Aleksandra Fyodorovna was born Alix Viktoria Helena Louise Beatrix, “Prinzessin” (princess) of Hesse and by Rhine, on June 6, 1872, in Darmstadt, Grand Duchy of Hesse, then part of the German Empire. She was given the name and patronymic “Aleksandra Fyodorovna” when she converted and was received into the Russian Orthodox Church. The sixth child of Grand Duke Ludwig IV and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, she was called “Alix” by her family. She was educated by her grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Alix met Grand Duke Nicholas Romanov, heir to the Russian throne when she was twelve. Over the years, the acquaintance blossomed into a romance. At first, the prospect of marriage didn’t seem very promising. Nicholas’s father, Alexander III, was anti-German and Alix’s family expressed open disdain for the Russian people. But they were deeply in love and on November 26, 1894, the couple wed.

By 1901, they only had four girls. The Romanov family needed a male heir and she desperately wanted to provide her husband a son. She turned to mystics in hopes of conceiving a boy, but to no avail. Aleksandra had become so frantic that in 1903 she experienced pseudocyesis, a false pregnancy. Finally, in 1904, she gave birth to a son named Alexei. Her joy was short-lived however as it was discovered he suffered from hemophilia.

Nicholas, Aleksandra, and their children were executed by the Bolsheviks on July 16-17, 1918, bringing an end to more than three centuries of the Romanov rule.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org