance to the new Emperor - Nicholas II, and the next day, Princess Alix of Hessen converted to Orthodoxy and became “Her Imperial Highness, Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna, Highly Appointed Bride of the Sovereign Emperor.”

She pronounced the words of the Creed and other prayers required by the Orthodox rite clearly, distinctly and almost without errors. Together with all the members of the Imperial family and the Court, the young bride left for St. Petersburg, where the funeral of Alexander the Third was soon to take place. It happened

November 7, 1894 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, after countless funeral services, liturgies and farewells.

And exactly a week later, on the birthday of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the mother of the young Emperor, (with the expected easing of mourning) the wedding of the new Sovereign and the former Hessian princess took place in the front church of the Winter Palace.

For the very religious, obligatory, straightforward Alix, this was very painful and incomprehensible. She was full of some kind of bad forebodings, was very worried and even cried. In confusion, she wrote to her sister Victoria, Duchess of Baden, saying that she did not understand how mourning and a wedding could be mixed into one, but she could not object to the uncles of her beloved Nicky, who had gained great influence at the Court after the death of her brother. And who would listen to her! As her beloved grandmother once told her: “Possessing persons cannot be slaves to their desires. They are slaves of circumstances, prestige, court laws, honor, Fate, but not themselves!” Fate decided that Alix would come to Russia after the royal coffin. Bad omen. A tragic omen. But what can you do? Death accompanied her so often that Alix gradually became accustomed to its faithful shadow. Death changed her Fate again. For the umpteenth time. Alix gathered her courage and, casting aside all her doubts, plunging into new dreams and hopes, tried in every possible way to fill the new page of her life with meaning. Outline the roads of your new Destiny. The fate of the Empress of Russia and the Mother of the heirs of the royal family. She didn’t yet know how painful and difficult all this would be.

Fate Four: Before the Mother, Before the Empress, or a Portrait of an Ideal Family..

It was the most beautiful and most desired role in her life! The mother of the children of the man she adores. In the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoe Selo, the Empress created a happy island of Solitude and Peace for the Emperor, burdened with a heavy burden of state concerns, the decoration of which were four lovely flowers: - daughters, who appeared one after another with an interval of one and a half to two years: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia . Four Crown Princesses, so strikingly similar to each other and so different!

They loved white dresses and pearl beads, delicate ribbons in their hair, and playing the piano. They didn’t really like the lessons of writing and calligraphy and enthusiastically acted out Moliere’s plays in French for the famous guests of the next dinner party and the diplomatic corps. They selflessly played lawn tennis and furtively read books from their mother’s table: “The Voyage of the Beagle” by Darwin and “The Bride of Lamermoor” by Walter Scott. They signed their letters with the initial letters of their names, merging into a strange seal sign, mysteriously romantic, and at the same time, childishly simple-minded: OTMA. They adored their mother, she was an indisputable deity for them, and they simply did not notice her affectionate authority. With a hand “in a velvet glove” their every step, every minute of the lesson, their dress at breakfast, lunch and dinner, entertainment, bicycle riding, swimming was painted. To the detriment of herself and her majestic image of the Empress, Alexandra Feodorovna devoted so much careful attention and time to her daughters that the brilliant secular society of St. Petersburg, in which the Empress, by the way, never fully became one, since she did not collect gossip and did not gravitate towards noisy balls and masqueraders, quietly constantly expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that maternal duties overshadowed everything else for the crowned person and looked askance at her with resentment. Many people really didn’t want to feel inferior to the empress in this regard!

As if in retaliation for the cold disregard of such a high Person for her rules and laws, the elite of both capitals and beyond - all of Russia, nervously, in secret whispers, attributed to Alexandra Feodorovna everything: lovers - Count A. N. Orlov, to for example, fanatical religiosity, domineering pressure on the crowned husband, disagreements with the Dowager Empress - mother-in-law. She, knowing the rumors, pursed her lips, smiled stonyly at receptions at extremely low-cut countesses and princesses, extended her hand to them for a kiss, but never considered them “great friends,” and this is what offended the titled dragonflies - gossips, such as the princess Zinaida Yusupova, for example, most of all!

But the overly proud Empress Alexandra did not at all consider herself guilty of the fact that her passionately imperious nature, desiring activity, real dedication, the achievement of great, ambitious internal possibilities, did not find any response, sympathy, understanding from superficial and shallow creatures called “close associates.” to the Court of Her Majesty,” and are always occupied only with the splendor of their own outfits and the whims of a lightweight heart, but not of the mind! The crowned wife of the Autocrat did not pay attention to all sorts of bad rumors about herself, she did not care what or how they said about her, since she knew long ago, from a young age, from her strict grandmother, that it is difficult, very difficult to hear the truth and separate it from the chaff in a select court environment and behind the scenes, where everyone is looking only for their own benefit, and all the paths to it are paved with flattery!

She undoubtedly seemed cold and unsmiling to many, but perhaps because she was simply protecting her soul from superficial “sliding” along it, not penetrating into its suffering and searching? So many things have always hurt this soul, and especially...

There were especially many wounds and scars on her after the birth of the “porphyry-born”, long-awaited, begged-for heir, whom the people called, crossing themselves: “Alyoshenka - the bleeding one!”

Talking about the suffering of a mother who has a terminally ill child in her arms, for whom every scratch could end in death, is pointless and useless. These circles of hell for the soul of Empress Alexandra also remained incomprehensible to absolutely no one, and were they even comprehensible?! Is the selfish human heart, which knows how to coldly remove other people’s suffering from itself, even capable of this? If so, then this is very rare. Mercy in all ages is not in honor, we admit frankly!

