After the death of the tsaritsa Natalia, Peter's mother, in 1694, his influence increased still further.
She would, doubtless, have made a model tsaritsa of the pre-Petrine period, but, unfortunately, she was no fit wife for such a vagabond of genius as Peter the Great.
Prince Alexander, who was born on the 5th of April 1857, was nephew of the tsar Alexander II., who had married a sister of Prince Alexander of Hesse; his mother, a daughter of Count Moritz von Hauke, had been lady-in-waiting to the tsaritsa.
She was escorted with great ceremony to Moscow in 1728 and exhibited to the people attired in the splendid, old-fashioned robes of a tsaritsa; but years of rigid seclusion had dulled her wits, and her best friends soon convinced themselves that a convent was a much more suitable place for her than a throne.
It is sometimes called the palace quarter, from the royal palace erected between 1868 and 1870, on the site of the older structure dating from the time of Tsaritsa Elizabeth.