AKA: Princess Dagmar of Denmark (before marriage, Minnie (to close family and friends)
Date of birth: 26 November 1847
Date of death: 13 October 1928 (aged 80)
Location of death: Hvidøre, Klampenborg, Denmark
Cause of death: Illness
Title: Danish princess, Empress of Russia, Dowager Empress
Father: King Christian IX of Denmark
Mother: Louise of Hesse-Kassel
Siblings: Queen Alexandra of the UK, King Frederick VIII of Denmark, and King George I of Greece, Duchess Thyra of Cumberland, Prince Valdemar of Denmark,
Husband: Emperor Alexander III
Children: Tsar Nicholas II, Alexander Alexandrovich, George Alexandrovich, Xenia Alexandrovna, Michael Alexandrovich, Olga Alexandrovna.
Personality traits: Adoring, family-oriented, dedicated, grief stricken, graceful, charming, refined, anti-German, anti-Soviet, outgoing, warm, friendly, possessive, judgemental
During the revolution: She was so popular that even the most radical of the Bolsheviks wouldn't target her. She travelled from Kiev to meet with Nicholas in Mogilev, but when she returned to Kiev she quickly found she was unwanted and unpopular. The revolutionary spirit had taken hold of the people.
Her family convinced her to go to Crimea by train with other Romanov refugees, but Nicholas and his family had already caught by the Bolsheviks. Before long, word reached her in the Crimea that Nicholas, his wife and children had all been executed, but she refused to believe it. She publicly rejected it as a rumour, and in later years, when asked to take the locum tenens – the symbolic duties of the Russian throne – she announced "Nobody saw Nicky killed."
She would write letters for Nicholas throughout her years, refusing to accept his death. In one letter she wrote:
"You know that my thoughts and prayers never leave you. I think of you day and night and sometimes feel so sick at heart that I believe I cannot bear it any longer. But God is merciful. He will give us strength for this terrible ordeal."
Even privately, when reflecting to herself in the safety of her various homes in both the UK and Denmark, she couldn't bear to face the possibility of his death. In her diary she wrote:
"I am sure they all got out of Russia and now the Bolsheviks are trying to hide the truth."
Her family tried and failed to convince her. Maria's daughter Olga later commented:
"I am sure that deep in her heart my mother had steeled herself to accept the truth some years before her death."
YOU ARE READING
The Suspicious Deaths of the Romanovs
Non-FictionThis work is an investigation into the brutal murders of the Russian royal family, the Romanovs. Officially, the Tsar, Tsarina, and their five children were brutally murdered, executed in the basement of their prison in the city of Yekaterinburg. Un...
