Dame af Tårer (Lady of Tears) - Continued from Feb 2021 DSN by Annette Lind
With the unrest in the country, Alexander and Dagmar moved about 31 miles outside of St. Petersburg to Garchina Palace. This large palace had been built by Catherine the Great, and it had over 900 rooms. They lived there for 13 years with their five surviving children. They were always under heavy guard, but in the summers they were able to visit Denmark. These trips were especially enjoyable since in Denmark they had so much more freedom. In 1887 a plot to assassinate Alexander III was launched. Those involved hollowed out books and filled them with dynamite to throw at the Czar The Okhrana discovered the plot. Five students were hung. One of them was the older brother of Vladimir Lenin. The oldest son of Dagmar and Alexander II, Nicholas, was a bit of a playboy. His parents thought it was important that he marry, but the woman he wanted to marry was Princess Alicky, a grandchild of Queen Victoria. Both Dagmar and her husband felt the young woman did not have the right character to be an empress. However by July of 1894 it was very apparent that Czar Alexander III was very ill. The parents relented. On March 1, 1894 the Czar died. He was only 49 years old. Dagmar had lost her Sasha as he was known to the family. Around a week later the Nicholas and Alicky were married. The Empress was now the Dowager Empress, but while she had not been much involved in politics as Empress, she now became very involved. She served as a political advisor to her son. The young Czar would often check with his mother before making decisions. Dagmar pressed him to resume the reforms his grandfather had begun in order to avoid revolution. However when after four daughters Alicky, now Empress Alexandra, gave birth to a son, she replaced Dagmar as her husband’s advisor. The two women were opposites. Dagmar had worked to ingratiate herself to the Russian people. Empress Alexandra was shy and closed herself off from the people. Dagmar was especially interested in removing Rasputin, a mystic and faith healer, who had Danish Sisterhood News, March 2021
become a part of the Russian court. However, Rasputin had the ear of the Empress who believed he had saved her son’s life. (Alexis Nicholaievitch suffered from hemophilia and when he was extremely ill, Alexandra had contacted Rasputin who told her the boy would recover. The next day he started getting better.) As a result, she fought the attempts by Dagmar to have him removed. The tensions grew between Dagmar and her son and daughter-in-law to the point they no longer had contact. Dagmar began to spend more time outside of Russia on trips to Denmark and England. She and her sister Alexandra purchased the villa Hvidøre just north of Copenhagen. She continued to try to influence her son from a distance but it became clear the Empress Alexandra was actually calling the shots in Russia. Dagmar moved to Kiev. In 1914, Russia was drawn into World War I, but was unprepared for the scale and magnitude of the fighting. Nicholas’ subjects were horrified by the number of casualties the country sustained. Russia had the largest number of deaths in the war—over 1.8 million military deaths, and about 1.5 million civilian deaths. Dagmar was in England when Russia entered the war. She tired to hurry home but was stopped by the German authorities from entering Russia. She had to go through Denmark and Finland. Once back in Russia she again worked on the war effort as President of the Red Cross. In 1917 the Russian Revolution began. On March 15, 1917, the army garrison at Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. He first abdicated in favor of his son Alexis. But his son was ill and weak and Nicholas then abdicated in favor of his brother Michael. However, in light of the circumstances, Michael did not accept the authority. After 304 years of Romanov rule in Russia, the dynasty was finished. Dagmar was shocked. She left Kiev to meet with her son. They spent three difficult days together. On March 21 they bid each other what 8
