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Danish Royals Prepare To Say Farewell to Empress Maria |
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Written by Joanne Leyland
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Friday, 22 September 2006 |
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Some of the most historic royal
ceremonies
of recent years will take place in Denmark and Russia in the coming
days, starting on Saturday when Queen Margrethe II leads other royals
and VIPs with a memorial service near Copenhagen which will climax with
the reburial of Tsar Nicholas II of
Russia's mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna, in Russia next week.
The ceremony is the result of the lifetime's wish of the Dowager Empress that, when circumstances allowed, she one day be laid to rest next to her late husband, Tsar Alexander III, in his homeland.
The reburial, long in the planning, was delayed several times reportedly due to diplomatic rows between Denmark and Russia over a Chechen conference held in Denmark in 2002. Following this there was another diplomatic wrangle over the detention of a Chechen rebel envoy by the Danish authorities.
Queen Margrethe will leading tomorrow's ceremony which will see the royal remains depart Denmark for Russia aboard a Danish navy ship. The Danish monarch, who is related to the Dowager Empress (Maria Feodorovna was the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark) will join the congregation for a memorial service at Roskilde Cathedral near Copenhagen.
The main ceremony of reburial will take place next Thursday when members of the Romanov dynasty will gather alongside royalty and politicians to witness their ancestor's remains being reburied in a crypt next to that of Tsar Alexander in the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
The September 28th ceremony will take place exactly 140 years to the day since the Dowager Empress — a sister of King Edward VII's wife, Queen Alexandra — first arrived in Russia.
Dowager Maria Feodorovna died at the age of 80 in 1928.
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