Alexandra Feodorovna Signed CDV Photo Cabinet Card Princess of Hesse Nicholas II

For your consideration is an exceedingly rare and historically important original c. Royal autographs are manuscript hand-signed in fountain pen ink. Signed by both in black ink in lower blank corners of image,'Alix' and'Irene'. Photographer's credit to lower card mount and verso, 16 x 11 cm. This photograph was taken when both princesses were bridesmaids at the 1885 wedding of Princess Alix's godmother and maternal aunt, Princess Beatrice, to Prince Henry of Battenberg.

25 May 1872 - 17 July 1918, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Emperor Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November O. 14 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March O. A favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was, like her grandmother, one of the most famous royal carriers of haemophilia and bore a haemophiliac heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years.

She and her immediate family were all murdered while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.

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