Overview
Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine (Alexander Ludwig Georg Friedrich Emil; 15 July 1823 – 15 December 1888), was the third son and fourth child of Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Wilhelmine of Baden. He was a brother of Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna, wife of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Battenberg-Mountbatten family descends from Alexander and his wife Countess Julia von Hauke, a former lady-in-waiting to his sister.
Family and background
It was openly rumoured that Alexander and his sister Marie were not the children of the Grand Duke, but that their father was actually August von Senarclens de Grancy, their mother's chamberlain. His mother, although married to the grand duke, lived apart from her husband, who did not repudiate paternity of any of the four children born during the marriage. His ancestry listed below assumes his legitimacy. See Grancy's page for his rumored paternal ancestry.
When the future emperor Alexander II of Russia, as tsarevich, chose the sixteen-year-old Marie as consort, his parents consented to the match as worthy due to the Grand Duke's acknowledgement of her as his daughter. Because of her youth, Alexander escorted his sister to Russia for her wedding, remaining at the Russian court and joining the inner circle of his brother-in-law the tsarevich after the rest of Marie's entourage returned to Hesse.
Alexander's marriage
Alexander fell in love with Countess Julia von Hauke, lady-in-waiting to his sister (known, since her conversion to Orthodoxy, as Maria Alexandrovna, ranking only after her mother-in-law the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna). The countess was an orphaned German-Polish ward of the Russian Emperor, and daughter of the Emperor's former minister of war, Count Johann Moritz von Hauke, a Polish general of German descent. At that time, the Emperor Nicholas I was considering Alexander as a possible husband for his niece and, when he heard of Alexander's romance, he forbade the couple to marry.
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