This photograph, taken in 1860 or 1861, shows Tsar Alexander II (1818−81, ruled 1855−81), with two of his eight children: Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna (born 1853) and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (born 1857). Alexander is seated in a chair, three-quarters to his left, wearing a military uniform. The grand duchess is leaning on her father’s right knee, facing forward; the grand duke is sitting on his father’s left leg. Alexander was most respected for his emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and his domestic reforms included reorganizing the judicial system, introducing limited local self-government, and support of universities. He was assassinated by revolutionaries in Saint Petersburg in 1881. Maria married Prince Alfred, duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who also later became duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. She died in Zurich in 1920. Sergei, who was an influential figure during the reigns of his brother Tsar Alexander III and his nephew Tsar Nicholas II, was governor-general of Moscow for 14 years before his death at the hands of an assassin in Moscow in 1905. The photograph is preserved in the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents.