page_title: Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia)
section_title: Empress of Russia
hierarchical_section_title: Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia) / Empress of Russia
caption_attribution_description: English: Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte of Prussia)Русский: Робертсон, Кристина. Портрет императрицы Александры Федоровны, 1840/1841 гг.
context_page_description: Alexandra Feodorovna, born Princess Charlotte of Prussia, was Empress of Russia as the wife of Emperor Nicholas I.
  Charlotte was the eldest surviving daughter of King Frederick William III of Prussia and of Queen Louise of Prussia. Her childhood was marked by the Napoleonic wars and by the death of her mother when Charlotte was just twelve years old.
  In 1814 the Russian imperial family arranged her marriage – for political reasons – with Grand Duke Nicholas Pavlovich of Russia,
  who later became Emperor Nicholas I. The couple married on 1 July 1817. Upon her marriage, Charlotte converted to Russian Orthodoxy, and took the Russian name Alexandra Feodorovna. Ideally matched with her husband, she had a happy marriage that produced a large family; seven of her children survived childhood.
  Following the death of her brother-in-law, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, in December 1825, Alexandra's husband became the new Russian emperor. Alexandra enjoyed her husband's confidence in affairs of state, but she had no interest in politics other than her personal attachment to Prussia, her native country. She was the obedient and admiring supporter of her husband's views.
context_section_description: Alexandra Feodorovna became Empress consort upon her husband's accession as Tsar Nicholas I in December 1825 during a turbulent period marked by the bloody repression of the Decembrist revolt. She and her husband were consecrated and crowned at the Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin on 3 September 1826.
  By 1832 Nicholas and Alexandra had seven children whom they raised with care. In 1837, when much of the Winter Palace was destroyed by fire, Nicholas reportedly told an aide-de-camp, "Let everything else burn up, only just save for me the small case of letters in my study which my wife wrote to me when she was my betrothed."
  After more than twenty-five years of fidelity Nicholas took a mistress, Barbara Nelidova, one of Alexandra's ladies-in-waiting; the doctors had forbidden the Empress from sexual activity due to her poor health and recurring heart-attacks. Nicholas continued to seek refuge from the cares of state in Alexandra's company. "Happiness, joy, and repose - that is what I seek and find in my old Mouffy." he once wrote.
  In 1845, Nicholas wept when court doctors urged the Empress to visit Palermo for several months due to poor health. "Leave me my wife", he begged her physicians, and when he learned that she had no choice, he made plans to join her briefly. Nelidova went with them, and though Alexandra was jealous in the beginning, she soon came to accept the affair, and remained on good terms with her husband's mistress.
  Alexandra Feodorovna was always frail and in poor health. At forty, she looked far older than her years, becoming increasingly thin. For a long time, she suffered from a nervous twitching that became a convulsive shaking of her head.
  In 1837 the Empress chose a resort in the Crimea for a new residence. There, Nicholas ordered that the Palace of Oreanda be built for her. She was only able to visit the palace once however; the Crimean War began in 1852. Towards the end of 1854, Alexandra Feodorovna fell ill, and came close to death, though she managed to recover. In 1855 Tsar Nicholas I contracted influenza, and he died on 6/18 February.
caption: Alexandra Fedorovna by C. Robertson 1840s, Hermitage
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