Article on Nicholas' and Alix's betrothal in the Illustrated London News, year 1894

Source:

https://www.ebay.ie/itm/1894-Antique-Print-RUSSIA-Wedding-Grand-Duke-Nicholas-Tsar-Princess-Victoria-94-/233464682075?hash=item365b94565b

My 200th post on this blog!

This article was published in the English newspaper The Illustrated London News on April 28, 1894.

The article:

BETROTHAL OF THE CZAREVITCH.

Marrying and giving in marriage, the reigning Houses of Europe become wonderfully interlinked by family ties which, happily, in these times of settled national sovereignty are not likely to prove hereafter the source of disputed claims and wars of succession like those of two or three centuries ago. The heir to the imperial crown of Russia has prospects which no foreign matrimonial alliances could possibly strengthen, and is far above any temptation to seek aggrandisement for his descendants from connecting their lineage with even the most powerful of existing dynasties. That he should have chosen for his future bride the youngest sister of a German Grand Duke, whose territories are small, with a population less than the hundredth part of the number of Russian subjects, but whose ancestry is so estimable as that of the Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, and whose position is so well guaranteed by the constitution of the German Empire, is rather a fresh pledge for the continuance of peace on the Continent. Nor can it be otherwise than agreeable to our own nation, which already [illegible] the Russian throne shared by Alexander III, with the sister of our Princess of Wales, to look forward to the same imperial dignity being enjoyed, at some future day, by a granddaughter of our Queen. We earnestly hope that friendly and even [illegible] relations with Russia may long be maintained both by Germany and by Great Britain.

His Imperial Highness, Nicholas Alexandrovitch, Hereditary Grand Duke and Czarevitch of Russia, eldest child of the Emperor Alexander III, and of the Empress Marie Feodorovna, formerly Princess Dagmar of Denmark, was born at St. Petersburg on May 18, 1868, and will therefore soon be twenty-six years of age. Her Grand Ducal Highness Princess Alix Victoria Helena Louise Beatrix, youngest daughter of the late Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and of her Royal Highness the late Grand Duchess Alice, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, is in her twenty-second year, having been born at Darmstadt on June 6, 1872. Several pleasing and affecting anecdotes of her childhood are related in the published memoirs and [illegible] of her mother, whose death was so much lamented in England and in Germany, and whose virtues are universally acknowledged. It is our sincere desire that Princess Alix and her future husband, the heir to one of the greatest empires in the world, may in their united lives enjoy the fullest happiness in their exalted elation.