Above the main entrance of Westminster Abbey, where British monarchs are crowned, stand ten stone figures. These are the martyrs of the 20th century, people from different countries and faiths who died for their beliefs. Among them are Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Maximilian Kolbe, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and the only Russian: Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna.

The niches on the western facade had been empty since the Middle Ages. They were only filled in the 1990s during the restoration of the abbey. The statues were unveiled on July 9, 1998, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II, and the figure of the Grand Duchess was placed next to the former enemies of her world and generation.
The choice is not accidental. Princess Ella of Hesse-Darmstadt was the beloved granddaughter of Queen Victoria and grew up largely in an English environment.

In Russia, she married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. After his death from a terrorist bomb in 1905, she visited his murderer in prison, then distributed her jewels and founded the Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy in Moscow, where the poor were treated and orphans were cared for.
In 1918, the Bolsheviks arrested her and transported her to Alapaevsk. On the night of July 18, she, along with other members of the dynasty, was thrown alive into a mine.

It was said that the singing of prayers could be heard from underground for a long time. Her body was later taken by the White Army, and through Beijing, it reached Jerusalem, to the Church of Mary Magdalene in Gethsemane. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonized her in 1981, and the Moscow Patriarchate followed in 1992.
The sculptor depicted her in the monastic attire of the sisters of the convent, with a cross in her hands. Thus, the emigration that had preserved her memory for decades received in the heart of London what had long been absent in Moscow: public recognition.