[2] Her mother was Woizero Lakiyaye, a noblewoman of Tigray[citation needed] Tiruwork Wube was maternally a descendant of Ras Wolde Selassie who ruled much of the region and established his capital at Chalacot in the late 1700s.
A deeply religious woman, Tiruwork Wube endured her father's condition by resorting to prayer and fasting, and planned on entering a convent.
Legend states that one of the Emperor's officers was attending Sunday services at a church at Derasge when Tewodros was staying there, and was struck at the beauty, the aristocratic deportment, and the deep piety of a woman worshiping there.
Tiruwork Wube resisted, begging to be allowed to enter a convent, but her family prevailed upon her to marry the Emperor in hopes that the harsh imprisonment of her father and brothers might be ended, or at least eased.
The Emperor had ordered the conditions of imprisonment eased on Dejazmach Wube and his sons, but had not freed them as Empress Tiruwork had hoped, and this contributed to the coldness that developed between them.
Upon Tewodros II's defeat and suicide on Easter Monday 1868, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir Robert Napier took Empress Tiruwork and her son under his protection.
Hurt by this betrayal, she was also being harassed by a Captain Speedy from the British forces, who had previously been acquainted with Tewodros, and now constantly tried to get his widow to appoint him guardian to young Alemayehu.
Empress Tiruwork Wube was accorded full honors by the British troops as her body was carried away to the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Chalacot in Tigray, where her paternal grandfather had been buried.