Alexander's wife would deliver his first child barely six months after their elopement. Nonetheless, Julia von Hauke was a countess in her own right, as well as a former ward of the Russian Emperor whose husband retained, despite exile from Russia, the sympathetic support of the tsarevich and tsarevna. Grand Duke Louis III therefore chose to distinguish her from several non-royal wives of other Hessian princes by conferring upon her, along with the Battenberg countship, the style of "Erlaucht" (Illustrious Highness), usually reserved in Germany for counts of mediatized (i.e., dynastic) rank.