From the very moment of the birth of her son Alexei (August 12, 1905 - new style), the illusory, fragile hope for peace and happiness at least in the Family, in an unbreakable harbor where one can fully realize oneself as a Woman, left Alexandra’s restless soul forever. Instead of hope, an endless anxiety now settled in her, squeezing her heart in a vice, thoroughly destroying her nervous system, leading not only to hysteria, but to a strange heart disease - symptomatic,

(diagnosis by Dr. E. Botkin) which was caused in the empress, for example, half an hour ago, still healthy and vigorous, by any trifling nervous shock and experience. Perhaps, to this was also added a complex of guilt in front of her son, and torment from realizing herself as a failed mother who was unable to give her desired child the happiness of childhood and protect her from unbearable pain! These endless “guilts” weighed so heavily on her that she could suppress this burden only by “letting off steam” in a unique way: by giving strict advice in a matter that she did not really understand (*politics, for example, or the military actions of the First World War - the author.) leaving the box in the theater in the middle of the performance - for desperate prayer, or even - elevating a dubious sectarian-hypnotist to the rank of “Holy Elder”. It was. And there is no escape from this. But even this has its justification in history.

Alexandra, in fact, was monstrously lonely and in order to survive “in the enormous, unimaginable loneliness among the crowd,” she gradually developed her own “philosophy of suffering”: moral or physical torments are sent by God only to the chosen ones, and the heavier they are, the more humbly you bear your cross, she believed, the closer you are to the Lord and the closer the hour of deliverance! Having found support from virtually no one in society, including her relatives, with the exception of her husband, daughters, mother-in-law and Anna Aleksandrovna Vyrubova, Alexandra Feodorovna voluntarily, schematically, selfishly went into self-isolation. Immersed in endless suffering, she turned it into a kind of obsessive cult, and they swallowed her up! This is, in general, a rather complex ethical issue - the cult of suffering, service to suffering, justification of suffering in the name of God. But will anyone dare to throw a stone at a woman who has lost hope in everyone and everything except the Almighty? Hardly.. Could she have acted differently? Then? All this requires a certain growth of the soul. It, of course, happened, this inevitable growth, but - later... After March 1917. Then she overcame all her suffering. But then Death also defeated her Fate.

The Empress seemed to some to be religious to the point of fanaticism. Perhaps this was the case: the walls of her reception room - living room and the famous lilac boudoir are almost entirely covered with icons, one wall - from floor to ceiling, but, having changed her faith, she simply tried to correctly and devoutly fulfill all religious canons. The whole point is that for strong and bright natures, which, undoubtedly, was the last Russian empress, God can become an extreme, and God can become too much. And then again there will be a suppressed rebellion of the soul and a hidden desire to express oneself, to find something unlike the rest, familiar, unlike what has not given peace for a long time. Rasputin. A man of the people. God's wanderer who visited holy places. In front of the Crowned Person, kneeling in despair at the bed of a bleeding child, he was alone, in the famous gypsy restaurant “Yar” - completely different. Cunning, unkempt, unpleasant, mysterious, possessive magical power charm blood, and in confused phrases - mutterings - predict the future. Fool, Saint and Devil rolled into one. Either on his own, or as a servant in someone’s very experienced hands?..

Are they Masons or revolutionaries? There are a great many versions, guesses, facts, hypotheses, interpretations that have appeared now. How to understand them, how not to get confused? No matter how much you guess, go through, or imagine options, there will be many answers to the questions of history. Even - too much. Everyone sees what they want to see and hears what they want. The Siberian peasant Grigory Rasputin - Novykh was, of course, a magnificent psychologist by nature. And he knew this law of human “seeing and hearing” very well. He immediately, unmistakably, subtly caught the vibes of the Power tormented by passions and the suppressed Self-Expression of Alexandra Feodorovna’s Soul. He caught what she craved.

And I decided to play along with her. While he played along, convincing her that she could “divide and conquer,” help her Spouse bear the burden and be a Guardian Angel, the chattering “opposition to His Majesty,” the Left Bloc Party, the Duma, and ministers incapable of taking decisive steps, also ruled. Anyhow. Pulling the “blanket” in different directions. Strengthening in Alexandra Feodorovna’s tormented soul the tragic sensations that everything is falling apart, collapsing, that everything that the ancestors of her beloved husband created with titanic efforts is coming to a collapse, an end! With her last effort of will, she tried to save her destroyed nest, her son's inheritance: the throne. And who could blame her for this?

In the days of February anarchy and indiscriminate shooting on the streets of Petrograd, risking being killed by stray bullets along with her daughters every second, she behaved in such a way that she resembled the True Heroes of the tragedies of Aeschylus, Schiller, and Shakespeare. Heroes of the Spirit in the Days of the Greatest Troubles of Times. A tragic, mournful Empress, misunderstood by almost no one, she managed to rise above her suffering. There, later, in exile in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg, in the last months of his life in the Ipatiev House. But death was already standing guard over her, fanning her with an elastic, cool wing. Death once again conducted her Fate, played her last, victorious note, a loud, sonorous chord in the strange, brilliant, incomprehensible, broken line of her Life. The line, which abruptly ended, went into the stars on the night of July 17-18, 1918, in the basement of the Ipatiev House, on Svoboda Street. Death then breathed a sigh of relief. She finally overcame, covered with a black, dull veil the appearance, features, of the one who was called at first: Aliki - Alix, Princess of Hesse - Darmstadt and Rhine, and Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of All Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna. By the way, I will note in conclusion that, probably, least of all in the world, the Last Empress would like to be, oddly enough, the Holy Great Martyr, for her soul knew and comprehended at the end of her earthly journey the whole truth of bitterness and the irreparability of mistakes from suffering elevated to a cult, placed on the altar of the deity, illuminated with a halo of infallibility and chosenness!

After all, you must admit, in such a halo, it will undoubtedly be very difficult to distinguish, find, recognize, the living, humanly attractive, vulnerable, warm, real features of an extraordinary woman, such as Alix - Victoria - Elena - Liuza - Beatrice, Princess of Hesse, Empress of Russia . All the whimsical, alluring, bewitching, mirror-multiplying images of a Woman, involuntarily, with her mere presence, changed the entire course of world history at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

____________________________________________

*The author deliberately does not provide extensive quotes from numerous historical documents known to almost everyone, leaving the reader the opportunity to choose the tone and colors in which he sees the character’s image of this essay. Books, hypotheses, facts appear in our time at the speed of light, and numerous gossip and anecdotal stories, published in the 1990s in various publications, the author simply does not consider ethically acceptable.

