Elizabeth of Baden (1779–1826)

German princess and empress of All the Russias. Name variations: Elizabeth Louise; Luisa of Baden; Louise of Baden; Tsarina Elizaveta; Yelizaveta Alekseyevna von Baden. Born Luisa of Baden around 1777 in the Rhine Valley of Germany; daughter of Charles Louis of Padua (b. 1755), prince of Padua and Baden, and Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt (1754–1832); married Alexander I (1777–1825), tsar of Russia (r. 1801–1825), on October 9, 1793; children: Marie (1799–1800); Elizabeth (1806–1808).

In 1793, when Alexander I was 16, in 1793, his grandmother Catherine II the Great arranged his marriage to the German princess Luisa of Baden. (Luisa then appropriated the Russian name Elizaveta or Elizabeth.) In 1796, Catherine died unexpectedly, and Alexander's father Paul I then began his short and turbulent rule as tsar (1796–1801). A change in the law of succession was one of Paul's first acts (1797). No longer could nobles and courtiers conspire to determine the next tsar; the first-born male would now automatically become heir apparent. Thus, Alexander I would inherit a position that he longed to forsake. His preference would have been retirement to one of the royal estates with his new wife or life abroad in the German Rhine valley (Eliza-beth of Baden's homeland) where he could continue his studies as an amateur naturalist.

Following a successful reign, wherein he defeated Napoleon and attempted to bring constitutional reforms to his country, Alexander died of gastric fever in 1825 while visiting his wife, who was also ill, in remote Taganrob on the Sea of Azov. Since the marriage of Elizabeth of Baden and Alexander produced only two daughters who had died in infancy, by the law of succession Alexander's eldest brother Constantine was next in line for the throne. Constantine, however, abdicated his responsibilities to the next brother in line, Nicholas I.