After the memorial service for the Romanov family, come this.
Hmm, I kinda like the European royals, silent and dignified.
Danes bid farewell to princess who became empress of
Russia
A solemn, emotional mass was held at Roskilde cathedral for the
last Russian tsar's mother, a Danish princess who became empress of
Russia in 1866, before she is reburied in Saint Petersburg, in line
with her final wishes.
Led by Queen Margrethe of Denmark, some 800 Danish and Russian
officials took part in the mass in the royal cathedral 30
kilometres (18 miles) from Copenhagen where the empress had been
buried since her death in 1928 at the age of 80. She left Russia in
1919 with her two daughters Xenia and Olga, two years after the
Bolshevik revolution.
Hundreds of people who could not get into the church gathered
outside it in the autumn sunlight to watch the historic
event.
Known in Russia as Empress Dowager Maria Fyodorovna, the
Danish-born Princess Dagmar will be buried next to her husband,
Tsar Alexander III, in the Romanov family vault in the Peter and
Paul fortress of Russia's former imperial capital.
She will be the last empress to be buried in the Romanov vault
where every tsar and tsarina since Peter the Great (1672-1725) are
buried.
The sober, emotional ceremony opened with a children's choir
singing psalms, joined by the worshippers who included ministers
and officials of the Danish and Russian governments, the empress'
descendants and members of the Russian Orthodox church.
Paul Edward Kulikovsky, the late tsarina's great-great grandson,
read a funeral oration in front of the casket placed at the foot of
the altar and covered with the empress's personal yellow flag
marked with the tsars' two eagles.
He thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin and Queen Margrethe
"for enabling Empress Dagmar to be reburied next to the man she
loved and to return to the country where she lived for 52
years."
At the end of the hour-long ceremony broadcast live on Danish and
Russian television, the casket left the cathedral borne by eight
pall-bearers from the Danish Royal Guards and the Russian
presidential guard to the sound of a funeral march.
"It was a beautiful and dignified cermony and we were happy. It
might sound bizarre to be in a good mood at a funeral, but we are
happy because we have respected the princess's last wish to be
buried next to her loved ones," Danish Justice Minister Lene
Espersen said on Danish public television channel DR1.
The burial procession took the road to Copenhagen before being
placed on a horse-drawn carriage escorted by the Royal Hussars
across the city and past its historic buildings including the royal
palace of Amalienborg where she was born on November 26, 1847 and
grew up.
After pausing for a short ceremony at the Russian Orthodox church,
the casket was put aboard a Danish frigate, the Esbern Snare, for
the crossing to Saint Petersburg. A 63-gun salute rang out as it
set sail.
The princess's remains will arrive on Tuesday, 140 years to the day
after she first set foot on Russian soil, and she will be finally
laid to rest in the family vault on Thursday.[/b]
