Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)

Alexandra, 1895.

Alexandra was a noted beauty. Her maternal grandmother Queen Victoria praised her as "a most lovely child."[3] Her friend Anna Vyrubova described her as "tall... and delicately, beautifully shaped, with exquisitely white neck and shoulders. Her abundant hair, red gold, was so long that she could easily sit upon it when it was unbound. Her complexion was clear and as rosy as a little child's. The Empress had large eyes, deep gray and very lustrous."[4] A lady-in-waiting, Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, said that she was "a tall, slim girl" with "beautiful luminous eyes," "regular features," a "very good complexion," and "beautiful golden hair."[5] An Imperial courtier commented favorably about "her wonderful hair which lay like a heavy crown on her head and large dark-blue eyes beneath long lashes."[6] In 1905, her daughters' tutor Pierre Gilliard wrote that "the Tsarina was still a beautiful woman at that time. She was tall and slender and carried herself superbly. But all this ceased the moment one looked into her eyes—those speaking, grey-blue eyes which mirrored the emotions of a sensitive soul."[7]

Alexandra was shy. When her grandmother Queen Victoria insisted that she play the piano for others, she felt that her "clammy hands... [were] literally glued to the keys" and later described the experience as "one of the worst ordeals" of her life.[8] When she was Empress, a page in the Imperial household described her as "so obviously nervous of conversation" and claimed that "at moments when she needed to show some social graces or a charming smile, her face would become suffused with little red spots and she would look intensely serious."[9] Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich of Russia noted that she "is terribly shy... It's noticeable that she does not have her mother-in-law's charm, and still does not, therefore, inspire general adulation."[10] Nadine Wonar-Larsky, her lady-in-waiting, noted that she was "extremely shy even at such an informal affair as receiving" Wonlar-Larsky and her mother to tea.[10] An Imperial courtier notes that "when she was conversing or grew tired, her face became covered in red blotches [and] her hands were red and fleshy."[6] She herself admitted that during social functions, she "long[ed] to disappear into the ground."[11] She told her friend Marie Bariatinsky that "I am not made to shine before an assembly—I have not got the easy nor the witty talk one needs for that."[12]

Alexandra's natural shyness was often mistaken as haughtiness. Her brother Ernest Louis reflected that "she would unsmilingly tilt her head to one side if something displeased her, with the result that people often thought that she was unhappy, or bored, or simply capricious."[13] Her daughters' tutor Pierre Gilliard reflected that "the reserve which so many people had taken as an affront and had made her so many enemies was rather the effect of a natural timidity, as it were—a mask covering her sensitiveness."[14]

Left to right (back row): Princess Alix of Hesse; Princess Irene of Hesse; (front row): Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein; Charlotte, Princess Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen; Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein.

Even from a young age, Alexandra was serious and melancholic. Her first cousin and childhood friend Princess Marie Louise said that she had "a curious atmosphere of fatality."[15] Princess Marie Louise allegedly asked her, "Alix, you always play at being sorrowful; one day the Almighty will send you some real crushing sorrows, and then what are you going to do?"[15] Sir George William Buchanan, who was a diplomat for Alexandra's grandmother Queen Victoria, reflected that Alexandra had a "sad and pathetic expression."[16]

Alexandra was extremely religious. Although she loved Nicholas II, she initially refused his proposal because she refused to convert from Lutheranism and join the Russian Orthodox Church, as was expected of all wives of Russian Emperors. She told Nicholas that even though "it grieves me terribly and makes me very unhappy" not to marry him, leaving the Lutheran church would be "a wrongful thing."[17]

Alexandra was generous to her friends and often tried to help others. Her lady-in-waiting Sophie Buxhoeveden wrote that she was "ready to do literally anything for her friends" and that "she would take up things and people with violent enthusiasm."[18] She admitted that "I am of the preacher type. I want to help others in life, to help them to fight their battles and bear their crosses."[19]

Alexandra was intellectual and well-read. In her first years as Empress, she translated Russian writings and studied Russian music to improve her command of the language. She read Leo Tolstoy's novels and discussed them with her husband.[20]

Alexandra enjoyed music. When she was young, she played the banjo and sang duets for hours with Queen Victoria's Lady in Waiting Minnie Cochrane.[21] She enjoyed playing the piano with her daughter Olga, who inherited her musical talent.

Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine when she was a child

Alexandra was born on 6 June 1872 at the New Palace in Darmstadt as Princess Alix Viktoria Helene Luise Beatrix of Hesse and by Rhine,[22][23] a Grand Duchy then part of the German Empire. She was the sixth child and fourth daughter among the seven children of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and his first wife, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the second daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband Albert, Prince Consort.

Alix was baptized on 1 July 1872 (her parents' tenth wedding anniversary) in the Protestant Lutheran Church and given the names of her mother and each of her mother's four sisters, some of which were transliterated into German. Her mother wrote to Queen Victoria, "‘Alix’ we gave for ‘Alice’ as they murder my name here: ‘Ali-ice’ they pronounce it, so we thought ‘Alix’ could not so easily be spoilt.”[24] Her mother gave her the nickname of "Sunny", due to her cheerful disposition, a name adopted later by her husband. Her British relatives nicknamed her as "Alicky", to distinguish her from her aunt-by-marriage, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, who was known within the family as Alix.[25]

Alix's godparents were the Prince and Princess of Wales (her maternal uncle and aunt), Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom (her maternal aunt), the Duchess of Cambridge (her great-great-aunt), the Tsesarevich and Tsesarevna of Russia (her future parents-in-law), and Princess Anna of Prussia.

Alix's older brother Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine ("Frittie") suffered from hemophilia and died in May 1873 after a fall, when Alix was about one year old. Of her siblings, Alix was closest to Princess Marie ("May"), who was two years younger; they were noted as "inseparable".

In November 1878, diphtheria swept through the House of Hesse; Alix, her three sisters, her brother Ernst ("Ernie"), and their father fell ill. Elisabeth ("Ella"), Alix's older sister, was visiting their paternal grandmother, and escaped the outbreak. Alix's mother Alice tended to the children herself, rather than abandon them to nurses and doctors. Alice fell ill and died on 14 December 1878, when Alix was six years old. This was the 17th anniversary of Alice's own father's death. Marie also died, but the rest of the siblings survived. She described her childhood before her mother and sister's deaths as "unclouded, happy babyhood, of perpetual sunshine, then of a great cloud".[26][27]

Princess Alix of Hesse, lower right, with her grandmother Queen Victoria and her four older siblings in mourning after the deaths of her mother and sister. January 1879

Queen Victoria doted on the motherless Alix and became a surrogate mother to Alix. She felt highly protective of Alix and declared that "while I live Alicky, til she is married, will be more than ever my own child."[28] She handpicked Alix's tutors and instructed them to send detailed reports back to Windsor every month. She invited Alix and her surviving siblings to England for their holidays, and they grew close to their British cousins. Every birthday and Christmas, she sent Alix gifts of dresses, jewelry, lace, and dolls. Unlike her other siblings, Alix signed herself "your loving and grateful child," rather than grandchild, in her letters. Alix reflected that she saw Queen Victoria as "the best and dearest of grandmamas," "a very august person," "a Santa Clause," [29] and "the dearest and kindest Woman alive." When she was betrothed to Nicholas, Alix assured Victoria that "my marrying will [not] make a difference to my love for You."[30] When Queen Victoria died in 1901, Alix openly wept at her memorial service in St. Petersburg and shocked the Russian courtiers who considered her cold and unfeeling.[31]

Along with her sister, Princess Irene, Alix was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of her godmother and maternal aunt, Princess Beatrice, to Prince Henry of Battenberg.[32] At the age of 15, she attended Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887.

Princess Alix when she was 15

Alix of Hesse (center) with her siblings, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, Victoria of Hesse, Irene of Hesse, and Elisabeth Feodorovna (née Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine), in mourning for their father's death, 1892

In March 1892, when Alix was just nineteen years old, her father Grand Duke Louis IV, died of a heart attack.[33] According to her biographer, Baroness Buxhoeveden, Alix regarded the death of her father as the greatest sorrow of her life.[26] Buxhoeveden recalled in her 1928 biography that "for years she could not speak of him, and long after when she was in Russia, anything that reminded her of him would bring her to the verge of tears".[26] This loss was probably so much greater for Alix because Grand Duke Louis IV had been Alix's only remaining parent since she was six.[26]

Queen Victoria greatly favored Alix and she wanted Alix to become the Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, which she considered "the greatest position there is."[34] On 2 March 1888, she wrote to Alix's oldest sister Victoria that "My heart and mind are bent on securing dear Alicky for either Eddie or Georgie."[35] She pressured Alix to accept a proposal from her first cousin and the heir apparent to the British throne, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. In 1889, Victoria invited Alix and Eddy to Balmoral in hopes that they would fall in love. Eddy grew infatuated with her and proposed, but Alix was not interested in him and rejected his proposal. However, Victoria still persisted and tried to convince Alix of the benefits of the match. Victoria wrote to Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, Alix's older sister, that Alix "should be made to reflect seriously on the folly of throwing away the chance of a very good husband, kind, affectionate and steady, and of entering a united happy family and a very good position which is second to none in the world!"[36] Alix's older sister Ella opposed the match because "he [Eddy] does not look over strong and is too stupid."[37] In May 1890, Alix wrote a letter to Eddy that although it "pained her to pain him,"[34] she only saw him as a cousin and could not marry him. She wrote to Victoria that she would marry Eddy if she were "forced" by the family but that both of them would be miserable. Victoria was disappointed, but she decided that Alix had shown "great strength of character" in refusing to acquiesce to such strong pressure.[34]

In 1891, Queen Victoria tried to arrange a match between Alix and Prince Maximilian of Baden. She asked Louis to invite Max to Darmstadt as soon as possible. When he arrived in Darmstadt, Max told Alix that he intended to propose to her. Alix was surprised and unhappy, and she later reflected that "I did not know him at all."[38] She asked her older sister Victoria to intervene and help her reject Max politely.

In 1884, Alix attended the wedding of her sister Elisabeth to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in St. Petersburg. At this wedding, the 12-year-old Alix met the 16-year-old Grand Duke Nicholas, nephew of the groom and heir-apparent to the imperial throne of Russia. In his diary Nicholas called Alix "sweet little Alix"[39] and declared "we love each other." He gave her a brooch as a sign of his affection, and they scratched their names into a window pane.

In January 1890, Alix visited her sister Ella in Russia. She and Nicholas skated together, met at tea parties, and played badminton. Nicholas wrote in his diary: "It is my dream to one day marry Alix H. I have loved her for a long time, but more deeply and strongly since 1889 when she spent six weeks in Petersburg. For a long time, I have resisted my feeling that my dearest dream will come true."[40]

Alix's sister Ella and her husband Sergei were enthusiastically in favor of the match between Nicholas and Alix. The future Edward VII told his mother Queen Victoria that "Ella will move heaven and earth to get [Alix] to marry a Grand Duke."[41] Ella wrote to Ernest, “God grant this marriage will come true."[42]

Nicholas and Alix were second cousins through a great-grandmother, Princess Wilhelmina of Baden, and they were third cousins once removed through Frederick William II of Prussia, who was Alix's great-great-grandfather and Nicholas's great-great-great-grandfather. Nicholas's mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark), was Alix's godmother and the younger sister of Alexandra of Denmark, who married Alix's uncle Edward VII. Her sister Ella had married Nicholas's uncle Sergei. Her uncle Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh had married Nicholas's aunt Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia.

Queen Victoria opposed the match to Nicholas. She personally liked Nicholas, but she disliked Russia and Nicholas's father and worried that Alix would not be safe in Russia. She wrote to Alix's older sister Victoria of her suspicions that Sergei and Ella were encouraging the match.[43] After the betrothal was announced, she reflected: “The more I think of sweet Alicky's marriage the more unhappy I am. Not as to the personality for I like [Nicholas] very much but on account of the country and the awful insecurity to which that poor child will be exposed.”[44]

Alexander and Maria Feodorovna were both vehemently anti-German and did not want Alix as a daughter-in-law. Maria Feodorovna told her sister Alexandra of Denmark that the youngest daughter of an undistinguished grand duke was not worthy to marry the heir to the Russian throne, and she believed that Alix was too tactless and unlikeable to be a successful Empress.[45] Alexander favored Princess Hélène, the tall, dark-haired daughter of Philippe, Comte de Paris, pretender to the throne of France.[40] Nicholas was not attracted to Hélène, writing in his diary: "Mama made a few allusions to Hélène, daughter of the Comte de Paris. I myself want to go in one direction and it is evident that Mama wants me to choose the other one."[46] Hélène also resisted this match, as she was Roman Catholic and her father refused to allow her to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. Alexander sent emissaries to Princess Margaret of Prussia, sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II, and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Nicholas declared that he would rather become a monk than marry Margaret; she in turn was unwilling to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church from being Protestant.

