Engagement photo of Alexandra and Nicholas II

Official engagement photo of Alexandra and Nicholas II, April 1894

Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna

Image: Portrait of Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna by Nikolai Kornilievich Bodarevsky, Tsarskoe Selo, Russia, 1907

Born Alix von Hessen und bei Rhein (6 June 1872 - 17 July 1918), was Empress Consort of Russia as the spouse of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of the Russian Empire. She was born a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and later given the name Alexandra Feodorovna on admission into the Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer in 2000.

Alexandra, the last Tsarina of Russia, was best-known as one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease, as well as for her notorious friendship with the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, who was an important factor in her life.

The Provisional Government formed after the Russian revolution kept Alexandra, Nicholas II and their children confined in their primary residence, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, until they were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia in August 1917. On 30 April 1918 they were transferred to the town of Yekaterinburg, where they were imprisoned in the two-story Ipatiev House. Alexandra and her family, including the seriously ill son Alexei, along with several family servants, were executed by firing and bayonets in the basement of the Ipatiev House early in the morning of 17 July 1918, by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky.