Dowager Empress
On 1 November 1894, Alexander III died aged just forty-nine at Livadia. In her diary Maria wrote, "I am utterly heartbroken and despondent, but when I saw the blissful smile and the peace in his face that came after, it gave me strength." For a time Maria was inconsolable. Her sister, Alexandra, and brother-in-law, the future Edward VII arrived in Russia a few days later. The Prince of Wales planned Alexander's funeral and also set a date for the new Emperor Nicholas II's wedding to Alix.
Maria Feodorovna's grandson-in-law, Prince Felix Yusupov, noted that she had great influence in the Romanov family. Sergei Witte praised her tact and diplomatic skill. Nevertheless, she did not get along well with her daughter-in-law, Alexandra Feodorovna (the former Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt), holding her responsible for many of the woes that beset her son Nicholas and the Russian Empire in general.
Once the death of Alexander III had receded, Maria again took a brighter view of the future. "Everything will be all right," as she said. She had lived for twenty-eight years in Russia, including thirteen as Empress, and thirty-four years of widowhood still awaited her, the last ten in exile in Denmark. Maria continued to live in the Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg and at Gatchina Palace. In late 1916, the Dowager Empress left St. Petersburg to live in the Mariinsky Palace in Kiev. She never again returned to St. Petersburg.
Empress Maria Feodorovna, the mistress of Langinkoski retreat, was also otherwise a known friend of Finland. During the first russification period, she tried to have her son halt the constraining of the grand principality's autonomy and to recall the unpopular Governor-General Bobrikov from Finland to some other position in Russia itself. During the second russification period, at the start of the First World War, the Dowager Empress, travelling by her special train through Finland to Saint Petersburg, expressed her continued disapprobation for the russification of Finland by having an orchestra of a welcoming committee to play the March of the Pori Regiment and the Finnish national anthem "Maamme", which at the time were under the explicit ban from Franz Albert Seyn, the Governor-General of Finland.
Read more about this topic: Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar Of Denmark)
Famous quotes containing the word empress:
“We never really are the adults we pretend to be. We wear the mask and perhaps the clothes and posture of grown-ups, but inside our skin we are never as wise or as sure or as strong as we want to convince ourselves and others we are. We may fool all the rest of the people all of the time, but we never fool our parents. They can see behind the mask of adulthood. To her mommy and daddy, the empress never has on any clothes—and knows it.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)