Alexandra was sixteen when she married the emperor's brother. Her first royal match had failed over religion. This time she would keep her faith and leave Russia.
On 30 October 1799 by the Gregorian calendar, Alexandra Pavlovna married Archduke Joseph of Austria at Gatchina, south of St Petersburg. In Russia, which still used the Julian calendar, it was 19 October. The bride was the eldest daughter of Tsar Paul I and Maria Feodorovna. The groom was twenty-three, the younger brother of Emperor Francis II, and Palatine of Hungary, one of that kingdom's highest governing officials.
Their marriage was intended to strengthen the alliance between Russia and Austria against revolutionary France. Her family had already tried to make an alliance of a different kind through her marriage. Her grandmother, Catherine the Great, had wanted her to become Queen of Sweden.
Alexandra had been prepared carefully for the life expected of her. She learnt languages, drew, played music and translated from French. Two of her translations appeared in a magazine while she was still a child. Alongside those accomplishments came lessons in Swedish, a language chosen for the husband her grandmother had in mind. Her education was already being fitted to a country she had yet to enter.
In 1796, when Alexandra was thirteen, Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden came to St Petersburg. The negotiations advanced as far as arrangements for a betrothal. Then the question of her religion stopped them. Alexandra was Orthodox. Her prospective husband was Lutheran. Catherine required a written guarantee that her granddaughter could continue to practise the faith in which she had been brought up. The Swedish king would not give the required undertaking, and the planned ceremony did not take place.
The lessons had been given. The marriage had not followed.
Three years later, another prince came to Russia. Joseph had a diplomatic purpose, but his response to Alexandra was warmer than a successful negotiation required. In February 1799 he wrote to his brother, thanking him for choosing her as his future wife and expressing his confidence that the marriage would secure his family happiness for life. It was a considerable hope to put into a letter after so short an acquaintance.
There was a household to prepare as well as an alliance. Back in Hungary, Joseph sought apartments in Buda's royal palace for himself and his bride and made arrangements for her attendants and the transport of her dowry. Alexandra would be leaving her parents and siblings, but there were rooms being made ready for her at the other end of the journey.
By the time Joseph returned for the wedding, relations between the two governments had deteriorated. Paul was angry with his Austrian allies over the conduct of the war. A wedding meant to bind the alliance went ahead as the alliance came apart.
At Gatchina the couple were married first according to the Orthodox rite and then according to the Catholic. Both churches had their ceremony. Alexandra remained Orthodox.
The girl who had once been prepared for Sweden was now an Austrian archduchess, with her married home waiting in Hungary. About a month after the wedding she left Russia with Joseph. They travelled by way of Vienna, and the winter roads delayed the last stage of the journey.
When they finally arrived on 1 February 1800, the streets were crowded. People called out their welcome, and bells accompanied the procession towards the royal palace. Deputations had travelled to greet them and had waited through all the delays. At the celebrations that followed, Alexandra and Joseph appeared in Hungarian dress.
Inside their palace apartments, an Orthodox chapel was provided for Alexandra. The religious provision that had once helped wreck a marriage negotiation now had a place in her new home. Joseph arranged balls and entertainments. At Üröm, outside Buda, they planned a summer residence. Their life together had begun to acquire places beyond the rooms where other people had negotiated it.
Alexandra became pregnant. The summer house was still a plan when, on 8 March 1801, she gave birth to a daughter, Alexandrina. She lived only a few hours.
Alexandra was seventeen. She had been married for about sixteen and a half months. She did not recover from the birth, and on 16 March she died at Buda of childbed fever, eight days after her daughter. She had lived in Hungary for just over a year.
Joseph had written of family happiness lasting his whole life. The wife for whom he had prepared the palace apartments had not reached her eighteenth birthday. At sixteen she had gone through two wedding ceremonies and left Russia with him. At seventeen, she and their only child were both dead.
