Set against the backdrop of revolution and turmoil, this couple’s tale had all the elements of a sensational opera. The granddaughter of England’s Queen Victoria, Alix Victoria Helena Louise Beatrice—later known as Alexandra Feodorovna Romanov—rejected an arranged marriage to her first cousin, Prince Albert Victor, after falling in love with Nicholas, heir to the Russian throne, as a teenager in 1889. Smitten, her lover convinced his ailing father to agree to the union. The pair wed in November 1894, several weeks after the czar’s death and Nicholas’ coronation.

The marriage was a happy and passionate one, producing four daughters and a son, Alexei. From his father the young czar inherited the claim to the Russian throne. However, his mother bequeathed him a more burdensome legacy: the mutant gene for the clotting disorder hemophilia, of which both Alexandra and her grandmother Victoria were carriers. Terrified of losing Alexei, his parents became increasingly reliant on the mad monk, Grigori Rasputin, whose hypnosis treatments slowed the boy’s hemorrhages.

Rasputin’s political influence over the czar and czarina undermined the Russian public’s confidence in the Romanov dynasty and contributed to its overthrow during the February Revolution in 1917. Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were executed on July 16, 1918, on orders from Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.

This is a bittersweet tale of two lovers destined to eternity long before their departure times.

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With her website under construction, you can reach her here: writerjr1044@gmail.com