Dowager Empress
Alexandra Feodorovna survived her husband by five years. She retired to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, and remained in good terms with her husband’s mistress Barbara Nelidova, who she made her personal reader.
The Dowager Empress's health became more and more fragile with the years. Unable to spend the harsh winters in Russia, she was forced to make long sojourns abroad. 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. But I cough and my sick lungs cannot go without a southern climate". In the autumn of 1860, her doctors told her that she would not live through the winter if she did not return once more to the south. Knowing the danger, she preferred to stay in St. Petersburg, so that if death did come it would happen on Russian soil. The night before her death, she was heard to say, "Niki, I am coming to you." She died in her sleep at the age of sixty-two on 1 November 1860 at Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo.
Read more about this topic: Alexandra Feodorovna (Charlotte Of Prussia)
Famous quotes containing the word empress:
“The Empress is Legitimist, my cousin is Republican, Morny is Orleanist, I am a socialist; the only Bonapartist is Persigny, and he is mad.”
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