anastasia's sisters: tatiana nicholaevna

Tatiana Nicholaevna was the second child of Alexandra and Nicholas. She was only 18 months younger than her older sister Olga, and was considered the most beautiful of the four grand duchesses. Tatiana was also the leader of OTMA, mostly because she got along the best with Alexandra. She most resembled her mother and often was sent to Alexandra by her sisters when they wanted something. She was assigned a regiment of soldiers - and her uniform that she is wearing, below, survived to this day (I saw it in Cincinnati a few years ago!).

In 1913 Russia celebrated the Tercentenary - 300 years of Romanov rule. Formal pictures were taken of the imperial family. These photos are perhaps the most famous and well-known pictures of the Romanovs. But poor Tatiana had just recovered from typhoid and had lost all her hair - so she wore a wig for the photos.

During World War I, Tatiana worked as a Red Cross nurse with Olga and Alexandra. She was the most social of her sisters, and both Anna Vyrubova and Lili Dehn, beloved friends of Alexandra, wrote after the revolution how Tatiana wished to have friends outside their small social circle, but Alexandra would never allow it.

When the family was held captive in Tobolsk, it was Tatiana whom Alexandra chose to remain in charge of Alexei, Olga and Anastasia, while she and Marie accompanied Nicholas to Ekaterinburg. The final entry in Tatiana's diary, copied from a Russian holy man read ominously: "Your grief is indescribable, the Savior's grief in the Gardens of Gethsemane the world's sins is immeasurable, join your grief to his, in it you will find consolation."

Olga and Tatiana, taken in 1913 as part of the Tercentenary celebrations. Tatiana is wearing a wig!

the romanov's cincinnati connection

Audrey Emery and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Cincinnati Museum Center, where they had an exhibit on the Romanovs. The exhibit included clothing (the baptismal gown was featured, as well as a uniform Tatiana wore as a child), toys, Faberge jewels and photographs taken from negatives that had never been published.

Why was all this in Cincinnati? Incredibly, the Romanovs have a very interesting connection to the city in Ohio that comes from Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich. (Read about his mother, Alexandra Georgievna, in this post.) Dmitri was exiled from Russia when he and Felix Yussupov murdered Rasputin. He was a notorious womanizer and had several affairs, including one with Coco Chanel. (Come on - handsome royal with a Russian accent. I dare you resist that!) He eventually settled down with an American heiress, Audrey Emery, whose family was from Cinci. While the marriage did not last, the couple had one child, Paul, who eventually became the mayor of Palm Beach, Florida, and died in 2004.

anastasia's family: maria nicholaevna

Anastasia had four siblings, but the sister she was brought up closest to was her third-eldest sister, Maria Nicholaevna.

Often called Marie or Masha, she was born on June 26, 1899. She was named for her grandmother, the former Empress, Maria Feodorovna. Margaret Eagar stated the other girls called Marie their stepsister, because she never got into trouble. She and Anastasia made up the "Little Pair" (Olga and Tatiana were the "Big Pair")

Marie was very flirtatious - she once wrote she wanted to marry a soldier and have 20 children.

When her family was in captivity, she was chosen by Nicholas to accompany her parents to Ekaterinburg. It was there that a curious incident happened on Marie's 19th birthday. A soldier named Ivan Skorokhodov snuck a birthday cake in for Marie, and she disappeared into a different room with him. When other soldiers arrived for a surprise inspection of the house, Marie and Ivan were discovered. No one knows what happened between the two, but other soldiers reported that after this incident, Marie's family seemed upset with her. Olga refused to speak to her.

Though this blog is named for Anastasia, I don't have a favorite Romanov daughter - but I do think Marie was the most beautiful! I've included my two favorite pictures of Marie in this entry. What do you think?

Thanks to livadia*org for photos

anastasia's world: the alexander palace

The Alexander Palace

The world Anastasia was born into was a world of glamor, but also a world of extreme poverty. Russian peasants had difficult lives, to say the least, and the tsar and his family lived an incredibly sheltered life behind the palace gate.

Likewise, the Romanov children were also raised in a controlled environment. They did not socialize very much beyond their immediate family; even the extensive Romanov cousins were hardly around the grand duchesses and tsarevich. Besides their native Russian and French, which was the official language of the court, the children were taught German and English, though they spoke these languages badly. The girls were dressed alike even through adulthood, and life usually revolved around the tsarevich's precarious health.

The family traveled around to various countries - royal European houses being what they were, Nicholas and Alexandra could claim relation to almost every royal family - but when they were in St. Petersburg, they lived at Tsarskoye Selo, the Tsar's Village. The grounds at Tsarskoye Selo included two palaces - the blue Catherine Palace and the yellow Alexander Palace. The Alexander Palace was favored by the family, and it was here they spent most of their time.

The palace was modernized during Nicholas's reign and included electricity and even a screening booth to show motion pictures. It was to the Alexander Palace Nicholas returned in 1917 as Colonel Romanov, rather than the Tsar of All the Russias, after his abdication. This would also be the first of three places the imperial family was held under arrest during the revolution.

thanks to Wikipedia for information and a picture!