When his health failed in 1894, Alexander III decided to allow Nicholas to marry Alix so that he could secure the succession.[47] Marie reluctantly permitted Nicholas to propose to Alix. Nicholas was ecstatic and immediately inquired about Alix.

Despite her love for Nicholas, Alix was initially reluctant to marry Nicholas because she did not want to renounce her Lutheran faith to join the Orthodox church. She wrote to Nicholas that “I cannot [convert to Orthodoxy] against my conscience" because “What happiness can come from a marriage which begins without the real blessing of God?”[48] Nicholas was devastated, but he remained hopeful because Ella assured him that Alix was "utterly miserable" and had a "deep and pure" love for him.[49] Nicholas begged her "not [to] say 'no' directly" and declared, “Do you think there can exist any happiness in the whole world without you!”[49]

In April 1894, Alix's brother Ernest Louis married Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Princess Victoria was Alexander III's niece by his sister Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and Nicholas's first cousin, so several Russians attended the wedding, including Grand Dukes Vladimir, Sergei and Paul, Grand Duchesses Elisabeth Feodorovna and Maria Pavlovna, and Nicholas.[50] Nicholas was determined to convince Alix to marry him. He was evidently confident in his future success: He brought Father Ioann Yanyshev, confessor to the Imperial family, to teach Alix about Russian Orthodoxy, and he brought Ekaterina Adolfovna Schneider, to teach Alix Russian.[51]

The day after his arrival in Coburg, Nicholas proposed to Alix and tried for two hours to convince her to convert to Orthodoxy. She wept continuously but refused. Ella spoke to Alix afterwards, and she convinced Alix that she did not need to renounce Lutheranism to convert to Orthodoxy. Ella herself had not been required to abjure her Lutheran faith when she converted to Orthodoxy. The next day, Alix spoke to Wilhelm II (who hoped that a German Empress would lead to better German-Russian relations) and Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (a German princess who had converted from Lutheranism to Orthodoxy to marry Nicholas's uncle Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia). She accepted Nicholas's second proposal.[52]

Tsar Nicholas II, in hussar uniform, and Princess Alix of Hesse in an official engagement photograph, 1894

Following the engagement, Alix returned to England and her grandmother. In June, Nicholas travelled to England to visit her and attend the christening of the eldest son of Prince George, Duke of York. Alix and Nicholas were both named as godparents of the boy, who reigned briefly as Edward VIII of Great Britain in 1936.[53] Alix wrote to her old governess that "I am more happy than words can express. At last, after these five sad years!"[54] Nicholas declared that "my soul was brimming with joy and life."[55]

In September, as Alexander III's health declined, Nicholas obtained the permission of his dying father to summon Alix to the Romanovs' Crimean palace of Livadia. Escorted by her sister Ella from Warsaw to the Crimea, she traveled by ordinary passenger train.[56] The dying tsar insisted on receiving Alix in full dress uniform and gave her his blessing.[57]

World War I put what proved to be an unbearable burden on Imperial Russia's government and economy, both of which were dangerously weak. Mass shortages and hunger became the daily situation for tens of millions of Russians due to the disruptions of the war economy. Fifteen million men were diverted from agricultural production to fight in the war, and the transportation infrastructure (primarily railroads) was diverted towards war use, exacerbating food shortages in the cities as available agricultural products could not be brought to urban areas. Inflation was rampant. This, combined with the food shortages and the poor performance by the Russian military in the war, generated a great deal of anger and unrest among the people in Saint Petersburg and other cities.[128]

The decision of the tsar to take personal command of the military was disastrous, as he was directly blamed for all losses. His relocation to the front, leaving the Empress in charge of the government, helped undermine the Romanov dynasty. The poor performance of the military led to rumours believed by the people that the German-born Empress was part of a conspiracy to help Germany win the war. Moreover, within several months of taking personal command of the army, the tsar replaced several capable ministers with less able men at the Empress's and Rasputin's behest; most notable among these replacements was replacing N. B. Shcherbatov with Alexei Khvostov as minister of the interior.[129] The severe winter of 1916–17 essentially doomed Imperial Russia. Food shortages worsened and famine gripped the cities. The mismanagement and failures of the war turned the soldiers against the tsar. By 1917, the tsar realized that Russia could not fight the war much longer, and as railroads carried troops to the front there was little capacity left to bring food to the cities.

