Possible Clues:

• Extremely tedious song about end of Russian empress
• Monarch volunteers to inhale a nerve gas
• Ruler way back, initially named in song
• Bygone empress
• Empress having a strain treated
• A train's transported powerful Russian
• One member of group in 35 across from Queen?
• Artisan could become empress
• Russian leader’s wife volunteers to hide chemical weapon
• Russian royal once treating artisan badly