** In preparing the article, materials from the author’s personal book collection and archive were used.

*** The article was written at the request of the weekly magazine “Aif - Superstars”, but for reasons unclear to the author, it remained unclaimed.

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas II

The last Russian empress...the closest to us in time, but perhaps also the least known in its original form, untouched by the pen of interpreters. Even during her lifetime, not to mention the decades that followed the tragic 1918, speculation and slander, and often outright slander, began to cling to her name. No one will know the truth now.

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (nee Princess Alice Victoria Elena Louise Beatrice of Hesse-Darmstadt; May 25 (June 6), 1872 - July 17, 1918) - wife of Nicholas II (since 1894). The fourth daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine, Ludwig IV, and Duchess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria of England. She was born in Germany, in Darmstadt. The fourth daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine, Ludwig IV, and Duchess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria of England.

When little Alex was six years old, a diphtheria epidemic spread in Hesse in 1878. Alice's mother and her younger sister May died from it.

Ludwig IV of Hesse and Duchess Alice (second daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) are Alex's parents

And then the girl is taken in by her English grandmother. Alice was considered the favorite granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who called her Sunny. So Alix spent most of her childhood and adolescence in England, where she was raised. Queen Victoria, by the way, did not like the Germans and had a special dislike for Emperor William II, which was passed on to her granddaughter. All her life, Alexandra Fedorovna felt more drawn to her homeland on her mother’s side, to her relatives and friends there. Maurice Paleologue, the French ambassador to Russia, wrote about her: “Alexandra Fedorovna is not German either in mind or in heart and never has been. Of course, she is one by birth. Her upbringing, education, formation of consciousness and morality have become completely English. And now she is still English in her appearance, demeanor, a certain tension and puritanical character, intransigence and militant severity of conscience. Finally, in many of her habits."

In June 1884, at the age of 12, Alice visited Russia for the first time, when her older sister Ella (in Orthodoxy - Elizaveta Fedorovna) married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. In 1886, she came to visit her sister, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna (Ella), the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Then she met the heir, Nikolai Alexandrovich. The young people, who were also quite closely related (they were second cousins ​​through the princess’s father), immediately fell in love with each other.

Sergei Alexandrovich and Elizaveta Fedorovna (Ella)

While visiting her sister Ella in St. Petersburg, Alix was invited to social events. The verdict handed down by high society was cruel: “Uncharming. It holds on as if it had swallowed an arshin.” What does high society care about the problems of little Princess Alix? Who cares that she grows up without a mother, suffers greatly from loneliness, shyness, and terrible pain in the facial nerve? And only the blue-eyed heir was completely absorbed and delighted with the guest - he fell in love! Not knowing what to do in such cases, Nikolai asked his mother for an elegant brooch with diamonds and quietly placed it in the hand of his twelve-year-old lover. Out of confusion, she did not answer. The next day, the guests were leaving, a farewell ball was given, and Alix, taking a moment, quickly approached the Heir and just as silently returned the brooch to his hand. Nobody noticed anything. Only now there was a secret between them: why did she return her?

The childish naive flirtation of the heir to the throne and Princess Alice on the girl’s next visit to Russia three years later began to acquire the serious nature of a strong feeling.

However, the visiting princess did not please the parents of the crown prince: Empress Maria Feodorovna, like a true Dane, hated the Germans and was against the marriage with the daughter of Ludwig of Hesse of Darmstadt. His parents hoped until the very end for his marriage to Elena Louise Henrietta, daughter of Louis Philippe, Count of Paris.

Alice herself had reason to believe that the beginning of an affair with the heir to the Russian throne could have favorable consequences for her. Returning to England, the princess begins to study the Russian language, gets acquainted with Russian literature, and even has long conversations with the priest of the Russian embassy church in London. Queen Victoria, who loves her dearly, of course, wants to help her granddaughter and writes a letter to Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. The grandmother asks to find out in more detail about the intentions of the Russian imperial house in order to decide whether Alice should be confirmed according to the rules of the Anglican Church, because according to tradition, members of the royal family in Russia had the right to marry only women of the Orthodox faith.

Another four years passed, and blind chance helped decide the fates of the two lovers. As if an evil fate hovering over Russia, unfortunately, young people of royal blood united. Truly this union turned out to be tragic for the fatherland. But who thought about it then...

In 1893, Alexander III became seriously ill. Here a dangerous question for the succession to the throne arose - the future sovereign is not married. Nikolai Alexandrovich categorically stated that he would choose a bride only for love, and not for dynastic reasons. Through the mediation of Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich, the emperor's consent to his son's marriage to Princess Alice was obtained. However, Maria Feodorovna poorly concealed her dissatisfaction with the unsuccessful, in her opinion, choice of an heir. The fact that the Princess of Hesse joined the Russian imperial family during the mournful days of the suffering of the dying Alexander III probably set Maria Feodorovna even more against the new empress.

April 1894, Coburg, Alex agreed to become Nikolai's wife

(in the center is Queen Victoria, Alex's grandmother)

And why, having received the long-awaited parental blessing, Nikolai could not persuade Alix to become his wife? After all, she loved him - he saw it, felt it. What it took for him to persuade his powerful and authoritarian parents to agree to this marriage! He fought for his love and now, the long-awaited permission has been received!

Nikolai goes to the wedding of Alix's brother at Coburg Castle, where everything is already prepared for the fact that the Heir Russian Throne will propose to Alix of Hesse. The wedding went on as usual, only Alix... was crying.

“We were left alone, and then that conversation began between us, which I had long and strongly desired and, at the same time, was very afraid of. They talked until 12 o'clock, but to no avail, she still resists the change of religion. She, poor thing, cried a lot.” But is it just one religion? In general, if you look at portraits of Alix from any period of her life, it is impossible not to notice the stamp of tragic pain that this face carries. It seems like she always KNEW... She had a presentiment. Cruel fate, the basement of the Ipatiev House, terrible death... She was afraid and tossed about. But the love was too strong! And she agreed.

