Alexandra

Alexandra (born June 6, 1872, Darmstadt, Germany—died July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg, Russia) was the consort of the Russian emperor Nicholas II. Her misrule while the emperor was commanding the Russian forces during World War I precipitated the collapse of the imperial government in March 1917.

A granddaughter of Queen Victoria and daughter of Louis IV, grand duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, Alexandra married Nicholas in 1894 and came to dominate him. She proved to be unpopular at court and turned to mysticism for solace. Through her near-fanatical acceptance of Orthodoxy and her belief in autocratic rule, she felt it her sacred duty to help reassert Nicholas’s absolute power, which had been limited by reforms in 1905.

In 1904 the tsarevich Alexis was born; Alexandra had previously given birth to four daughters. The tsarevich suffered from hemophilia, and Alexandra’s overwhelming concern for his life led her to seek the aid of a debauched “holy man” who possessed hypnotic powers, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin. She came to venerate Rasputin as a saint sent by God to save the throne and as a voice of the common people, who, she believed, remained loyal to the emperor. Rasputin’s influence was a public scandal, but Alexandra silenced all criticism.

After Nicholas left for the front in August 1915, she arbitrarily dismissed capable ministers and replaced them with nonentities or dishonest careerists favoured by Rasputin. As a result, the administration became paralyzed and the regime discredited, and Alexandra came to be widely but erroneously believed to be a German agent. Yet she disregarded all warnings of coming changes, even the murder of Rasputin. After the October Revolution (1917), she, Nicholas, and their children were imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and were later shot to death. (Although there is some uncertainty over whether the family was killed on July 16 or 17, 1918, most sources indicate that the executions took place on July 17.)