ninme

Actually his imperialist side… Where was a reading a couple years ago that his slide into autocracy isn’t because he’s an old KGB guy, but actually quite imperialist… He’s named all the space shuttles after various tsars, for instance.

Times Online - Russia buries a tsaritsa with love and grandeur

With a flourish of Imperial tradition, Russia buried the mother of its last Tsar today 78 years after her death.

Tsaritsa Maria Feodorovna was laid to rest in the royal crypt of St Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress in a ceremony attended by dozens of members of Russia’s Romanov dynasty and by royalty from across Europe.

The Danish-born Empress was the mother of Nicholas II, who was executed with his family in 1918 after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. She fled into exile a year later on HMS Marlborough, initially to Britain then to Denmark, where she died in 1928.

Family members said that the Empress had wished to be buried alongside her husband, Tsar Alexander III, when the situation in Russia permitted.

The return of the remains was a personal initiative of President Vladimir Putin, who contacted Queen Margrethe II of Denmark to secure support for the reburial in an apparent act of atonement for Russia’s bloody revolutionary history.

She first arrived on Russian soil as Princess Dagmar 140 years ago. That’s kinda crazy sounding.

The coffin was sealed in a white marble sarcophagus topped with a gold Orthodox cross after descendants of the Romanovs and visiting royals, including Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, had filed past to pay their respects. A wreath from Prince Michael carried a note saying simply: “In Memoriam.”

Hmmm.