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The wedding of Nicholas II of Russia to Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse) occurred on November 14/26, 1894 at the Grand Church of the Winter Palace. ==Engagement == In April 1894, Tsarevich Nicholas travelled to Coburg, Germany to attend the wedding of Ernst Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt to their mutual cousin, Victoria Melita of Edinburgh. Nicholas had also obtained permission from his parents, Tsar Alexander III and Tsarina Marie Feodorovna to propose to Ernst's younger sister, Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, one of the favorite granddaughters of Queen Victoria. The Tsar and Tsarina had initially had been opposed to the match. However, Nicholas, who had first met Alix a decade earlier in St. Petersburg when Alix's sister, Elizabeth married Nicholas's uncle, Grand Duke Sergei was not to be dissuaded. Furthermore, Tsar Alexander's health was beginning to fail. Shortly after arriving in Coburg, Nicholas proposed to Alix. However, Alix, who was a devout Lutheran, rejected Nicholas's proposal, as in order to marry the heir to the throne, she would have to convert to Russian Orthodoxy.〔King, Greg The Last Empress (Wiley & Sons, 1994) pgs. 54 & 55〕 However, Alix's cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had been at the wedding, along with their grandmother, Queen Victoria came to speak to her, insisting that it was her duty to marry Nicholas, despite her religious scruples.〔King, Empress pgs. 54〕 Elizabeth also spoke with her, insisting that there were not that many differences between Lutheranism and Orthodoxy. At the prompting of the kaiser, Nicholas proposed for the second time, and she accepted. On November 1, 1894, Alexander III died at Livadia Palace, aged forty-nine, leaving twenty-six-year-old Nicholas as tsar of Russia. The following day, Alix, who had arrived at Livadia several days earlier in order to receive the dying tsar's blessing, was received into the Russian Orthodox Church as Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna. Alix had apparently expressed her wish to take the name Catherine, but decided to take the name Alexandra on Nicholas's request.〔King, Greg Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp Power and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II (Wiley & Sons, 2006), pg. 329〕 On November 18, after nearly two weeks of Orthodox liturgies, and a procession from the Crimea to St. Petersburg, via Moscow, Nicholas's father was interred at the Peter and Paul Fortress. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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