Alexandra Feodorovna

Nicholas I was Emperor of Russia from 1825 until his death in 1855, the third son of Paul I and younger brother of Alexander I, whom he succeeded after the Decembrist uprising. His nearly thirty-year reign was marked by military expansion, the codification of Russian law, and a conservative autocracy summarized in the doctrine of Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality. He is the great-grandfather of Nicholas II and the founder of the branch of the Romanov dynasty covered by this tree: his son Alexander II succeeded him, beginning the direct line that ended with the last tsar.

Alexander II reigned as Emperor of Russia from 1855 until his death in 1881. Known as the 'Tsar Liberator,' he is best remembered for the Emancipation Reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom across the Russian Empire, alongside sweeping judicial, military, and local-government reforms. He was the eldest son of Nicholas I and married Maria Alexandrovna, with whom he had several children including his successor, Alexander III, and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. His reign bridged the conservative rule of his father and the more autocratic turn of his son, and his reforms reshaped Russian society in the decades before the revolution.

Alexander III was Emperor of Russia from 1881, when he succeeded his father Alexander II, until his own death in 1894. He pursued a policy of political and cultural conservatism, strengthening autocratic rule and Russification following the upheaval that had marked his father's later reign. He married Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, and their children included his successor Nicholas II, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. Physically imposing and known for personal frugality, he is often credited with a period of relative stability that preceded the turbulent reign of his son.

Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was the fifth son of Alexander II and Maria Alexandrovna, and an uncle of Nicholas II. He served as Governor-General of Moscow from 1891 to 1905, a tenure marked by strict conservatism and by the Khodynka Tragedy of 1896 during Nicholas II's coronation festivities, for which he was widely blamed. In 1884 he married Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, who took the name Elizabeth Feodorovna, though the couple had no children. He died in Moscow in 1905, during the wave of political violence and unrest that also produced the 1905 Revolution.

Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna was the eldest daughter of Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna, and the elder sister of Nicholas II. In 1894 she married her cousin Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, with whom she had seven children. She lived through the fall of the Romanov dynasty and, along with her mother, escaped Russia via Crimea in 1919, eventually settling in Britain, where relatives including King George V offered her refuge. She spent the rest of her life in exile, remaining close to her mother until Maria Feodorovna's death in 1928. Xenia outlived nearly all of her immediate family, dying in England in 1960, more than four decades after the revolution that ended her family's rule.

Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich was the youngest son of Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna, and the younger brother of Nicholas II. When Nicholas abdicated in March 1917, he named Michael as his successor, but Michael declined to accept the throne unless offered it by a popularly elected assembly, effectively ending three centuries of Romanov rule the following day. He had served as a cavalry officer and briefly commanded troops during the First World War. His morganatic marriage to Natalia Sheremetevskaya, a divorcee, had caused a rift with Nicholas II and led to a period of exile abroad before the war. He died in 1918, shortly before Nicholas II and his immediate family.

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was the youngest child of Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna, and the youngest sister of Nicholas II. She trained as a nurse and worked in field hospitals during the First World War. Her first marriage, to Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, was unhappy and later annulled; she then married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had two sons. She escaped Russia with her mother in 1919 via Crimea, lived for a time in Denmark, and later settled in Canada in 1948. A skilled amateur painter, she remained close to her brother's family and was one of the last Romanovs to have known Nicholas II's children personally. She died near Toronto in 1960.

Maria Alexandrovna, born Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine, was Empress consort of Russia as the wife of Alexander II, whom she married in 1841. She was known for her piety and charitable work, founding hospitals and schools and supporting the Russian Red Cross movement. She and Alexander II had eight children, including Alexander III, who succeeded his father as emperor, and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Her health declined in later years, and she died in 1880, the year before her husband. She is an ancestor of Nicholas II through her son Alexander III.

Maria Feodorovna, born Princess Dagmar of Denmark, was Empress consort of Russia as the wife of Alexander III, whom she married in 1866. The daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, she was the sister of Britain's Queen Alexandra, placing her at the center of Europe's interconnected royal houses. She and Alexander III had six children, including Nicholas II, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, and Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna. After the family's downfall she was among the few Romanovs to escape Russia, eventually returning to Denmark, where she lived until her death in 1928, having outlived her son Nicholas II and most of his family.

Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, born Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, was the elder sister of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, whom she married in 1884. Widowed in 1905, she withdrew from court life, sold her jewels, and founded the Convent of Saints Martha and Mary in Moscow, where she lived as a nun and devoted herself to charitable and medical work among the city's poor. Widely respected for her piety and humanitarian work even amid revolutionary upheaval, she was arrested with other members of the imperial family after the revolution and died in 1918, the same year as her sister and the Romanov branch she had married into.