#alexandra romanov

[wildfieldz]

Life is too short to spend it on fighting and quarrels, especially in the sacred family circle.

Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova

[otmaaromanovas]

Two evening dresses worn by Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, on display at the Hermitage Amsterdam

Photos taken at the "Jewels! The Glitter of the Russian Court" exhibition, by Jane023 

[kootyl]

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna with her children - Tsarevitch Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov. 1912.

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Heinrich von Angeli, Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia (1896/1897)

via wikimedia commons

[romanovsonelastdance]

Alexandra Feodorovna with her daughters, 1913.

Another example of "old timey Photoshop." All the other postcard versions of this image are landscape; for some reason this one was published in portrait orientation. That meant they had to draw in the rest of Alix and Maria's skirts as well as the chair. They didn't . . . they didn't do great. The draping on Alix's especially looks very stiff and unnatural, being so straight. You can also see editing above Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia's heads where they had to fill in background that wasn't there.

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

Princess Alix of Hesse with her father, Louis IV, 1889.

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Royal Mothers + Piggybacks 🤍

[imperial-russia]

The Imperial Family in the Livadia Palace by Daria Buravtseva

"In my work ... I set the task of showing a long-gone era, and people whose fate personifies the tragedy of the Russian Empire. One day I was traveling the Crimea and visiting palaces, wandering through museum halls filled with Crimean air and scorching sun. At that moment, a long-gone era appeared before me as if it were yesterday.

I wanted to show the Romanovs not as the royal seven, but as living happy people. I had a desire to show that history is multifaceted and consists not only of tragic moments but is also full of happy moments in the lives of historical figures."

[maurineromanovs]

Costume Ball of winter palace 1903 Romanovs

[adini-nikolaevna]

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia (nee Princess Charlotte of Prussia) by Hau, after Sokolov.

[wildfieldz]

do bow to those who remember us.

[otmaaromanovas]

A French writer recalls meeting the Romanov sisters

During WWI, French journalist and writer Amélie de Néry, who went by the pen name Marylie Markovitch, was invited to have a private audience with Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. During this meeting, she was introduced to the four Grand Duchesses by the Tsarina.

In January 1916, her recollections were condensed and published in multiple newspapers throughout America and Europe. She wrote:

With a charming smile she took my hand and told me she was very happy to receive a representative of the women of France, who, like their sisters in Russia, had so bravely borne their burden of anxiety during this cruel war. 'Let me introduce you to my daughters,' she said as soon as I thanked her for granting me an audience. 'This is Tatiana.' Grand Duchess Tatiana also shook hands with me and said she was very much interested in meeting a woman journalist for the first time. She is a beautiful girl, with big blue eyes, full of life, illuminating her fair, young face. At this moment the door opened and a young girl, also in the garb of a sister of mercy, entered the room. 'And here is Olga, my little French daughter' said the czarina. Grand duchess Olga is no less beautiful and charming than her younger sister, but she is more calm and there is something of the serenity of the mystic about her. As the czarina referred to her stay in Paris, it seemed to me as if a dreamy expression came into the daughter's dark soulful eyes. ‘Colonel de Vitchkowsky will introduce you to my two other daughters,' said the czarina, as she parted from me to take up her duties in the operating room; and once more I felt the firm grip of her hand. The two little grand duchesses, Marie and Anastasia, were in the convalescent ward. I found that both, wearing plain white dresses and red hats, standing close to an officer who, seated on the window sill, was playing the balalaika. They both shook hands with me and the music went on.

📍SOURCES: Amélie de Néry; LA Raconteuce, ‘Find Writer Finds Czarina Hard At Work’, El Paso Herald newspaper, 6 January 1916. Her full recollections can be found in Amélie de Néry, ‘L’Imperatrice en Voile Blanc’ in Revue Des Deux Mondes, (1916), p. 566

📍PHOTOS: Photograph albums of the Grand Duchesses, public domain; Photographs of Amélie de Néry: Portrait de Mme Marlie [sic] Markovitch, Femina publication, 122, February 1906, p. 75, public domain

[roses-of-the-romanovs]

It has now been 106 years since the Romanov murders.

"And death came, but death refused to separate those whom life had so closely bound together, and it took them all seven, united in one faith and one love. ...

" ... it is impossible that those of whom I have spoken should have suffered their martyrdom in vain. I know not when it will be, nor how; but one day or other, without any doubt, when brutality has bled itself to death in the excess of its fury, humanity will draw from the memory of their sufferings an invincible force for moral reparation.

"Whatever revolt may rankle in the heart, and however just vengeance may be, to hope for an expiation in blood would be an insult to their memory.

"The Czar and Czarina died believing themselves martyrs to their country: they have died martyrs to humanity. Their real greatness is not to be measured by the prestige of their Imperial dignity, but by the wonderful moral heights to which they gradually attained. They have become a force, an ideal; and in the very outrage they have suffered we find a touching testimony to that wonderful serenity of soul against which violence and passion can avail nothing and which triumphs unto death."

–Pierre Gilliard, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court

[the-last-tsar]

Alix and Nicky.

[romanovsonelastdance]

Nicholas II with his wife and daughters in a boat (with close up).

[teatimeatwinterpalace]

At the Russian Court (3/?)  I M P E R I A L  D I A D E M  

‘Regal assemblage of pearls and old diamonds. This diadem is, past question, one of the finest specimens of its kind.’  Fersman

This splendid diadem, worn by the Empress Alexandra at the opening of the Duma, was catalogued by Fersman as early 19th century, but it is more likely to have been made by the court jeweller Bolin expressly for the Tsarina, using antique pearls and diamonds from the Imperial Cabinet. Fersman considered it to be the fiest piece in the entire imperial collection. All trace if of it is lost after the inventory of 1922, and it seems likely that as with other pieces from the collection it was sold or broken up when some of the imperial jewels were sold by Christie’s in London in 1927. 

The Empress Alexandra in court dress for the opening of the first Duma in 1906, photographed by K. Bulla. She wears the diadem, a small diamond chain of the Order of St Andrew, and a collier de chien in pearls and diamonds and a pearl and diamond cluster necklace, both surely created by Bolin to accompany the diadem. Neither necklace appears among the inventoried jewels, and it is likely that they had been taken by the Empress to Tobolsk and then disappeared. | The Jewels of the Romanovs Family and Court by Stefano Papi