I think the point that I was trying to make about Alexandra by using the story of St. Dyphmphna was that Alexandra, regardless of her human failings, was a woman of faith. And for that reason I can understand why she was cannonized. Let me explain what I mean by faith.
I had really never understood what a person of faith was until I saw the story of this man in NJ who had murdered his entire family, including his mother. He had tried to live beyond his means, bought a big house and had his mother move in. Then, even though he was employed her started going through all of his mother's savings to stay afloat. Then he was fired from his job so he pretended to go to work everyday for months until the final day when there was absolutely no money left and he would have to admitt everything to his family.
Instead of admitting anything, he snuck back home early and he killed his mother, then waited for his wife to return home from shopping and killed her and the killed each of his children as they returned from school.
He had led an outwardly "religious" life and had been very active in his local church. At his first trial his minister took the stand and said that this man was a "man of faith" and that because of this he could not have committed such a hideous crime.
Well somehow or other the man managed to escape during the trial and was finally found a decade later in Florida and was arrested and brought to trail again.
This time the same minister took the stand and said, "Eleven years ago I said that this man was a "man of faith," but I was mistaken. This man was not a man of faith. When people with faith find themselves under unbearalble pressure and backed into a corner with no possible escape they turn to God in their desperation and ask for guidance. People without faith become God.
In her letters from captivity Alexandra never abandons her faith in God. All through those frieghtening and depressing 16 months of arrest and captivity, inspite of witnessing the denigration of her husband and son and humiliation of her daughters, the destruction of her country and all that she believed in, Alexandra remains unmoved in her belief that God is still governing. If she questions anything, it is her understanding of God.
It is not that I think Alexandra fits very comfortably into the High Church Orthodox traditions of saintliness, but I think the Orthodoxy Church on a grassroot level supported her belief that God has the power to heal save mankind.
Orthodox Church may have chosen to cannonize Alexandra because the could see through all of her human flaws, to her genuine piety in the face of unbearable personal agony and disgrace.
The other thing I feel, and these are only intuitive feelings, is that perhaps the cannonization of the Imperial family is more about forgiveness that it is about saintliness. I feel that the cannonization has initiated a healing process for the Russian people and has helped to destroy the guilt that had separated them from their own brilliant and glorious national heritage.