In April 1894, Nikolai Alexandrovich, accompanied by a brilliant retinue, went to Germany. Having gotten engaged in Darmstadt, the newlyweds spend some time at the English court. From that moment on, the Tsarevich’s diary, which he kept throughout his life, became available to Alex.

Already at that time, even before her accession to the throne, Alex had a special influence on Nicholas. Her entry appears in his diary: “Be persistent... don’t let others be first and bypass you... Reveal your personal will and don’t let others forget who you are.”

Subsequently, Alexandra Feodorovna’s influence on the emperor often took increasingly decisive, sometimes excessive, forms. This can be judged from the published letters from the Empress Nicholas to the front. It was not without her pressure that Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, popular among the troops, resigned. Alexandra Fedorovna was always worried about her husband’s reputation. And she more than once pointed out to him the need for firmness in relations with the courtiers.

Alix the bride was present during the agony of the groom's father, Alexander III. She accompanied his coffin from Livadia across the country with her family. On a sad November day, the body of the emperor was transferred from the Nikolaevsky station to the Peter and Paul Cathedral. A huge crowd crowded along the path of the funeral procession, moving along the pavements dirty with wet snow. The commoners whispered, pointing to the young princess: “She came to us behind the coffin, she brings misfortune with her.”

Tsarevich Alexander and Princess Alice of Hesse

On November 14 (26), 1894 (on the birthday of Empress Maria Feodorovna, which allowed for a retreat from mourning), the wedding of Alexandra and Nicholas II took place in the Great Church of the Winter Palace. After the wedding, a thanksgiving prayer service was served by members of the Holy Synod, led by Metropolitan Palladius (Raev) of St. Petersburg; While singing “We praise You, God,” a cannon salute of 301 shots was fired. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich wrote in his emigrant memoirs about their first days of marriage: “The wedding of the young Tsar took place less than a week after the funeral of Alexander III. Their honeymoon passed in an atmosphere of funeral services and mourning visits. The most deliberate dramatization could not have invented a more suitable prologue for the historical tragedy of the last Russian Tsar.”

Typically, the wives of Russian heirs to the throne were in secondary roles for a long time. Thus, they had time to carefully study the mores of the society they would have to manage, had time to navigate their likes and dislikes, and most importantly, had time to acquire the necessary friends and helpers. Alexandra Fedorovna was unlucky in this sense. She ascended the throne, as they say, having fallen from a ship to a ball: not understanding the life that was alien to her, not being able to understand the complex intrigues of the imperial court.

In truth, her very inner nature was not adapted for the vain royal craft. Painfully withdrawn, Alexandra Feodorovna seemed to be the opposite example of a friendly dowager empress - our heroine, on the contrary, gave the impression of an arrogant, cold German woman who treated her subjects with disdain. The embarrassment that invariably gripped the queen when communicating with strangers prevented her from establishing simple, relaxed relationships with representatives of high society, which she vitally needed.

Alexandra Fedorovna did not know how to win the hearts of her subjects at all; even those who were ready to bow to members of the imperial family did not receive food for this. So, for example, in women's institutes, Alexandra Fedorovna could not squeeze out a single friendly word. This was all the more striking, since the former Empress Maria Fedorovna knew how to evoke in college students a relaxed attitude toward herself, which turned into enthusiastic love for the bearers of royal power. The consequences of the mutual alienation that grew over the years between society and the queen, sometimes taking on the character of antipathy, were very diverse and even tragic. Alexandra Fedorovna’s excessive pride played a fatal role in this.

Early years married life turned out to be tense: the unexpected death of Alexander III made Niki emperor, although he was completely unprepared for this. He was bombarded with advice from his mother and five respectable uncles, who taught him to rule the state. Being a very delicate, self-possessed and well-mannered young man, Nikolai at first obeyed everyone. Nothing good came of this: on the advice of their uncles, after the tragedy on Khodynka Field, Niki and Alix attended a ball at the French ambassador - the world called them insensitive and cruel. Uncle Vladimir decided to pacify the crowd in front of the Winter Palace on his own, while the Tsar’s family lived in Tsarskoe - Bloody Sunday ensued... Only over time will Niki learn to say a firm “no” to both uncles and brothers, but... never to HER.

Immediately after the wedding, he returned her diamond brooch - a gift from an inexperienced sixteen-year-old boy. And all life together The Empress will not part with her - after all, it is a symbol of their love. They always celebrated the day of their engagement - April 8th. In 1915, the forty-two-year-old empress wrote a short letter to her beloved at the front: “For the first time in 21 years we are not spending this day together, but how vividly I remember everything! My dear boy, what happiness and what love you have given me over all these years... How time flies - 21 years have already passed! You know, I saved that “princess dress” I was wearing that morning, and I’ll wear your favorite brooch...”

The queen's intervention in the affairs of government did not appear immediately after her wedding. Alexandra Feodorovna was quite happy with the traditional role of a homemaker, the role of a woman next to a man engaged in difficult, serious work. She is, first of all, a mother, busy with her four daughters: taking care of their upbringing, checking their assignments, protecting them. She is the center, as always subsequently, of her closely knit family, and for the emperor, she is the only beloved wife for life.

Her daughters adored her. From the initial letters of their names they made up a common name: “OTMA” (Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia) - and under this signature they sometimes gave gifts to their mother and sent letters. There was an unspoken rule among the Grand Duchesses: every day one of them seemed to be on duty with her mother, without leaving her a single step. It is curious that Alexandra Fedorovna spoke English to the children, and Nicholas II spoke only Russian. The empress communicated with those around her mostly in French. She also mastered Russian quite well, but spoke it only to those who did not know other languages. And only German speech was not present in their everyday life. By the way, the Tsarevich was not taught this.

Alexandra Fedorovna with her daughters

Nicholas II, a domestic man by nature, for whom power seemed more like a burden than a way of self-realization, rejoiced at any opportunity to forget about his state concerns in a family setting and gladly indulged in those petty domestic interests for which he generally had a natural inclination. Perhaps, if this couple had not been so highly elevated by fate above mere mortals, she would have calmly and blissfully lived until her death hour, raising beautiful children and resting in God, surrounded by numerous grandchildren. But the mission of monarchs is too restless, the lot is too difficult to allow them to hide behind the walls of their own well-being.

