Maria Alexandrovna revered memory of her aunt, Empress Elizaveta Alexeevna, nee Princess of Baden. Se didin`t know her personally as she was only 2 when the Empress died. BUt her mother was the Empress`s sister and she often told her daugter about her late aunt. Maria Alexandrovna, on her coming to Russia, collected materials on her aunt,read her letters and tried to keep her memory intact. Before her death she gave all the papers to her son Sergey who later married Elizabeth of Hesse. Sergey Alexandrovich loved his mother so dearly that he continued gathering materials on Elizaveta Alexeevna e.g. he personally copied ab. 1000 letters of Elizaveta Alexeevna to her German relatives. Geran royals made them available to Sergey Aleksandrovich. GD Sergey was neither historian nor writer so he gave all the materials to his cousin, GD Nikolay Mikhailovich, a priminent historian. A few years later nikolay mikhailovichh published the first russian (or may be the first ever?) biography of empress elizaveta alexeevna