I'm very interested and fascinated about Alexandra Nikolaevna. Does anyone have more information about her personality and her relationship with her family and her husband? Thanks!
From what I've read, Alexandra was a sweet, mischievous child who grew into a radiant, lively, and kindhearded young woman who got along with just about everyone. She was popular at court for both her beauty and her personality, and she was well-known for her talent as a singer--she was good enough to be taught by a famous soprano whose name I cannot recall. She also founded either a hospital or a nurses' corps. She was supposed to have been a favorite of her brother Constantine (whose wife Alexandra Iosifovna bore such a strong resemblance to Adini that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna cried upon meeting her). Her brother Alexander II named his first daughter Alexandra in memory of his sister, and she died of infant meningitis at the age of seven. Of course, Adini herself was the namesake of her father's sister, Alexandra Pavlovna, who also died young following complications in childbirth. Olga of Wurttemberg believed that Nicholas I favored Adini (an earlier post said that he did not consider her to be especially pretty, but I have always heard the opposite, that he believed her the only one of his children to have inherited her mother's Prussian appearance). and was truly devastated by her death--he commisioned a statue of her holding her baby son, but it was destroyed during the Nazi occupation. At present, there is a replica bust based on the original statue and a memorial bench in her honor.
Landgrave Friedrich Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel, known as Fritz, came to St. Petersburg as a potential husband for Nicholas I's second daughter Olga, , but evidently, he and Adini fell in love at first sight. They had did not have much time together, as she contracted TB shortly before their wedding, but they seem to have been very close. Adini was overjoyed with the prospect of motherhood, but she was so physically taxed by both the pregnancy and her illness that she was too sick to return to Hesse with her new husband. She was essentially confined to bed for the duration of her pregnancy, and it saddened her that she was unable to pick flowers and go for walks with Fritz, as they had done during their engagement. Her son, Wilhelm, was three months premature, and he only lived for about four hours. Olga described him as Adini's "final joy," as she died later that same day. Fritz was heartbroken, and some people believe that he never recovered. He remarried around ten years later, to Adini's cousin, Princess Anna of Prussia, and they had several children together, but he was always rather distant toward her, presumably because he was unable to get over the loss of his much-loved first wife.
I hope that helps you a little...
