Alexandra Feodorovna

Alexandra bore four daughters - Olga, Tatania, Maria and Anastasia. By this time, people inside and outside the family had started despising her because of her inability to conceive a male child.

Finally, on 12th August, 1904, she gave birth to the first male child and the successor to the Russian throne, Alexei Nikolaevich. But, unfortunately the royal heir had inherited the hereditary disease of Haemophilia.

It is during her pursuit of healing her son that Alexandra came in contact with the mystic Gregori Rasputin. She started relying on him blindly and in his capability of reducing Alexei’s pain.

Alexandra Frodorovna was born on June 6, 1872 at the New Palace in Darmstadt, and was the sixth child and fourth daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. She was nicknamed Princess Alix by her family.

On 1st July, 1872, she was baptised in accordance to the rituals of the Lutheran Church. The Prince and princess of Wales were chosen as her Godparents among many others.

On 14th December, 1878, when she was six years old, Alix’s mother died of a diphtheria epidemic. Alix and her three other siblings survived the disease but her youngest sister Princess Marie succumbed to it.

The notorious disease Hemophilia ran in the family. Alix’s older brother, Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine, died of the disease in May 1873.

Alix first met her future husband, Nicholas II, the heir to the throne of Russia in 1884 at the wedding of the latter’s uncle Sergei with Alix’s sister, Elizabeth at St. Petersburg. But the match was a problematic one for various reasons.

The match was disapproved by Nicholas’s father, Alexander III, an anti- German ruler, who wanted his son to marry the daughter of Phillipe, comte de Paris, the heir to the throne of France. Queen Victoria herself was against the match. However, she relented and let Alexandra have her way.

Alexandra herself had her share of doubts because the marriage would require her to convert into the Orthodox religion that’s why she turned down the first proposal of Nicholas. However, she accepted his second proposal.

The marriage took place after the death of Alexander III on 1st November, 1894. Tsarevich Nicholas II became the new Tsar of Russia, who wed Alexandra in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg, on 26th November, 1894.

The coronation of Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II happened on the 14th of May, 1896 at Kremlin, in Moscow.

During the outbreak of the First World War, Tsar Nicholas had to travel to the Frontline so he appointed Alexandra as the Regent in the capital, in 1915. However, she was inexperienced and under her governance, the wartime miserable situation of Russia worsened.

Her German origin infuriated the common people, as did her increasing closeness with Gregori Rasputin. All of these, culminated in the intense hatred towards the tsarina in the hearts of Russian people.