By March 1917, conditions had worsened even more. Steelworkers went out on strike on 7 March, and the following day, crowds hungry for bread began rioting on the streets of Saint Petersburg to protest food shortages and the war. After two days of rioting, the tsar ordered the Army to restore order and on 11 March they fired on the crowd. That very same day, the Duma, the elected legislature, urged the tsar to take action to ameliorate the concerns of the people. The tsar responded by dissolving the Duma.[130]

On 12 March soldiers sent to suppress the rioting crowds mutinied and joined the rebellion, thus providing the spark to ignite the February Revolution (like the later October Revolution of November 1917, the Russian Revolutions of 1917 get their names due to the Old Style calendar). Soldiers and workers set up the "Petrograd Soviet" of 2,500 elected deputies while the Duma declared a Provisional Government on 13 March. Alexander Kerensky was a key player in the new regime. The Duma informed the tsar that day that he must abdicate.

In an effort to put an end to the uprising in the capital, Nicholas tried to get to Saint Petersburg by train from army headquarters at Mogiliev. The route was blocked so he tried another way. His train was stopped at Pskov where, after receiving advice from his generals, he first abdicated the throne for himself and later, on seeking medical advice, for himself and his son the Tsarevich Alexei.[131]

Alexandra was now in a perilous position as the wife of the deposed tsar, hated by the Russian people. There were attempts made by the mutinous Tsarskoe Selo garrison to storm the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, but the palace was successfully defended by the palace guards.[132] The Palace guards and other troops gradually left for the capital after being informed about the abdication, and Alexandra asked the Duma to put in place security measures for her and her household in view of the riots and violence in the nearby capital.[133] On 18 March Mikhail Rodzianko sent the newly appointed Minister of War, Alexander Guchkov, and General Kornilov to Alexandra to inspect the security of the Palace, which resulted in an officer being appointed to maintain the security of the Palace as well as a channel of communication between the Palace and the Duma.[133] After this, Alexandra noticed that the guards defending the palace gradually come to wear handkerchiefs around their wrists, signalling that they supported the Duma, which also meant that she and her children, while being defended from immediate harm, were nevertheless under de facto house arrest from that moment on.[132] Alexandra and her children and household were not molested in any way, and the household was left to continue its everyday life as before, with the exception of occasional power cuts.[134] On 21 March, Kornilov informed Alexandra that she was formally under house arrest, and the members of the household were informed that they were free to leave if they wished, but if the chose to stay, they would have to obey the same rules as pertained to the house arrest of Alexandra.[133]

The following day, on 22 March, Nicholas finally was allowed to return to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo where he was placed under arrest with his family. Alexandra told him that "the husband and father was of more value in her eyes than the Emperor whose throne she had shared."[135]

The last photograph ever taken of Alexandra. With her are her daughters Olga (right) and Tatiana (left). They are sitting on the balcony of the Governor's Mansion, Tobolsk, in Siberia in spring of 1918.

The Provisional Government formed after the revolution kept Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children confined under house arrest in their home, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo. They were visited by Kerensky from the government, who interviewed Alexandra regarding her involvement in state affairs and Rasputin's involvement in them through his influence over her.[136] She answered that as she and her spouse kept no secrets from each other, they often discussed politics and she naturally gave him advice to support him; as for Rasputin, he had been a true holy man of God, and his advice had been only in the interest of the good of Russia and the imperial family.[136] After the interview, Kerensky told the tsar that he believed that Alexandra had told him the truth and was not lying.[134]

The Provisional Government did not wish to keep the family in Russia, particularly as both the family as well as the Provincial Government were under threat from the Bolsheviks; they trusted that the former tsar and his family would be received in Great Britain, and ensured that inquiries were being made.[134] Despite the fact he was a first cousin of both Nicholas and Alexandra, George V refused to allow them and their family permission to evacuate to the United Kingdom, as he was alarmed by their unpopularity in his country and the potential repercussions to his own throne.[137] After this, it was suggested they be moved to France. However, although the French government was never asked, British diplomats in France reported that the family was not likely to be welcome there, as anti-German feelings were strong in France during the war and Alexandra was widely unpopular because she was believed to be a sympathizer of Germany.[134] The Provisional Government was reportedly very disappointed that no foreign state seemed to be willing to receive the family, and was forced to act and relocate them within Russia, as the security situation was becoming more and more difficult.[134]

