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]
mi condolences