Empress Maria made a chilling confession to her husband.

Tragic Facts About Maria Alexandrovna, The Lonely Empress
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Tragic Facts About Maria Alexandrovna, The Lonely Empress
Mar 8
PEOPLE
Dancy Mason
Even during her glory years, Empress Maria Alexandrovna was something like a ghost walking the halls of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. As frail as she was beautiful, the haunting royal often hid from balls and other official events, preferring to let her boisterous, domineering husband take the spotlight. But behind closed doors, Maria kept painful secrets.
1. She Was A Lonely Girl
Maria’s upbringing was a strange one, especially considering the tragedy she would eventually experience. As the daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse and his wife Wilhelmine, you’d think she grew up in luxury. But the reality was much sadder. Thanks to the fact that her father was a total bore, the court at Hesse was staid and strict, and Maria was raised woefully ignorant and naïve.
Then again, maybe this ignorance was a good thing—because her parents were hiding big secrets.
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2. She Was A Scandalous Love Child
From the moment of Maria’s birth, a scandalous rumor went around about the girl. Most of Europe believed that she wasn’t actually the Duke’s true daughter, but rather the product of her mother’s illicit affair with the strapping Master of Stables in Hesse, Baron August von Senarclens de Grancy. And far from being harmless gossip, this was about to nearly ruin Maria’s life.
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3. She Met Her Prince Charming
In 1839, Maria came face-to-face with her destiny. That year, the heir to the Russian Empire, the hard-partying Tsesarevich Alexander , came to Europe on a grand tour to find himself a bride. Even so, Alexander most definitely didn’t have Maria in mind. In fact, he wanted to skip out on visiting the boring court of Hesse entirely, before his attendants convinced him they needed a break.
Eventually, Alexander reluctantly sat down at the Grand Duke Ludwig’s table. And when he saw Maria, everything changed.
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4. She Was A Lolita
From the minute Alexander set eyes on Maria at her father’s house, he was completely in love with her. Still, this is way more creepy than it is romantic. While Alexander was in his 20s at the time, Maria was a bare 14 years old—so young that she still wore her hair loose, in the style that children did. And when Alexander approached her, it got ten times more awkward.
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5. She Had An Awkward Courtship
Some couples have adorable meet-cutes, but Maria’s first meeting with the future Tsar almost turned into a disaster. In a detail so awkward it’s still known centuries later, Maria was actually eating a bunch of cherries at the time that Alexander came over. When he approached, she had to spit them out into her hands in order to talk to him.
Still, it obviously went well after that, because it escalated very quickly.
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6. Her Suitor Stopped At Nothing To Get Her
Alexander was used to getting what he wanted, and what he wanted was Maria. Within days, he had written back home to his father and mother, the reigning Tsar and Tsarina, insisting that he had found his bride in Maria and he would look no further. The young prince was so serious, he even made sure to time his letter so that his father would receive it on a feast day and think it was a good omen.
In April 1840, the engagement became official. But if Alexander and Maria thought it would be smooth sailing, they were very wrong.
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7. Her Mother-In-Law Hated Her
While Alexander’s father was willing to approve the match, the royal mother threw the lovers a curveball. The Tsarina, who was born Charlotte of Prussia, absolutely despised the idea. Thinking her own ancestral Germanic house better than Hesse, Charlotte sneered at Maria’s heritage—but more than that, she believed the rumors of Maria’s illegitimacy, and scorned the idea of a love child polluting the glory of her Russian Empire.
To convince her potential mother-in-law, Maria had to resort to desperate measures.
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8. She Worked Overtime To Impress
Over the next months, Alexander visited Maria in her home city of Darmstadt as much as humanly possible, while Maria herself pored over Russian books, single-mindedly trying to learn Russian as quickly as she could. That summer, the teenager even staged a meeting with the Tsarina to show off how much she had learned. It paid off—big time.
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9. She Got What She Wanted
With the help of Maria’s ambition and studies—plus the fact that Alexander threatened to give up the throne rather than give up his bride—the young couple finally got what they wanted. The Tsarina gave her permission for the union to go ahead, and by the end of the summer, Maria packed up and headed to Russia to get settled in before her marriage.
She couldn’t have known it then, but she was walking into her worst nightmare.
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10. She Hated Her New City
Growing up in a quiet, austere court as the maybe-illegitimate child of an affair had not done wonders for Maria’s confidence. So she entered the decorative and declarative city of St. Petersburg as a shy, reserved princess who, while very ready to do her duty, wasn’t very ready to party. In other words, she was at complete odds with the spirit of the city, and it began to show fast.
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11. She Had Breakdowns
On the outside, Maria put on a brave show for her new betrothed as well as her hard-to-please mother-in-law. But behind closed doors, she was falling apart. One of her ladies-in-waiting later admitted that after the glittering balls, “under cover of darkness and the stillness of her room, she would give freedom to her muffled cries”. Unfortunately for Maria, her biggest trial was yet to come.
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12. Her Wedding Wasn’t About Her
When Maria chose Alexander as her fiancé, she may have forgotten one crucial thing: He loved parties. So much so that when it came time to pick the wedding date, he decided it should be on the eve of his 23rd birthday, making it more his day than hers. Thus, at the end of April 1841, Maria became an official member of the Russian Imperial family. Which is about when the royal rumor mill went into overdrive.
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13. The Court Turned On Her
Even though Maria grudgingly put in face time at court parties, she did a horrible job of hiding her distaste for the opulence of St. Petersburg. The results were humiliating. People began to see her as boring, even disdainful, spurring her father-in-law Emperor Nicholas I—one of her only allies—to forbid anyone from sullying her name in his presence.
Still, even the emperor couldn’t protect Maria from the trials to come.
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14. She Was Constantly Pregnant
Throughout the 1840s, Maria gave birth to a succession of children. While her first child, Alexandra, was a girl, the next three—Nicholas, Alexander, and Vladimir—were coveted male heirs and completed the happy family. For a few shining years, the royal couple lived an idyllic lifestyle, constructing private gardens for their children…

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