In August 1917, the family were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia, a step by the Kerensky government designed to remove them from the capital and possible harm.[134] Nicholas and Alexandra had themselves suggested to be moved to the Livadia Palace in the Crimea, but Kerensky deemed this to be too dangerous: to get to the Crimea, they would have to travel through Central Russia, an area which was at that time affected by widespread revolutionary violence and riots where the upper classes and aristocracy was attacked by the public and their mansions burned.[134] Tobolsk in Siberia was, in contrast to Central and Southern Russia, a calm and peaceful place with greater security and more sympathy for the former tsar.[134] There were indications that the Provisional Government were actually attempting to transport them out of Russia by the Trans-Siberian Railway, thus fulfilling the government's wish to have them expelled, but now via a different route, after the first attempt to exile them to Europe had failed.[134] However, this plan was not revealed to the family, and if it had indeed been the intent of the government, it had to be cancelled because of a strong Bolshevik presence in Ekaterinburg and other cities along the Trans-Siberian Railway east of Tobolsk, and the family therefore continued to their official destination.[134]

From Tobolsk, Alexandra managed to send a letter to her sister-in-law, Xenia Alexandrovna, in the Crimea:

My darling Xenia,

My thoughts are with you, how magically good and beautiful everything must be with you – you are the flowers. But it is indescribably painful for the kind motherland, I cannot explain. I am glad for you that you are finally with all your family as you have been apart. I would like to see Olga in all her new big happiness. Everybody is healthy, but myself, during the last 6 weeks I experience nerve pains in my face with toothache. Very tormenting ...

We live quietly, have established ourselves well [in Tobolsk] although it is far, far away from everybody, But God is merciful. He gives us strength and consolation ...[138]

Alexandra and her family remained in Tobolsk until after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917. The fall of the Provisional Government and the Bolshevik's accession to power greatly worsened their position.[134]

In 1918, they were subsequently moved to Bolshevik controlled Yekaterinburg. Nicholas, Alexandra and their daughter Maria arrived at the Ipatiev House on 30 April 1918. On entering their new prison, they were ordered to open all their luggage. Alexandra immediately objected. Nicholas tried to come to her defence saying, "So far we have had polite treatment and men who were gentlemen but now -"[139] The former Tsar was quickly cut off. The guards informed him he was no longer at Tsarskoe Selo and that refusal to comply with their request would result in his removal from the rest of his family; a second offence would be rewarded with hard labour. Fearing for her husband's safety, Alexandra quickly gave in and allowed the search. On the window frame of what was to be her last bedroom in the Ipatiev House, Alexandra scrawled a swastika, her favourite good luck symbol, and pencilled the date 17/30 April 1918.[139] In May, the rest of the family arrived in Yekaterinburg. They had not been able to travel earlier due to the illness of Alexei. Alexandra was pleased to be reunited with her family once more.

Seventy-five men did guard duty at the Ipatiev House. Many of the men were factory workers from the local Zlokazovsky Factory and the Verkh-Isetsk Factory. The commandant of the Ipatiev House, Alexander Avadeyev was described as "a real Bolshevik". The majority of witnesses recall him as coarse, brutish and a heavy drinker. If a request for a favour on behalf of the family reached Avadeyev, he always gave the same response, "Let them go to hell!" The guards in the house often heard him refer to the deposed tsar as "Nicholas the Blood-Drinker" and to Alexandra as "The German Bitch".[140]

For the Romanovs, life at the Ipatiev House was a nightmare of uncertainty and fear. The imperial family never knew if they would still be in the Ipatiev House from one day to the next or if they might be separated or killed. The privileges allowed to them were few. For an hour each afternoon they could exercise in the rear garden under the watchful eye of the guards. Alexei could still not walk, and his sailor Nagorny had to carry him. Alexandra rarely joined her family in these daily activities. Instead she spent most of her time sitting in a wheelchair, reading the Bible or the works of St. Seraphim. At night the Romanovs played cards or read; they received little mail from the outside world, and the only newspapers they were allowed were outdated editions.[141]

Dmitri Volkogonov and other Soviet historians believe that indirect evidence indicates that Vladimir Lenin personally ordered the execution of the Imperial Family,[142] although official Soviet accounts place the responsibility for the decision with the Ural Regional Soviet.[143] Leon Trotsky, in his diary, makes it quite clear that the execution took place on the authority of Lenin. Trotsky wrote:

My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Ekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov I asked in passing, "Oh yes, and where is the tsar?" "It's all over," he answered. "He has been shot." "And where is his family?" "And the family with him." "All of them?" I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. "All of them," replied Sverdlov. "What about it?" He was waiting to see my reaction. I made no reply. "And who made the decision?" I asked. "We decided it here. Ilyich (Lenin) believed that we shouldn't leave The Whites a live banner to rally around, especially under the present difficult circumstances."[144]

