Duchess Alexandra Petrovna of Oldenburg (d. 1900)
Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna of Russia (Russian: Алекса́ндра Петро́вна Ольденбургская, tr. Alexandra Petrovna Olʹdenburgskaya; Born Duchess Alexandra Frederica Wilhelmina of Oldenburg; 2 June 1838 – 25 April 1900) was a great-granddaughter of Emperor Paul I of Russia and the wife of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia, the elder.
Born Duchess Alexandra of Oldenburg, she was the eldest daughter of Duke Peter of Oldenburg and his wife Princess Therese of Nassau-Weilburg. She grew up in Russia in close proximity to the Romanovs as her father was a nephew of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Alexandra’s parents were artistically gifted and passionate philanthropists. They provided a good education for her and inspired in Alexandra a life of service to those in need.
Alexandra married in 1856, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia, the third son of Tsar Nicholas I and her first cousin once removed. Alexandra, who had been raised in the Lutheran church, converted to the Orthodox faith, and took the name Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna of Russia. The couple had two children: Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929), the younger, and Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia (1864–1931). The marriage, arranged by the Russian Imperial family in an attempt to control the Grand Duke’s excesses, was unhappy. She was plain, serious and liked simplicity. Deeply religious and very involved in charity work, Alexandra founded a training institute for nurses in St Petersburg in 1865. The same year, her husband began an affair with a ballerina, forming a second family with his mistress.
After the collapse of her marriage, Alexandra lived separated from her husband who expelled her from their household in 1879. A carriage accident left her almost completely paralyzed and, in November 1880, Alexandra went abroad to improve her health, compelled by her brother-in-law Tsar Alexander II. The following year, she asked her nephew, Tsar Alexander III, to allow her to return to Russia and she settled in Kiev. She recovered her mobility and, in 1889, she founded the Pokrov of Our Lady Monastery, a convent of nursing nuns with its own hospital, to provide free treatment for the poor. She dedicated the rest of her life to the work at the hospital. In 1889, she became an Orthodox nun under the name Anastasia. She died at the convent in 1900.