Alexandra was born on 6 June 1872 at the New Palace in Darmstadt as Princess Alix Viktoria Helene Luise Beatrix of Hesse and by Rhine,[3][4] a grand duchy then part of the German Empire.

"[10] When Queen Victoria died in 1901, Alix openly wept at her memorial service in Saint Petersburg and shocked the Russian courtiers who considered her cold and unfeeling.

"[15] On 2 March 1888, she wrote to Alix's oldest sister Victoria that "My heart and mind are bent on securing dear Alicky for either Eddy or Georgie",[16] respectively the second in line to the British throne and his brother, the future George V, both of whom were Alexandra's first cousins.

Maria Feodorovna told her sister Alexandra of Denmark that the youngest daughter of an undistinguished grand duke was not worthy to marry the heir to the Russian throne, and she believed that Alix was too tactless and unlikeable to be a successful empress.

"[44] Alexandra herself wrote to her sister: "Our wedding seemed to me, a mere continuation of the funeral liturgy for the dead Tsar, with one difference; I wore a white dress instead of a black one.

[citation needed] Insecure about her modest origins as a minor German princess, Alexandra insisted on being treated with the full honors due to an empress.

[55] At the Russian court courtiers mocked for her "dress[ing] in the heavy brocade of which she was so fond, and with diamonds scattered all over her, in defiance of good taste and common sense.

"[57] Queen Victoria worried about Alexandra's unpopularity in her new country and she advised her granddaughter: "I've ruled more than 50 years ... and nevertheless every day I think about what I need to do to retain and strengthen the love of my subjects ...

Nicholas's mother (Maria), sister (Xenia) and sister-in-law (Ella) were alarmed and warned him and Alexandra to stay away from Philippe, but the imperial couple did not heed their advice.

On 19 August 1902 she had suffered a discharge of "a spherical, fleshy mass the size of a walnut",[69] which Dr Dmitry Ott confirmed was a dead fertilized egg in the fourth week of gestation.

As her due date drew near, a newspaper noted that "a few days will decide whether the Czarina is to be the most popular woman in Russia, or regarded by the great bulk of the people as a castaway – under the special wrath of God.

Her letters to Olga include frequent reminders to mind her siblings: "Remember above all to always be a good example to the little ones"[75] and "Try to have a serious word with Tatiana and Maria about how they should conduct themselves towards God.

Her biographers, including Robert K. Massie, Carolly Erickson, Greg King, and Peter Kurth, attribute the semi-invalidism of her later years to nervous exhaustion from obsessive worry over the fragile tsarevich, who suffered from hemophilia.

The director of the national police told Alexandra that a drunk Rasputin had exposed himself at a popular Moscow restaurant and bragged that Nicholas gave him sexual access to her, but she blamed the account on malicious gossip.

[102] "After the middle of 1915," wrote Florinsky, "the fairly honorable and efficient group who formed the top of the bureaucratic pyramid degenerated into a rapidly changing succession of the appointees of Rasputin.

[109] There are documents that support the fact that, in this critical situation, the Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna was involved in a planned coup d'état to depose her son from the throne in order to save the monarchy.

[108] The plan was reportedly for Maria to make a final ultimatum to the Tsar to banish Rasputin unless he wished her to leave the capital, which would be the signal to unleash the coup.

This, combined with the food shortages and the poor performance by the Russian military in the war, generated a great deal of anger and unrest among the people in Petrograd and other cities.

"[117][self-published source] The Provisional Government formed after the revolution kept Nicholas, Alexandra and their children confined under house arrest in their home, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo.

[116] Despite the fact he was a first cousin of both Nicholas and Alexandra, George V refused to allow them and their family permission to evacuate to the United Kingdom, since he was alarmed by their unpopularity in his country and the potential repercussions to his own throne.

[116] The Provisional Government was reportedly very disappointed that no foreign state seemed to be willing to receive the family and was forced to relocate them within Russia, since the security situation was becoming more and more difficult.

The guards informed him he was no longer at Tsarskoye Selo and that refusal to comply with their request would result in his removal from the rest of his family; a second offence would be rewarded with hard labour.

Preliminary results of genetic analysis carried out on the remains of a boy and a young woman believed to belong to Nicholas II's son and heir Alexei and daughter Anastasia or Maria were revealed on 22 January 2008.

[134][135] The Ekaterinburg region's chief forensic expert said, "Tests conducted in Yekaterinburg and Moscow allowed DNA to be extracted from the bones, which proved positive," Nikolai Nevolin said.

"[141] An imperial courtier commented favourably about "her wonderful hair which lay like a heavy crown on her head and large dark-blue eyes beneath long lashes.

When her grandmother Queen Victoria insisted that she play the piano for others, she felt that her "clammy hands... [were] literally glued to the keys" and later described the experience as "one of the worst ordeals" of her life.

[144] When she was empress, a page in the imperial household described her as "so obviously nervous of conversation" and claimed that "at moments when she needed to show some social graces or a charming smile, her face would become suffused with little red spots and she would look intensely serious.

Her brother Ernest Louis reflected that "she would unsmilingly tilt her head to one side if something displeased her, with the result that people often thought that she was unhappy, or bored, or simply capricious.

"[149] Her daughters' tutor Pierre Gilliard reflected that "the reserve which so many people had taken as an affront and had made her so many enemies was rather the effect of a natural timidity, as it were—a mask covering her sensitiveness.

Alexandra Feodorovna's letters to Anna Vyrubova and Lili Dehn, written in the years 1916–1918, are preserved in the 'Romanov collection' in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, USA).