Alexandra Feodorovna

ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA was the last Empress consort of the Russian Empire and the wife of Nicholas II. She was born in Darmstadt on 6 June 1872 as Princess Alix Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice of Hesse and by Rhine, the daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. After her mother's death in 1878 she spent substantial periods in Britain with her grandmother. In 1894 she became engaged to Tsesarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich, converted from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy and took the name Alexandra Feodorovna. They married at the Winter Palace on 14 (26) November 1894; Nicholas II and Alexandra were crowned in Moscow on 14 (26) May 1896. Their five children were Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei. After Nicholas II's abdication in 1917, Alexandra and her family were held under arrest first at Tsarskoye Selo, then at Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg. On the night of 16–17 July 1918 Alexandra Feodorovna, Nicholas II, their five children and members of their household were executed at the Ipatiev House. In 1998 her remains, together with those of Nicholas II and members of the family, were reinterred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg; in 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church canonised the imperial family as passion-bearers.