Henriette Feodorovna (Anne of Great Britain)

## Empress AnneEmpress Henrietta Feodorovna

Buckingham Palace, London, Great Britain, British Isles, British Empire, Continental Europe

### Spouse

Grand Duke Dmitry Nikolaevich of Russia
(m. 1929; died 2003)

### Issue

Grand Duchess Matilda Alexivich
Grand Duchess Anne Alexiovna
Grand Duke William Alexivich

### House

Tudor-Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov (by birth)
Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov (by marriage)

### Siblings

Phillip of the United Kingdom
Margaret of the United Kingdom
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Pauline of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth of the United Kingdom
Orchird of the United Kingdom
Poppy of the United Kingdom
Anna of the United Kingdom
Mary of the United Kingdom
Susan of the United Kingdom
Grand Duchess Alice Feodorovna of Russia
Chrysanthemum of the United Kingdom

**Henrietta Feodorovna** (12 August [O.S. 30 July] 1910 – 23 August 2021) was the empress consort of Emperor Dmitry II of Russia from their marriage on 17 July 1929 until his death. Originally **Princess Anne of Great Britain and Ireland** at birth, she was given the name and patronymic *Henrietta Feodorovna* when she converted and was received into the Russian Orthodox Church. She and her immediate family, excluding her eldest two sons and daughters were all killed by a group of rogue revolutionaries called the Bolsheviks. During the Russian Revolution in 1918, the sickly Empress was murdered alongside her husband, several of her younger sisters as well as her maternal great-grandmother [ruler of the British Empire] and maternal great-grandfather, as well as other people including her own two youngest daughters: Grand Duchess Matilda Alexivich and Grand Duchess Anne Alexiovna.

The most favorite great-granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom, Henrietta was, like her great-grandmother, one of the most famous royal empresses in the world's written history. She bore four healthy sons and eight healthy daughters, all of her children marrying into prominent royal houses of Continental Mainland Europe. Her reputation for abstaining from politics, encouraging the arts, sciences and the growth of the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia itself made her highly popular. Her immediate conversion to Russian Orthodoy drastically improved her personal popularity and subsequently that of the Romanov monarchy in the years prior to her and her immediate family's murder.

## Appearance and personality

Henrietta had the classic beauty of the British royals and an elegant neck that her own sister-in-law the Queen Mother stated was "simply attractive" - she also had the standard royal appearance of any high-ranking German princess. Her own mother-in-law Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna called her "extremely beautiful" and was incredibly jealous of her beauty and grace in courtly life.

Henrietta was nuturing and compassionate. When Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (mother of the Queen Mother) appealed to the Empress consort for help regarding recouncillation towards her youngest daughter Violet, Henrietta aided the ailing Countess and was credited with being the cause for their relationship repairing itself. When she was Empress, a page in the Imperial household described her as "quite charming" in any and all conversations and claimed that "at moments when she needed to show some social graces or a charming smile, her face would don a gentle and compassionate smile, her eyes swirling with maternally and motherly emotions.” Prince Gabriel Constantinovich of Russia noted that she "is greatly confident and acts naturally when placed in the spotlight, as if she was born to be replaced there. It's noticable that she possesses the charm that her mother-in-law does not have, she inspires general adulation." Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia called her the "Mother of the Russian Motherland". Kanao Tsuyuri, her Japanese lady-in-waiting, noted that she was "a avid lover of foreign cultures, especially the Spanish dry-cured ham known as Jamón. She could eat entire platters and yet her weight remained the same, for she excercised vigerously and consequently remained the same weight, regardless of what she ate." She told her friend Maria Braingsky that "I could eat platters of the dry-cured meat, delicious and simply filled with flavor-- I have not got the easy nor the strength one needs for that."

Henrietta's unnatural shyness was mistaken as a perceived weakness, that foreign diplomats could take advantage of. Her brother Phillip Wilhelm reflected that "she was unaturally shy to the point where simply speaking to a small group of people gave her anxiety, yet around the court or visiting the Russian countryside, she was extremely lively and animated in conversation." Her daughters' tutor Pierre Gilliard reflected that "the reserve which some many people had taken as a depiction of an insult was actually her timid nature making it's round appearance-- it was a mask covering her sensitiveness."