Anxiety and confusion gripped the reigning couple even when the empress, with some fatal sequence, began to give birth to girls. Nothing could be done against this obsession, but Alexandra Feodorovna, who had learned with her mother’s milk her destiny as a queen of a woman, perceived the absence of an heir as a kind of heavenly punishment. On this basis, she, an extremely impressionable and nervous person, developed pathological mysticism. Gradually, the entire rhythm of the palace obeyed the tossing of the unfortunate woman. Now every step of Nikolai Alexandrovich himself was checked against one or another heavenly sign, and state policy was imperceptibly intertwined with childbirth. The queen's influence on her husband intensified, and the more significant it became, the further the date for the appearance of the heir moved forward.

The French charlatan Philip was invited to the court, who managed to convince Alexandra Feodorovna that he was able to provide her, through suggestion, with male offspring, and she imagined herself to be pregnant and felt all the physical symptoms of this condition. Only after several months of the so-called false pregnancy, which was very rarely observed, the empress agreed to be examined by a doctor, who established the truth. But the most important misfortune was not in the false pregnancy or in the hysterical nature of Alexandra Feodorovna, but in the fact that the charlatan received, through the queen, the opportunity to influence state affairs. One of Nicholas II’s closest assistants wrote in his diary in 1902: “Philip inspires the sovereign that he does not need other advisers except representatives of the highest spiritual, heavenly powers, with whom he, Philip, puts him into intercourse. Hence the intolerance of any contradiction and complete absolutism, sometimes expressed as absurdity. If at the report the minister defends his opinion and does not agree with the opinion of the sovereign, then a few days later he receives a note with a categorical order to carry out what he was told.”

Philip was still able to be expelled from the palace, because the Police Department, through its agent in Paris, found indisputable evidence of the French subject’s fraud.

With the outbreak of the war, the couple were forced to separate. And then they wrote letters to each other... “Oh, my love! It’s so hard to say goodbye to you and see your lonely pale face with big sad eyes in the train window - my heart is breaking, take me with you... I kiss your pillow at night and passionately wish you were next to me... We have been through so much over these 20 years, we understand each other without words...” “I must thank you for your arrival with the girls, for bringing me life and sunshine, despite the rainy weather. Of course, as always, I didn’t have time to tell you even half of what I was going to, because when I meet you after a long separation, I always become shy. I just sit and look at you - this in itself is a great joy for me...”

And soon the long-awaited miracle followed - the heir Alexei was born.

The four daughters of Nikolai and Alexandra were born beautiful, healthy, real princesses: father's favorite romantic Olga, serious beyond her years Tatyana, generous Maria and funny little Anastasia. It seemed that their love could conquer everything. But love cannot defeat Fate. Their only son turned out to be sick with hemophilia, in which the walls of blood vessels burst from weakness and lead to difficult-to-stop bleeding.

The illness of the heir played a fatal role - they had to keep it a secret, they painfully searched for a way out and could not find it. At the beginning of the last century, hemophilia remained incurable and patients could only hope for 20-25 years of life. Alexey, who was born a surprisingly handsome and intelligent boy, was ill almost all his life. And his parents suffered with him. Sometimes, when the pain was very severe, the boy asked for death. “When I die, will it hurt me anymore?” - he asked his mother during indescribable attacks of pain. Only morphine could save him from them, but the Tsar did not dare to have as heir to the throne not just a sick young man, but also a morphine addict. Alexei's salvation was loss of consciousness. From pain. He went through several serious crises, when no one believed in his recovery, when he rushed about in delirium, repeating one single word: “Mom.”

Tsarevich Alexey

Having turned gray and aged several decades at once, my mother was nearby. She stroked his head, kissed his forehead, as if this could help the unfortunate boy... The only, inexplicable thing that saved Alexei was Rasputin’s prayers. But Rasputin brought an end to their power.

Thousands of pages have been written about this major adventurer of the 20th century, so it is difficult to add anything to the multi-volume research in a small essay. Let's just say: of course, possessing the secrets of unconventional methods of treatment, being an extraordinary person, Rasputin was able to inspire the empress with the idea that he, a person sent by God to the family, had a special mission - to save and preserve the heir to the Russian throne. And Alexandra Feodorovna’s friend, Anna Vyrubova, brought the elder into the palace. This gray, unremarkable woman had such a huge influence on the queen that it is worth special mention about her.

She was the daughter of the outstanding musician Alexander Sergeevich Taneyev, an intelligent and dexterous man who held the position of chief manager of His Majesty's office at court. It was he who recommended Anna to the queen as a partner for playing the piano four hands. Taneyeva pretended to be an extraordinary simpleton to such an extent that she was initially declared unfit for court service. But this prompted the queen to intensively promote her wedding with naval officer Vyrubov. But Anna’s marriage turned out to be very unsuccessful, and Alexandra Fedorovna, as an extremely decent woman, considered herself to some extent guilty. In view of this, Vyrubova was often invited to the court, and the empress tried to console her. Apparently, nothing strengthens female friendship more than trusting compassion in amorous matters.

Soon, Alexandra Fedorovna already called Vyrubova her “personal friend,” especially emphasizing that the latter did not have an official position at court, which means that her loyalty and devotion to the royal family were completely selfless. The empress was far from thinking that the position of a friend of the queen was more enviable than the position of a person belonging by position to her entourage. In general, it is difficult to fully appreciate the enormous role played by A. Vyrubova in the last period of the reign of Nicholas II. Without her active participation, Rasputin, despite all the power of his personality, would not have been able to achieve anything, since direct relations between the notorious old man and the queen were extremely rare.

Apparently, he did not strive to see her often, realizing that this could only weaken his authority. On the contrary, Vyrubova entered the queen’s chambers every day and did not part with her on trips. Having fallen entirely under the influence of Rasputin, Anna became the best conductor of the elder’s ideas in the imperial palace. In essence, in the stunning drama that the country experienced two years before the collapse of the monarchy, the roles of Rasputin and Vyrubova were so closely intertwined that there is no way to find out the degree of significance of each of them separately.

