Source:
Olga Grigor'eva at lastromanovs on VK
Above: Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna of Russia, formerly Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine.
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, later Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna of Russia (born November 1, 1864, died July 18, 1918) was a German Hessian and Rhenish princess of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt and the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia and Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. She was also a maternal great-aunt of the late Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the consort of the late Queen Elizabeth II.
A granddaughter of Queen Victoria and an older sister of Alexandra, the last empress of Russia, Elizaveta became famous in Russian high society for her beauty and charitable works amongst the poor. Upon her marriage she became the aunt of the future Tsar Nicholas II, who, upon his own marriage to her sister, became her brother-in-law. After the Socialist Revolutionary Party's Combat Organisation assassinated her husband with a bomb in 1905, Elizaveta publicly forgave Sergei's murderer, Ivan Kalyayev, and campaigned unsuccessfully for him to be pardoned. She then left the Imperial Court and became a nun, founding the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, dedicated to helping the downtrodden of Moscow. In 1918 she was arrested and ultimately murdered by the Bolsheviks.
In 1981 Elizaveta was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992 as a Holy Martyr.
The letter:
Ever so hearty loving Xmas and New Year blessings from your loving Sister
Ella
1908-1909
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