From a young age, Henrietta was serious and hard-working. Her closely-related cousin and childhood friend Princess Khloe said that she had "a most curious atmosphere of seriousness, holding herself with a certain serious air to her." Princess Khloe allegedly said about her, "Henny [Henrietta] was always a serious one, her eyes were as stern as coal, her mouth downturned into a slight frown and narrowed eyebrows-- it gave her an intimidating air which often scared people off. It interested me instead of scaring me off.” Sir George Buchanan, who was a diplomat for Henrietta's great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth, reflected that Henrietta had a "gentle and sunny-like expression." He also called her "a blossoming young woman with a lovely personality, akin to that of a blossoming lily flower."

Henrietta was not religious. She despised going to church, which caused her parents much distress in her youth and enjoyed nature walks, hiking, riding horses, walking on foot trails, exploring foreign countries, eating foreign food and interacting with commoners, especially those from different backgrounds from her. She also enjoyed reading books about Analytical psychology, especially if the writer was Carl Jung. She deeply loved Grand Duke Dmitry Nikolaevich of Russia, though she initally refused his proposal as it would require converting to the Russian Orthodox Church, something which she was not fond of. Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna (one of her relatives-in-law) was not fond of her attitude towards religion and despaired at the thought that Henrietta would become her new granddaughter-in-law. Yet, Henrietta eventually accepted Alexandra's grandson's thirty-sixth proposal and became his beloved wife.

Henrietta was chasitful and faithful towards her husband. Her strict vows of chasity and faithfulness were vigerously and ruthlessely followed through the course of her marriage to her husband before her ultimate murder. She never strayed even a single inch from her vows and ultimately no illegimente children were fathered from any external sources. The lady-in-waiting to her grandmother-in-law Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden wrote that she was "a woman who never strayed from her convicitions as the Czarina, a loyal and loving wife, and a virtious mother-- she was the epitome of virtue and chasity."

Henrietta enjoyed butterfly watching. When she was young, her parents comissioned a butterfly garden for her, where butterflies were sheltered and flowers blossomed yearly and withered in accordance with the seasons. She enjoyed feeding butterflies with her many siblings and especially her children, as well as her grandchildren.

## Early life

    Henrietta was born 12 August [O.S. 30 July] 1910 at Buckingham Palace in London as Princess *Anne Helena Beatrice* of Great Britain, an island then part of the British Empire. She was the second child and first-born daughter of Prince Edward of the United Kingdom and Princess Catherina of Belgium. Princess Catherina was a sister-in-law of Lilian, Princess of Réthy and eldest sister of Leopold III of Belgium, making her a daughter of King Albert I of Belgium and Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria. She was born as both a great-goddaughter and great-granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth and her consort Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Anne was baptized on 12 September [O.S. 30 August] 1910 (her parents' tenth wedding anniversary) in the Christian Church of England and given the names of the last monarch from the dissolved House of Stuart, a princess of the United Kingdom and a a princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Her mother adored the name, Anne, because it is derived from the Latin given name Anna. Her parents gave her the nickname of "Annie" which came from a novel that her mother enjoyed reading during Anne's entire childhood: Anne of Green Gables. Her Russian relations nicknamed her as "Anna-bear", to distinguish her from her aunt Annabella, Princess of Wales, who was known within the family as Anne.
Anne's parents disliked the thoughts of godparents so they had only one set of godparents for their children.

At the age of 18, she attended her first society ball [which was her debut into high society] during Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee in 7 September 1929. During the ball, she met Vicente Mejía Colindres the then-President of Honduras, the fifty-one-year-old president requested a dance with her and she obliged during which the two of them discussed Honduarian flowers currently in season at that time. Vicente gave her a bonquet of Hondurian flowers as a thank-you for granting him a dance and Henrietta enjoyed the bonquet so much, that her siblings began giving her a bonquet of Hondurian flowers every year for her birthday. They also imported Hondurian flowers and made a planter garden for them. Even as she was being murdered, she never forgot the kindness of Vicente and murmured a small prayer for him before she was ultimately killed by a gunshot wound to the head. Her parents disapproved of her meeting Vicente Mejía Colindres, yet she called their friendship "a wonderful and diplomatic relationship, that flourished between two people. A relationship always for the benefit of the nation, never for personal gain."

In October 1929, when Henrietta was just nineteen years old, her paternal grandmother Princess Anne, died of a heart attack. According to her biographer, Countess Pointmouth, Henrietta regarded the death as her paternal grandmother as the greatest loss of her life. Pointmouth recalled in her 1928 biography that "for years she couldn't speak of her, and long after when she was in Russia, anything or anybody that reminded her of her would bring her to the verge of tears". This loss was much greater for Henrietta because Princess Anne had raised Henrietta from the time that she was a little girl, due to the death of her mother while giving birth to her final child.