Word: empresse
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...wait was not long, and in the midst of mourning an insignificant German princess became empress of all the Russias. Her mother-in-law, Marie Feo-dorovna, beloved of the people, was so steeped in sorrow that she paid very little attention to Alexandra; but the various grand duchesses took pains to make her difficult position yet more difficult with their resentful jealousies. Bashful, awkward, guileless, Alix, now Alexandra Feo-dorovna, disdained the gentle art of flummery, and was only took frank in her disapproval of Russian frivolity...
Most glittering and ceremonious of festivals was the last Russian coronation, May, 1896. Each in her gilded coach, two empresses followed in slow procession, the first, Dowager Empress Marie, to be greeted with huzzahs of adoration; and the second, Alexandra, with a sudden silence, variously interpreted. Baroness Buxhoeveden, friend and lady-in-waiting to the last empress, says the crowds were struck dumb with holy awe. But Princess Radziwill, member of the St. Petersburg aristocracy Alexandra failed to please, calls the dumbness "a solemn, ominous silence . . . majestic absence of emotion on the part of the multitude...
...after daughter, and never an heir to the throne. Troubled by this her failing, she resorted to mystic seances (Princess Radziwill includes table-tipping, which the Baroness denies) conducted by a smooth character who turned out to be ex-jailbird and Parisian hairdresser. This Philippe prophesied a son; the Empress believed herself with child; a date was publicly announced, and excitement ran high. But no child appeared-the Empress having suffered the undignified phenomenon of phantom birth...
Years later the Cesarevitch actually was born, a sickly child, victim of an hereditary disease in Alexandra's family. Again the harassed Empress resorted to religion, and Rasputin, notorious mendicant, promised a cure. In gratitude, Alexandra fell completely under the spell of this man-she was his dupe, and he in turn the dupe of countless office-seekers, climbers, charlatans...
...Significance. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was variously accused of misguiding her royal spouse, of sympathizing traitorously with her Vaterland during the War, of antagonizing the Russian aristocracy, and terrorizing the peasantry-in short, of causing downfall to the Russian empire. That this one woman should be held responsible for the inevitable revolt against centuries of abuse is patently ridiculous. But she served as convenient symbol-though less charmingly than Marie Antoinette...