This blog is about the Danish princess Dagmar , who - for better or for worse - became grand duchess and tsesarevna and later empress or tsaritsa Maria Feodorovna of Russia. This is not a hagiographic blog. Admittedly, after reading thousands of pages of her diaries and letters as well as those of her relatives, this blogger finds her a thoroughly likable and charming person, but at the same time a rather ordinary person with no special intellectual or political gifts. What makes her interesting are the circumstances in which fate and history placed her. And not least the way she took it, both in good times and in bad times. By dealing with Dagmar/Maria Feodorovna we will also deal with her contemporaries, with the politics, thought and morality of her time as well as its expression in art and craft. .