Alexander Nevsky was a 13th-century prince, later declared a saint, who engaged in some of the toughest battles of the Kievan Rus (a Slavic tribes federation, the ancestor of today’s Russia). Saint Alexander Nevsky was the personal patron-saint of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia, who ruled the country during the liberation war of Bulgaria, so he was chosen as the patron of the cathedral as a gesture of respect and gratefulness.