On the night of July 17, 1918, Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova, the last Empress of Russia, was led with her family into the basement of a house in Ekaterinburg. She had been told they were to have a photograph taken before being moved to a safer refuge. She asked for two chairs, one for herself and one for her son, the heir, who could not stand for long because of his illness. The request was granted.

Her husband, Tsar Nicholas II, stood with his back to the guards who watched the doorway, facing his family. He loved them deeply. Armed men entered the room, and when the order to fire was given, Nicholas tried to turn around. He was shot at point-blank range.

The others were shot without mercy, the gunfire continuing for several minutes. It was the end of a dynasty, but the story of what happened to the bodies would not come to light for decades. Alexandra was not always an empress, and she was not always called Alexandra. She was born Alix of Hesse and by Rhine on June 6, 1872, in Germany, the sixth of seven children born to Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and by Rhine and his wife, Princess Alice of the United Kingdom.

She was also a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. The family called her Alix. In 1878, her father and nearly all of her siblings fell ill with diphtheria. Her mother nursed all of them, but Alix’s younger sister, Marie, died.

When the survivors began to recover, their mother, exhausted from caring for everyone, fell ill herself and died. Alix was only six years old when she lost both her sister and her mother. The loss changed her completely. The happy, cheerful child became timid, withdrawn, melancholic, and permanently on the defensive.

In the summers, she stayed with her brothers and cousins in England, close to her grandmother. Queen Victoria favored Alix above all her other granddaughters. As she grew, Alix became a shy, delicate young woman of great beauty with a sad look in her eyes. Suitors came, but she rejected them all, because she was already in love with Nicholas, the heir to the Russian Empire.

She had met him through her sister Elisabeth. In 1894, Alix’s brother, Ernest Louis, married their cousin, Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. A great number of guests attended the wedding, including Nicholas. The young heir asked Alix to marry him, but she refused.

She could not accept the condition of changing her religion. Her sister Elisabeth explained to her that the two faiths were very similar, and that there was nothing wrong with setting aside Lutheranism to join the Orthodox Church. Nicholas proposed a second time, and this time Alix accepted. Both families opposed the engagement.

Alix even confronted her grandmother, Queen Victoria. The queen was so impressed by her granddaughter’s courage in standing up to her that she gave her blessing to a possible union, though reluctantly. On Nicholas’s side, his father, Tsar Alexander III, had known of his son’s intentions for some time and had always refused. But when his health began to fail, and seeing how deeply in love his son was with the young woman, he accepted the union.

Alix was summoned to appear before the tsar at the Livadia Palace. She arrived with her sister Elisabeth, and Nicholas’s father gave them his blessing to marry. On November 1, 1894, Alexander III died, leaving his son Nicholas as the new Tsar of Russia. Alix joined the Orthodox Church and took the name Alexandra Feodorovna Romanova.

On November 26, 1894, Nicholas and Alexandra were married at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. A year into their marriage, their first child was born, a daughter named Olga. The birth brought great joy to her parents.

On May 14, 1896, the couple was crowned, but the coronation was followed by great misfortune for the Russian people. Thousands of people were trampled to death while celebrating the coronation of the new tsars. The disaster was taken as an ill omen for the new monarchs. More children arrived.

Tatiana was born in 1897, Maria in 1899, Anastasia in 1901. In 1904, Alexandra gave birth to a son, Alexei. But the birth of the boy was not a source of joy for long, because it soon became clear that he was hemophiliac, as were many descendants of Queen Victoria of England. The marriage itself was a good one.

Nicholas and Alexandra loved each other and were always together. The Russian people, however, did not love Alexandra. They saw her as a cold, unfeeling woman. She disliked attending public events because of her extreme shyness.

She had almost no friends and preferred to be alone with her husband and children rather than in the middle of a crowd. This manner of hers displeased the nobles and the Russian people. Alexei’s illness was kept a secret. They did not want the people to learn of the little boy’s weakness.

Alexandra grew more and more worried day by day. She brought doctors from every corner of Russia, but none of them had a solution for what Alexei suffered. She turned to religion, seeking a little hope in every prayer, and did extensive charitable work. Then Rasputin came into her life, a strange man who claimed he had a cure for little Alexei.

