Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna of Russia

Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna of Russia (Александра Георгиевна), née Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark (Greek: Πριγκίπισσα Αλεξάνδρα της Ελλάδας και Δανίας) (30 August 1870 – 24 September 1891) was born in Corfu, Greece. She was the third child and firstborn daughter of George I of Greece and Olga Konstantinovna of Russia, herself the daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia. She was a sister to Constantine I of Greece, and thus aunt of three kings and two queens, Constantine's three sons, who all became kings of Greece, and two of his daughters, who were queens, in name, of Romania and Croatia, respectively. She is also an aunt of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Marriage and children

 "Alexandra looked tall and beautiful, and ever since she was a child, life looked as it had nothing but joy and happiness in store for her."[1] When she was nineteen years old, she was married to Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia, the eighth child and sixth son of Emperor Alexander II and Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. They had become close when Grand Duke Paul spent winters in Greece due to his frequent respiratory illnesses. The Greek royal family also frequently spent holidays with the Romanov family on visits to Russia or Denmark.[2]

They had two children:

• Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna
• Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich.

Death

Seven months into her second pregnancy, Alexandra took a walk with her friends on the bank of the Moskva River and jumped directly into a boat that was permanently moored there, but fell as she got in. The next day, she collapsed in the middle of a ball from violent labour pains brought on by the previous day's activities. She gave birth to her son, Dmitri, lapsed into a fatal coma, and she died six days later in the Romanovs' estate Ilyinskoe near Moscow. The Grand Duchess was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg. Her grieving husband had to be restrained from throwing himself into the grave with her.^[3]

Her husband later morganatically remarried Olga Karnovich.

In 1939 when Alexandra's nephew George II of Greece was reigning, the Greek government obtained a permission from the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin to rebury Princess Alexandra in Greece. Her body was removed from the vault in Leningrad and transferred by a Greek ship to Athens. It was finally laid to rest near the Tatoi Palace. Alexandra's marble tombstone over an empty tomb is still in its place in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

The "Alexandra Maternity Hospital" (now "Alexandra General Hospital") in Athens was later named in her memory by her another nephew, King Paul; it was affiliated with the University of Athens with a special remit to research and combat postpartum maternal mortality. Alexandras Avenue in Athens was also named after her.^[4]

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

• Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark
• Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgievna of Russia

Ancestry

Notes

References

• Mager, Hugo (1998). Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia. Carroll and Graf Publishers Inc. ISBN 0-7867-0678-3
• Zeepvat, Charlotte (2004). The Camera and the Tsars: A Romanov Family Album. Sutton Publishing Inc. ISBN 0-7509-3049-7