Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia was the eldest child of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II, and of his wife Alexandra.
Photo, c. 1914
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, 1914
Olga with her sister, Tatiana, 1913
Grand Duchesses Tatiana, left, and Olga with Anna Vyrubova during a summer cruise in Finland, ca. 1908. Courtesy: Beinecke Library.
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
Alexandra Feodorovna, 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.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. 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.
Photograph by Boasson and Eggler, 1908
Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine when she was a child
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
Princess Alix when she was 15