Kschessinskaya was also a mistress of the future Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. She had been involved with Nicholas, from 1890, when he was a grand duke and she was just seventeen. She met him with his family after her graduation performance. They stayed lovers for three years, until Nicholas married Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt—the future Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna—in 1894, shortly after the death of his father, Tsar Alexander III.