Alexandra Feodorovna (Russian: Алекса́ндра Фёдоровна, IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandrə ˈfjɵdərəvnə]), born Princess Charlotte of Prussia (13 July 1798 – 1 November 1860), was Empress of Russia as the wife of Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855).

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was born as Princess Friederike Luise Charlotte Wilhelmine of Prussia, at the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin on 13 July [O.S.

[3] Her father was a kind, religious man but a weak and indecisive ruler who, following military defeats in 1806, lost half of his kingdom.

[1] When the Prussians were defeated at the battle of Jena, Louise fled to Königsberg, taking her children with her, Charlotte then being eight years old.

In December 1809, Queen Louise finally returned to Berlin with her children, but after a few months, became ill and died of typhus at the age of 34, shortly after Charlotte's twelfth birthday.

[4][6] Arrangements were made between the two dynasties for Nicholas to marry Charlotte, then fifteen years old, to strengthen the alliance between Russia and Prussia.

[7] Nicholas was only second in line to the throne, as the heir was his brother Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich who, like Tsar Alexander I, was childless.

[11] At first, Alexandra Feodorovna had problems adapting to the Russian court, the change of religion affected her and she was overwhelmed by her new surroundings.

[14] Alexandra Feodorovna wrote in her memoirs of her first years in Russia, "We both were truly happy only when we found ourselves alone in our apartments, with me sitting on his knees while he was loving and tender".

[22] Neither arrogant nor frivolous, Alexandra was not without intelligence and had an excellent memory; her reading was quite extensive; her judgment of men sure, slightly ironical.

Alexandra Feodorovna became Empress consort upon her husband's accession as Tsar Nicholas I in December 1825 during a turbulent period marked by the bloody repression of the Decembrist revolt.

Alexandra enjoyed her husband's confidence in affairs of state, but she had no interest in politics other than her personal attachment to Prussia, her native country.

In 1837, when much of the Winter Palace was destroyed by fire, Nicholas reportedly told an aide-de-camp, "Let everything else burn up, only just save for me the small case of letters in my study which my wife wrote to me when she was my betrothed".

[24] Reportedly, after more than twenty-five years of fidelity, Nicholas took a mistress, Varvara Nelidova, one of Alexandra's ladies-in-waiting, after the doctors had forbidden the Empress from sexual activity due to her poor health and recurring heart-attacks.

[15] In 1845, Nicholas wept when court doctors urged the Empress to visit Palermo for several months due to poor health.

"Leave me my wife",[15] he begged her physicians, and when he learned that she had no choice, he made plans to join her briefly.

Nelidova went with them, and though Alexandra was jealous in the beginning, she soon came to accept the affair and remained on good terms with her husband's mistress.

She retired to the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, and remained on good terms with her late husband's mistress Varvara Nelidova, whom she appointed as her personal reader.

Unable to spend the harsh winters in Russia, she was forced to make long sojourns abroad in Switzerland, Nice and Rome.

She wrote in September 1859, "I am homesick for my country and I reproached myself for costing so much money at a time when Russia has need of every ruble.