On 4 July 1918, Yakov Yurovsky, the chief of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, was appointed commandant of the Ipatiev House. Yurovsky was a loyal Bolshevik, a man Moscow could rely on to carry out its orders regarding the imperial family. Yurovsky quickly tightened security. From the imperial family he collected all of their jewellery and valuables. These he placed in a box which he sealed and left with the prisoners. Alexandra kept only two bracelets which her uncle Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, had given her as a child and which she could not take off. He did not know that the former tsarina and her daughters wore concealed on their person diamonds, emeralds, rubies and ropes of pearls. These would be discovered only after the executions. Yurovsky had been given the order for the execution on 13 July.[145]

On Sunday, 14 July 1918, two priests came to the Ipatiev House to celebrate the Divine Liturgy. One of the priests, Father Storozhev later recalled:

I went into the living room first, then the deacon and Yurovsky. At the same time Nicholas and Alexandra entered through the doors leading into the inner room. Two of his daughters were with him. I did not have a chance to see exactly which ones. I believe Yurovsky asked Nicholas Alexandrovich, "Well, are you all here?" Nicholas Alexandrovich answered firmly, "Yes, all of us." Ahead beyond the archway, Alexandra Feodorovna was already in place with two daughters and Alexei Nicolaievich. He was sitting in a wheelchair and wore a jacket, as it seemed to me, with a sailor's collar. He was pale, but not so much as at the time of my first service. In general he looked more healthy. Alexandra Feodorovna also had a healthier appearance. ...According to the liturgy of the service it is customary at a certain point to read the prayer, "Who Resteth with the Saints." On this occasion for some reason the deacon, instead of reading the prayer began to sing it, and I as well, somewhat embarrassed by this departure from the ritual. But we had scarcely begun to sing when I heard the members of the Romanov family, standing behind me, fall on their knees ...[146]

Tuesday, 16 July 1918 passed normally for the former imperial family. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Nicholas and his daughters took their usual walk in the small garden. Early in the evening Yurovsky sent away the fifteen-year-old kitchen boy Leonid Sedinev, saying that his uncle wished to see him. At 7 p.m., Yurovsky summoned all the Cheka men into his room and ordered them to collect all the revolvers from the outside guards. With twelve heavy military revolvers lying before him on the table he said, "Tonight, we shoot the entire family, everybody." Upstairs Nicholas and Alexandra passed the evening playing bezique; at ten thirty, they went to bed.[147]

The former tsar, tsarina, and all of their family, including the gravely ill Alexei, along with several family servants, were executed by firing squad and bayonets in the basement of the Ipatiev House, where they had been imprisoned, early in the morning of 17 July 1918, by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky.[148] In the basement room of the Ipatiev House, Alexandra complained that there were no chairs for them to sit on, whereupon Nicholas asked for and received three chairs from the guards. Minutes later, at about 2:15 a.m., a squad of soldiers, each armed with a revolver, entered the room. Their leader Yurovsky ordered the entire party to stand; Alexandra complied "with a flash of anger", and Yurovsky then casually pronounced, "Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and we must now shoot you." Nicholas rose from his chair and only had time to utter "What...?" before he was shot several times, not (as is usually said) in the head, but in the chest; his skull bears no bullet wounds, but his ribs were shattered by at least three fatal bullet wounds.[149] Standing about six feet from the gunmen and facing them, Alexandra watched the execution of her husband and two manservants before military commissar Peter Ermakov took aim at her. She instinctively turned away from him and began to make the sign of the cross, but before she could finish the gesture, Ermakov killed her with a single gunshot which, as she had partly turned away, entered her head just above the left ear and exited at the same spot above her right ear. After all the victims had been shot, Ermakov in a drunken haze stabbed Alexandra's body and that of her husband, shattering both their rib cages and chipping some of Alexandra's vertebrae.[150]

Identification of remains

Yekaterinburg's "Church on the Blood", built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood

