As a
cadet of the Hessian grand ducal dynasty, Prince Alexander had followed the martial tradition of his family by offering his sword to the military service of a
Great Power while still a teenager, having accompanied his sister to St. Petersburg. He became a respected commander in the Russian army, with the prospect of a distinguished career. He had a regiment of
lancers named after him and was awarded the
Order of St. George 4th class. His elopement, in sending him abroad
AWOL, terminated his military career and made him, initially, a fugitive from Russia. But once his elder brother recognized his wife, he was able to obtain an appointment in the Austrian army, where he resumed his military career, although remaining sufficiently in disgrace never to be
billeted in
Vienna. Each of his children would be born in a different city, depending upon where in the Austro-Hungarian empire Prince Alexander was stationed. After serving Austria with distinction in several battles, he was given a major command in Hesse's small army in its war, as an ally of Austria, with Prussia in 1866. By this time his wife and children had taken up their home at Alexander's small castle,
Schloss Heligenberg, at
Seeheim-Jugenheim in Hesse, to which he retired after Prussia defeated Austria and Hesse. Although the electorate of
Hesse-Kassel, ruled by another branch of Alexander's family, was
annexed by Prussia for adhering to the losing side, the fact that Hesse-Darmstadt's grand duke was the brother-in-law of the Russian tsar saved its independence, although not without loss of territory. Henceforth, Alexander and his family alternated between their castle in the grandducal capital of
Darmstadt, and their country home a few hours away by carriage. Alexander was often in attendance at his elder brother's court. But a shift occurred when his sister, now Empress of Russia, began to pay annual visits to her brother in the 1870s along with her husband, children, and a large entourage. Louis III, while benefitting from his kinship to the tsar, preferred to defer entertaining him to Alexander and Marie at Heiligenberg. These annual visits had the twofold effect of enhancing the international prestige of the grandduchy while socially rehabilitating Alexander's morganatic household. The memoirs of his daughter,
Marie of Battenberg, document the cordiality between Alexander and his eldest brother, while also recording the growing importance of her own family's household as diplomats who wished to pay court to the Russian emperor would await his annual visit to the Hessian countryside to do so discreetly in the more intimate setting of Alexander's home. ==Children==