Anna Vyrubova on a walk in a wheelchair with Grand Duke Olga Nikolaevna, 1915-1916.

The last years of Alexandra Feodorovna's reign were full of bitterness and despair. The public at first transparently hinted at the pro-German interests of the empress, and soon began to openly vilify the “hated German woman.” Meanwhile, Alexandra Fedorovna sincerely tried to help her husband, she was sincerely devoted to the country, which had become her only home, the home of her closest people. She turned out to be an exemplary mother and raised her four daughters with modesty and decency. The girls, despite their high origins, were distinguished by their hard work, many skills, did not know luxury and even assisted during operations in military hospitals. This, oddly enough, was also blamed on the empress, they say, she allows her young ladies too much.

Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Livadia, 1914

When a rioting revolutionary crowd overran Petrograd, and the Tsar's train was stopped at Dno station for the abdication to be drafted, Alix was left alone. The children had measles and lay with a high fever. The courtiers fled, leaving only a handful of loyal people. The electricity was turned off, there was no water - we had to go to the pond, break off the ice and heat it on the stove. The palace with defenseless children remained under the protection of the Empress.

She alone did not lose heart and did not believe in renunciation until the last. Alix supported the handful of loyal soldiers who remained to stand guard around the palace - now this was her entire Army. On the day when the ex-Sovereign, who had abdicated the Throne, returned to the palace, her friend, Anna Vyrubova, wrote in her diary: “Like a fifteen-year-old girl, she ran along the endless stairs and corridors of the palace towards him. Having met, they hugged, and when left alone, they burst into tears...” While in exile, anticipating an imminent execution, in a letter to Anna Vyrubova, the Empress summed up her life: “Dear, my dear... Yes, the past is over. I thank God for everything that happened, that I received - and I will live with memories that no one will take away from me... How old I have become, but I feel like the mother of the country, and I suffer as if for my child and I love my Motherland, despite all the horrors now ... You know that it is IMPOSSIBLE to tear LOVE OUT OF MY HEART, and Russia too... Despite the black ingratitude to the Emperor, which tears my heart... Lord, have mercy and save Russia.”

The abdication of Nicholas II from the throne led royal family to Tobolsk, where she, along with the remnants of her former servants, lived under house arrest. By your selfless act former king I wanted only one thing - to save my beloved wife and children. However, the miracle did not happen; life turned out to be worse: in July 1918, the couple went down to the basement of the Ipatiev mansion. Nikolai carried his sick son in his arms... Following, walking heavily and holding her head high, was Alexandra Feodorovna...

On that last day of their lives, which is now celebrated by the church as the Day of Remembrance of the Holy Royal Martyrs, Alix did not forget to wear “his favorite brooch.” Having become material evidence No. 52 for the investigation, for us this brooch remains one of the many evidence of that Great Love. The shooting in Yekaterinburg ended the 300-year reign of the House of Romanov in Russia.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, after the execution, the remains of Emperor Nicholas II, his family and associates were taken to this place and thrown into the mine. Nowadays it is located on Ganina Yama monastery in honor of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers.

In the marriage of Nikolai Alexandrovich with Alexandra Fedorovna, five children were born:

Olga (1895-1918);

Tatiana (1897-1918);

Maria (1899-1918);

Anastasia (1901-1918);

Alexey (1904-1918).

Alexandra Feodorovna (née Alice of Hesse), the last Russian empress, according to the memoirs of her contemporaries, also had mystical talents; her relatives called these abilities “shamanic disease.” She had frightening prophetic dreams, which she told only to her loved ones. One of the dreams on the eve of the revolution is as if the ship is leaving, she wants to get on board and extends her hand, asking for help... but the passengers do not see her... and the ship leaves, leaving the queen alone on the shore.

Since childhood, the Empress was attracted to mystical phenomena. As usual, the interest of the rulers is transferred to the subjects. In Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, the fashion for spiritualistic seances, fortune-tellers and magic clubs began. The Empress knew about the gloomy predictions that predicted the collapse of the empire and the death of her husband.

Which lady is your favorite? (several options are possible)

She understood the inevitability of the law of balance, that success and happiness will sooner or later be replaced by adversity. And the one who survives suffering finds happiness. “In the life of every home, sooner or later, bitter experience comes - the experience of suffering. There may be years of cloudless happiness, but there will probably also be sorrows. The stream, which has flown for so long, like a cheerful stream running in bright sunlight through meadows among flowers, deepens, darkens, plunges into a gloomy gorge or falls over a waterfall.- Alexandra wrote in her diary.

The sorcerer Rasputin played a fatal role in the fate of the empress. One might say, the Russian Count Cagliostro, who had the talent of a hypnotist. Rasputin took advantage of the serious illness of Tsarevich Alexei and manipulated his mother-empress. “As long as I’m alive, nothing will happen to you. If I don’t exist, you won’t either.”- said Rasputin.

The sorcerer suspected that the royal relatives would want to get rid of him, and threatened the Romanov house with a curse. “I feel that I will not live until the first of January... If your relatives are involved in this, then none of the members of the royal family, that is, none of the children or relatives, will live more than two years. The Russian people will kill them.". The magician was not mistaken, the revenge of the killers overtook him. Dying, Rasputin kept his word... he cursed the entire family of his royal benefactors; Rasputin's killers were relatives of the emperor.

Tsarevich Alexey

Rasputin was killed by Prince Felix Yusupov (who was married to the niece of Nicholas II and Grand Duke Dmitry (cousin of Nicholas II). The young people decided to stop the hypnotic influence of the sorcerer on their crowned relatives.
Prince Felix Yusupov once experienced Rasputin's hypnosis. “I gradually sank into a sleepy state, as if under the influence of a powerful sleeping pill. All I could see were Rasputin's sparkling eyes."- the prince recalled.

Foreign novelists write that the vile Rasputin conjured not only the revolution in Russia, but also the First World War. He opened some hellish gates and released all kinds of evil spirits into our world.

The sad ending of the Romanov family was predicted long before Rasputin. On the eve of his death, Emperor Paul I wrote a message to his descendants, which he placed in a box and ordered to be opened exactly one hundred years after his death. The letter contained the prediction of the monk Abel about the fate of the royal family.

Kings walked on rooftops before it became mainstream :)

On March 12, 1901, the emperor and his wife opened a message from the past, which read “He will replace the royal crown with a crown of thorns, he will be betrayed by his people, as the Son of God once was, and in the year 18 he will meet a painful death.”

According to the memoirs of the royal confidant S.A. Nilus: “On January 6, 1903, at the Winter Palace, during a gun salute from the Peter and Paul Fortress, one of the guns turned out to be loaded with grapeshot, and part of it hit the gazebo where the clergy and the sovereign himself were located. The calmness with which the sovereign reacted to the incident was so amazing that it attracted the attention of the retinue around him. He, as they say, didn’t even raise an eyebrow... “Until I’m 18, I’m not afraid of anything,” the king remarked.”

On the eve of the wedding, 1894

There was another casket with a letter from the 17th century, from the time of Peter I’s father, Alexei the Quiet. The king received this gift in honor of his coronation. The text of the message spoke of a gloomy prophecy that the emperor who would ascend the throne at the end of the 19th century would be the last. He is destined to atone for all the sins of the family.

The wedding took place on November 14, 1894. Alexandra is 22 years old, Nikolay is 26 years old.
Nicholas's father, Emperor Alexander III, did not live to see his son's wedding. The wedding took place a week after his funeral; they decided not to postpone the wedding on the occasion of mourning. Foreign guests were preparing to move from grief for the dead to joy for the living. The modest wedding ceremony left a “painful impression” on many guests.
Nikolai wrote to his brother George about his experiences: “The wedding day was a terrible torment for her and me. The thought that our dear, selflessly beloved Dad was not between us and that you were far from your family and completely alone did not leave me during the wedding; I had to strain all my strength, so as not to burst into tears here in church in front of everyone. Now everything has calmed down a little - life has begun completely new for me..."

“I cannot thank God enough for the treasure that he sent me in the form of a wife. I am immeasurably happy with my darling Alix and I feel that we will live just as happily until the end of our lives.”- wrote Nikolai.
Alexandra was also happy with her marriage: “I never imagined that I could be so absolutely happy in the whole world, so feel the unity of two mortals.”

Years later, they retained their old feelings:
“I can’t believe that today is our twentieth wedding anniversary! The Lord blessed us with rare family happiness; just to be able to prove worthy of His great mercy during the rest of my life.”- wrote Nikolai.
“I'm crying like a big baby. I see in front of me your sad eyes, full of affection. I send you my warmest wishes for tomorrow. For the first time in 21 years we are not spending this day together, but how vividly I remember everything! My dear boy, what happiness and what love you have given me over all these years."- from Alexandra's letter.

Monarchs rarely gain family happiness. Often the law of balance of the universe plays a cruel joke. They found simple human happiness, but lost their throne and life.

The empress avoided court life. She was the opposite of her secular mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who could easily start a conversation with both the king and the servant. Evil tongues called Empress Alexandra a “Hessian fly.” Empress Alexandra's thoughtfulness was often mistaken for arrogance.

Prince Felix Yusupov quite accurately, although harshly, described the empress’s character traits:
“Princess Alice of Hesse came to Russia in mourning. She became a queen without having time to either get comfortable or make friends with the people over whom she was going to reign. But, immediately finding herself in the center of everyone’s attention, she, naturally shy and nervous, became completely embarrassed and stiff . And therefore she was known as cold and callous. And then both arrogant and contemptuous. But she had faith in her special mission and a passionate desire to help her husband, shocked by the death of his father and the burden of his new role. She began to interfere in the affairs of the state. It was then decided that "She is also power-hungry, and the sovereign is weak. The young queen realized that neither the court nor the people liked her, and completely withdrew into herself."

Princess Alice with her grandmother, Queen Victoria

Alice with her father Ludwig of Hesse

Alexandra Fedorovna and her daughters were not glamorous white-handed girls. During the First World War, they worked in the hospital as nurses and even became assistants during operations. They were taught medicine by the first female surgeon in Russia, Vera Gedroits. This one is separate interesting topic, which I’ll write about too.

In her diary, the Empress did not write about her experiences during the years of the revolution. Her notes continue to describe the family structure. She even writes about deportations and relocations calmly, as if she were talking about a planned royal trip.

It seems to me that Alexandra Fedorovna looks like Princess Diana. More precisely, Princess Diana is similar to Alexandra Feodorovna, chronologically speaking.

Brief entries were made in Alexandra's diary about revolutionary events.
“Terrible things are happening in St. Petersburg. Revolution". February 27 Monday

It’s an interesting coincidence that on the eve of the February revolution, Alexandra Feodorovna served a memorial service at the grave of Rasputin, who cursed them, which she wrote about in her diary: “ Lily and Anya met at the station, funeral service, grave.” The next day, the sorcerer's grave was desecrated by rioters, and his remains were burned.

IN February revolution the empress was in Tsarskoe Selo, from where she sent a telegram to her husband “The revolution yesterday took on terrifying proportions... Concessions are necessary. ... Many troops went over to the side of the revolution. Alix."

From March to August 1917, the royal family lived under house arrest in Tsarskoye Selo. Then the Romanovs were transported to Tobolsk to the house of the local governor. The Romanovs lived here for eight months.

On the eve of the revolution

In revolutionary exile, 1918

The royal family was informationally isolated from political events. According to contemporary Zhilard:
“One of our greatest deprivations during our Tobolsk imprisonment was the almost complete lack of news. Letters reached us only very sloppily and with great delay, as for newspapers, we had to be content with a miserable local sheet printed on wrapping paper; it told us only news that was several days late and, most often, distorted and truncated. Meanwhile, the Emperor watched with alarm the events unfolding in Russia. He understood that the country was heading towards destruction...

Nicholas II in a portrait by Serov

...That was the first time I heard from the Emperor an expression of regret about his abdication. He made this decision in the hope that those who wanted him removed would be able to bring the war to a happy end and save Russia. He was afraid that his resistance would serve as a reason for civil war in the presence of the enemy, and did not want the blood of at least one Russian to be shed for him. But wasn’t his departure followed very soon by the appearance of Lenin and his associates, paid mercenaries of Germany, whose criminal propaganda led the army to collapse and corrupted the country? He now suffered at the sight of the fact that his self-denial had turned out to be useless and that, guided only by the good of his homeland, he had actually done her a disservice by leaving. This thought began to haunt him more and more and subsequently became the cause of great moral torment for him...”

“2nd revolution. The provisional government has been removed. Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Trotsky. Settled in Smolny. The Winter Palace was badly damaged." October 28, Saturday. Tobolsk– Alexandra wrote briefly in her diary.

In April, Commissar Yakovlev received an order to deliver the royal family to Moscow. On the way near Omsk, the train was stopped, Yakovlev received another order - to proceed to Yekaterinburg.

“On April 28, 1918, when transporting tsarist prisoners from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg imprisonment, the route was changed, the train turned to Omsk. The path was blocked, and the train carrying Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and daughter Maria Nikolaevna stopped at the Lyubinskaya station. Commissioner Yakovlev, who accompanied the crowned family, left for Omsk to negotiate permission to travel. Regardless of Yakovlev’s motives, which historians argue about, the fate of the Emperor would not have been so tragic if the crowned family had moved into the city of Omsk, which within six months became the capital of Siberia.”- from the inscription on the memorial plaque of the Lyubinskaya station.

Empress with daughters

Alexandra Fedorovna again calmly describes their last route in her diary as a planned trip. Only the phrase “the heart has greatly expanded” speaks of strong emotions.

The Romanov spouses and daughter Maria traveled on one train, the rest of the royal children on another.

15(28). April. Sunday. Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Vai week. Palm Sunday. 4 1/2 hours. We left Tyumen. We hardly slept. Beautiful sunny weather. Nikolai and I are in the same compartment, the door to Maria and Nyuta’s compartment, in the nearest one is Valya Dolgorukov and E.S. Botkin. Then 2 of our people, then 4 of our shooters. On the other hand - these 2 commissioners and their assistants, and the toilet team.

Vagay. The rest were brought soup and hot food, but we ate tea and the provisions that we had taken with us from Tobolsk. Nazyvaevskaya station - Maria and Nyuta (Demidova) left the carriage once or twice to stretch their legs a little.
I wrote to children. In the evening, a second telegram arrived, sent after leaving Tyumen. “We are traveling in good conditions. How is the little one's health? The Lord is with you.

16(29). April. Monday. Holy Week. 91/4 hours. Passage 52.
Beautiful weather. We didn’t reach Omsk and turned back.

11 o'clock. The same station again, Nazyvaevskaya. The rest were brought food, I drank coffee. 12 1\6 hours. Masyanskaya station. The rest got out of the carriage for a walk. Soon after that, they went out for a walk again, as the axle of one of the carriages caught fire and had to be uncoupled. Sednev* prepared us a good dinner again today.

I wrote our 5th letter to the children. Nikolai read me the Gospel for today. (The Omsk Council of Deputies did not allow us to pass through Omsk, because they were afraid that someone would want to take us to Japan). The heart has expanded greatly."

*Leonid Sednev is the family's cook, the only one of the Romanovs' close associates who managed to avoid execution.

Alexandra Fedorovna - drawing by V.A. Serova

In Yekaterinburg, the Romanovs were brought to their last refuge - the house of the merchant Ipatiev.

The final entry in the Empress's diary.

"Ekaterinburg. 3 (16). July. Tuesday.
Irina 23rd<ень>R<ождения>+11°.
Cloudy morning, later - nice sunny weather. Baby* has a slight cold. Everyone went out for a walk in the morning for ½ hour. Olga and I prepared our medicines. T<атьяна>the Spirit read to me<овное>reading. They went out for a walk, T<атьяна>stayed with me, and we read: Book<игу>etc<орока>Amos, etc.<орока>Avdija. Weaving lace. Every morning a commandant comes to our rooms<ант>Finally, a week later, he brought eggs for Baby.
8 hours<асов>. Dinner.
Quite unexpectedly, Lika Sednev was sent to visit his uncle, and he ran away - I would like to know if this is true and whether we will ever see this boy!
Played bezique with N<иколаем>.
10 ½ [hours]. She went to bed. +15 degrees.”

*Baby—that’s what the empress called her son Alexei.

House of merchant Ipatiev

On the night of July 17, the royal family was shot in the basement of Ipatiev’s house. Together with the Romanovs, four loyal confidants who remained with royal family to the end, shared with them the hardships of exile (about these brave people I’ll write separately). Among those killed was Dr. Evgeniy Botkin, son of the famous physician Sergei Botkin.

Memoirs of G.P. Nikulin, a participant in the execution.
“... comrade Ermakov, who behaved rather indecently, subsequently assuming the leading role for himself, that he did it all, so to speak, single-handedly, without any help... In fact, there were 8 of us executors: Yurovsky, Nikulin, Mikhail Medvedev, Medvedev Pavel is four, Ermakov Peter is five, but I’m not sure that Kabanov Ivan is six. And I don’t remember the names of two more.

When we went down to the basement, we also didn’t even think of putting chairs there at first to sit down, because this one was... didn’t walk, you know, Alexey, we had to sit him down. Well, then they brought it up instantly. When they went down to the basement, they began to look at each other in bewilderment, they immediately brought in chairs, sat down, which means Alexandra Fedorovna, the heir, was imprisoned, and Comrade Yurovsky uttered the following phrase: “Your friends are advancing on Yekaterinburg , and therefore you are condemned to death." They didn’t even realize what was going on, because Nikolai just said immediately: “Ah!”, and at that time our salvo was already one, two, three. Well, there’s someone else there, which means, so to speak, well, or something, they weren’t quite completely killed yet. Well, then I had to shoot someone else..."

According to one version, the younger children, Anastasia and Alexei, managed to escape.