After the execution of the Romanov family in the Ipatiev House, Alexandra's body, along with those of Nicholas, their children and some faithful retainers who died with them, was stripped and the clothing burnt according to the Yurovsky Note, a secret report by Yurovsky, which came to light in the late 1970s, but did not become public knowledge until the 1990s. Initially, the bodies were thrown down a disused mine-shaft at Ganina Yama, 12 miles (19 km) north of Yekaterinburg. A short time later, the bodies were retrieved. Their faces were smashed and the bodies, dismembered and disfigured with sulphuric acid, were hurriedly buried under railway sleepers with the exception of two of the children whose bodies were not discovered until 2007. The Yurovsky Note helped the authorities to locate the bodies. The missing bodies were those of a daughter—Maria or Anastasia—and Alexei.[151] In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the bodies of the majority of the Romanovs were located along with their loyal servants, exhumed and formally identified. Preliminary results of genetic analysis carried out on the remains of a boy and a young woman believed to belong to Nicholas II's son and heir Alexei, and daughter Anastasia or Maria were revealed on 22 January 2008.[152][153] The Ekaterinburg region's chief forensic expert said, "Tests conducted in Yekaterinburg and Moscow allowed DNA to be extracted from the bones, which proved positive," Nikolai Nevolin said. "Once the genetic analysis has been completed in Russia, its results will be compared with test results from foreign experts."[152] Nevolin said the final results would be published in April or May 2008.[152] Certainty about the remains definitively put an end to the claim that Anna Anderson could be connected with the Romanovs, as all remaining bodies would be accounted for.

DNA analysis represented a key means of identifying the bodies. A blood sample from The Duke of Edinburgh (a grandson of Alexandra's oldest sister, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine) was employed to identify Alexandra and her daughters through their mitochondrial DNA. They belonged to Haplogroup H (mtDNA). Nicholas was identified using DNA obtained from, among others, his late brother Grand Duke George Alexandrovich of Russia. Grand Duke George had died of tuberculosis in the late 1890s and was buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg.[154][155][156]

In 1981, Alexandra and her immediate family were recognised as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. In 2000, Alexandra was canonized as a saint and passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church, together with her husband Nicholas II, their children and others including her sister Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna and the Grand Duchess's fellow nun Varvara.

• The best-selling 1895 American novel The Princess Aline by Richard Harding Davis was based on his infatuation with Alexandra.[157]
• Rasputin and the Empress (1932), a fictionalized film less famous than the lawsuit it spawned. Alexandra was portrayed by Ethel Barrymore.
• The highly fictionalized 1966 film Rasputin, the Mad Monk, in which Renée Asherson portrayed the Empress.
• A rather romanticised version of Alexandra's life was dramatized in the 1971 movie Nicholas and Alexandra, based on the book by the same title written by Robert Massie, in which the tsaritsa/Empress was played by Janet Suzman.
• The song "Rasputin" is a 1978 Euro-disco hit single by the Germany-based group Boney M. It tells of Alexandra's alleged affair with Rasputin.
• 1974's Fall of Eagles, a BBC series dramatizing the demise of the ruling families of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Alexandra, portrayed by American actress Gayle Hunnicutt, is a prominent character in the series.
• Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny is a 1996 HBO TV film for which Greta Scacchi won an Emmy for her portrayal of Empress Alexandra.
• Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1997), a biographical documentary.
• Anastasia (1997), an American animated musical fantasy drama film produced by Fox Animation Studios, where Empress Alexandra appears in flashbacks
• The Romanovs: An Imperial Family (2000), a Russian film that explores the last year of the Imperial family after Nicholas's abdication, the house arrest of the family and eventual execution. Lynda Bellingham plays Empress Alexandra.
• The Lost Prince, a BBC mini-series made in 2003 about Prince John of the United Kingdom, the youngest son of King George V, in which Alexandra is played by Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė.
• The episode Love and Revolution devoted to the fall of the Romanov dynasty is featured in the Danish television A Royal Family, a series about the descendants of King Christian IX of Denmark.
• Alexandra Feodorovna is a main character in the stage play, Ekaterinburg by David Logan.[158]
• The 2019 Netflix docudrama The Last Czars explores the reign, and eventual demise, of Tsar Nicholas II. Alexandra was portrayed by Susanna Herbert.

Alexandra Feodorovna's letters to Anna Vyrubova and Lili Dehn, written in the years 1916–1918, are preserved in the "Romanov collection" in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, USA).[169]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse.

• "God in All Things: The Religious Outlook of Russia's Last Empress" by Janet Ashton
• Newspaper clippings about Alexandra Feodorovna in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• "'Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged' – in Defence of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna" by Paul Gilbert Paul Gilbert (Covers in part the tsarina's health)