Many people of the nobility looked upon Rasputin with suspicion, calling him a sinner, a liar, a manipulator, and a fraud. Some even feared him. Nicholas did not trust Rasputin much and tried to keep him away from his family. Alexandra, however, placed all her hopes in him, believing every word he said.

Such was the influence Rasputin held over the empress that it was said he interfered in political affairs. During the First World War, Nicholas had to leave to be with his troops, leaving Alexandra in charge of the country. But Russia fell into the most absolute misery, because the empress had no knowledge of governing. She also allowed herself to be guided by Rasputin’s opinions.

The country was going through a great economic crisis even before her husband left for the war. Day by day, the people were sunk in poverty, and they heaped criticism and false rumors upon the empress. Rasputin was also greatly hated, by nobles and poor alike. He was assassinated in 1916.

During the winter of that year, the Russian people were dying of hunger because of the bad administration, and the soldiers who had accompanied the tsar to war turned against him because of the continuous defeats. In March 1917, factory workers went on strike, and the people took to the streets to protest the hardship affecting the country. Nicholas ordered the army, which still remained at his side, to calm the furious crowds, and the soldiers fired on the multitude. Nicholas, who hated being tsar, watched as the country slipped out of his hands.

He abdicated. He also gave up the rights to the throne for his son, so that he, too, would never become tsar. In this way, the Romanov dynasty came to an end. But the abdication of Nicholas and his son was not enough for the people.

Alexandra asked her cousin, George V of England, to take her family in, but he refused. In Russia, a civil war was underway. The royal family was confined in the palace of Tsarskoye Selo. In the summer of 1917, they were moved to the city of Tobolsk.

They stayed there for a long time, until April 1918, when they were taken to Ekaterinburg. They were told that they would be safer there. In their new home, they spent only a few months with a small group of servants. On July 17, 1918, the family was taken to the basement of the building where they were staying, under the pretext that they would have a photograph taken and then leave for a new refuge where they would be safer.

In the basement, Alexandra asked for a couple of chairs so that she and her son could sit down, and this was granted. Nicholas stood with his back to the guards who watched the exit, looking toward his family, whom he deeply loved. Armed men entered the room. When they were given the order to fire, Nicholas tried to turn around and was shot at point-blank range, while the other men fired without compassion at the royal family and their servants for several minutes.

There are several versions of the family’s end. Some of the men present at the moment of the murder claimed that after the smoke of the gunfire cleared, they realized that some of the princesses were still alive. Concealed inside their clothing, they carried numerous jewels to keep them from being stolen. These precious stones prevented the bullets from reaching their bodies, though they were badly wounded.

They were finished off with blows to the head. Yurovsky, one of the men who murdered the family and who is believed to have shot the tsar at point-blank range, tried to move the bodies of the Romanov family and their servants the following morning. The vehicle carrying the corpses broke down, so he improvised a grave where he placed all the bodies, not without first pouring acid over them. The grave was covered with debris.

The improvised tomb was located very close to a railway line, about 19 kilometers from the city of Ekaterinburg. In 1979, the grave was discovered with numerous human remains inside, but those who found it tried to hide the discovery. In 1991, the remains of the tsar and three of his daughters were exhumed for DNA testing. In the end, their remains were laid to rest in the Cathedral of St.

Peter and St. Paul in St. Petersburg. The remains of little Alexei were not in the grave, nor were those of one of his sisters.

It was believed that they might have been Anastasia, creating a legend around the young woman’s figure, as if she had escaped the terrible murder. But more exhaustive testing of the remains revealed that one of the bodies was Anastasia. In 2007, the skeletons of the two young people appeared in the middle of a forest. They had been burned, likely in a bonfire, at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Near the bones were remains of sulfuric acid containers. After studying the bones, the conclusion was reached that they belonged to Alexei and his sister Maria. Alexandra and her family met a very tragic end. She had a very sad life, although she was greatly loved by her family.

She had no gifts for governing, just as her husband did not, but they did not deserve to end that way. And least of all did their children deserve it, whose only sin was being the children of the tsars of Russia.