After the Socialist Revolutionary Party's Combat Organization assassinated her husband with a bomb in 1905, Elisabeth publicly forgave Sergei's murderer, Ivan Kalyayev, and campaigned without success for him to be pardoned.

Elisabeth was born on 1 November 1864, as the second child of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, and Princess Alice, daughter of Queen Victoria.

[3] At her christening on 28 November, the infant- whose godparents, or sponsors as they were known, included her grandmother Princess Charles, her great uncle Tsar Alexandra ll, her aunts Alix (Princess of Wales), (Her mother's sister, Helena) and Anna of Mecklenburg Schwerin, together with her uncles (Prince Alfred) and Fritz (Crown Prince of Prussia), she received the names Elizabeth Alexandra Louise Alice.

[4] The family was devastated in 1873 when Irene's hemophiliac younger brother Friedrich, nicknamed "Frittie", fell through an open window, struck his head on the balustrade and died hours later of a brain hemorrhage.

[7] The following morning, when her daughter was no better, the Grand duchess called for the family physician, Dr Eigenbrodt, who, to Alice's great concern, discovered a white membrane on both sides of Victoria throat, the first sign of diphtheria.

"It was a terrible lay sad meeting," she wrote "no-one daring to speak of what was uppermost in their thoughts Poor papa looked dreadfully.

[33] Ella herself recalled how Sergei, having insisted that she put them all at once, pinned each one and every brooch on to her dress until she could hardly stand under the weight 'I look liked a Christmas tree!'

[33]Sergei and Elisabeth married on 15 (3) June 1884, at the Chapel of the Winter Palace in St.[34] Petersburg; upon her conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, she took the name Elizaveta Feodorovna.

[35][36] It was at the wedding that Sergei's 16-year-old nephew, Tsarevich Nicholas, first met his future wife, Elisabeth's youngest surviving sister Alix.

Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Elisabeth's Lutheran sister-in-law who had not converted to Russian Orthodoxy, insisted that it was "a disgrace for a German Protestant princess to go over to the Orthodox faith".

[38] Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had once been in love with her, declared that she converted because of "an inordinate pursuit of popularity, a desire to improve her position at court, a great lack of intelligence, and also a want of true religiousness".

[40] It started four weeks before he arrived in person, after the publication of an imperial ukase by the Minister of the Interior Ivan Durnovo, by which all Jews of lower social stance (artisans, minor traders and so on) had to be expelled from Moscow.

In January 1892, in a temperature of 30 degrees below zero, Brest station was packed with Jews of all ages and sexes, all in rags and surrounded by meager remnants of households goods, all leaving voluntarily rather than face deportation.

One afternoon, the 21-year-old to grand duchess, who was seven months' pregnant with her second child, followed the path down from the back of the house to the small the waiting boat, Alexandra suddenly collapsed, her frantic husband, bother-and sister-in-law felt important to help, and with doctors to far away.

The arrival of the Grand Duke's recognizable carriage, drawn by a pair of horses and driven by his coachman Andrei Rudinkin, alerted the terrorist who had been waiting in the Kremlin with a bomb wrapped in newspapers.

[57] Just before 14:45, the carriage of the Grand Duke passed through the gate of Nikolskaya Tower of the Kremlin and turned the corner of the Chudov Monastery into Senatskaya Square.

The body of the Grand Duke was mutilated, with the head, the upper part of the chest, and the left shoulder and arm blown off and completely destroyed.

[58][60] On impact, the carriage horses had bolted towards the Nikolsky Gate, dragging with them the front wheels and coachbox as well as the semi-conscious and badly burned driver, Rudinkin, whose back had been riddled with bits of bomb and stones.

'[62] In 1915, the All-Russian Zemstvo Union was organised under Elisabeth's auspices to provide support for sick and injured soldiers during the First World War.

[58] Part of the obligations of the sisters of the Martha and Mary convent was to make an annual pilgrimage to the sepulchral church in memory of the Grand Duke on the day of his repose, 4 February.

[74] In 2010, a historian claimed that Elisabeth may have been aware that the murder of Rasputin was to take place and secondly, she knew who was going to commit it when she wrote a letter and sent it to the Tsar and two telegrams to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and her friend Zinaida Yusupova.

[79] That night the prisoners were awakened and driven in carts on a road leading to the village of Siniachikha, some 18 kilometres (11 miles) from Alapayevsk, where there was an abandoned iron mine with a pit 20 metres (66 feet) deep.

Finally a large quantity of brushwood was shoved into the opening and set alight, upon which Ryabov posted a guard over the site and departed.

[84] Early on 18 July 1918, the leader of the Alapayevsk Cheka, Abramov, and the head of the Yekaterinburg Regional Soviet, Beloborodov, who had been involved in the execution of the Imperial Family, exchanged a number of telegrams in a pre-arranged plan saying that the school had been attacked by an "unidentified gang".

Lenin welcomed Elisabeth's death, remarking that "virtue with the crown on it is a greater enemy to the world revolution than a hundred tyrant tsars".

"[80] New research published in the book Крестный путь преподобномученицы Великой княгини Елисаветы Феодоровны на Алапаевскую Голгофу, by Russian Orthodox Church historian Ludmila Kulikova in 2019, challenges the traditional hagiographical belief about Elizabeth during her time in the mine shaft.

With the Red Army approaching, their remains were removed farther east and buried in the cemetery of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Peking (now Beijing), China.

In 1921, the bodies of Elisabeth and of Sister Barbara (Varvara Yakovleva), one of her nuns, were taken to Jerusalem, where they were laid to rest in the Church of Mary Magdalene at Gethsemane.

[94] She is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London, England,[95] and she is also represented in the restored nave screen installed at St Albans Cathedral in April 2015.

[97] According to patriarch Alexei ll (1929-2008), "the long queues of believers to the relics of the holy new martyrs are another symbol of Russia's repentance for the sons of hard times, the country's return to its original historical path.