Background

Alexandra Feodorovna, nicknamed Alix, was born in 1872. She is famously known as the wife (or Tsarina) of the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II.

As a child, Alix was described as a cheerful and bright girl, with fine features much like that of her older sister, Ella. But this disposition was darkened when her younger sister and her mother died from disease when Alix was only six-years-old.

Alix and Nicholas first met in 1884 at Ella’s wedding to Sergei Alexandrovich, Nicholas’s uncle. Though it wasn’t until 1889, when Alix spent six weeks vacationing in St. Petersburg, that the couple truly fell in love and sought to marry. Neither families were excited by the prospect. But love won out, due largely to the fact that many of Nicholas’s prospects refused to convert to Russian Orthodoxy for the marriage.

Shortly after their engagement, Alexander III, Nicholas’ father, was assassinated and Nicholas forced to become the Russian Tsar. Their marriage and coronation occurred in quick succession. A daughter followed, then three more until finally Alexei was born — the Tsarevitch. Even before Alexei was diagnosed with haemophilia, Alexandra was very protective of him as her only son and heir. It’s understandable then that when Grigori Rasputin appeared and soothed her son’s pain, she fawned over him as a holy man.

While her husband was away for the First World War, Alix remained at home in their palace with her children, avoiding her citizens who despised her German heritage. When the war was lost and the Romanov family lost power, Nicholas abdicated for himself and his heir, and their family fled into exile. They were kept as prisoners for a few years, in conditions much better than many of their citizens but still abhorrent for royalty. In 1918, Lenin gave the secret order for the family’s assassination. Alix, Nicholas, their five children, their pets and their entourage were lined up in the basement of their Ekaterinburg prison and shot like criminals.