Romanov sisters
Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia
Biography
According to the old Russian calendar it was the 3rd November (15th November according to the new calendar) 1895, when young Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna found out her time came and she was to bring her first child into the world. We can only imagine how she felt - probably was little panicking as every new mother, and maybe she felt gret relief, that the pregnancy was over. Her husband - Tsar of all Russia Nicolas II. - her Nicky was really worried about his beloved Alix. They dwelt at Tsarskoe Selo that day, which they both later chose for their real home. The labour didn´t go too smoothly. The baby was very big and doctor even had to use forceps to help the young mother.
"Friday. A day I will remember forever, during which I suffred much!" Nicky wrote into his diary. "At 1 in the morning dear Alix began having pains that would not let her sleep. All day she lay in bed in great torment, poor thing. I could not watch her calmly. At about 2 in the morning dear Mamma arrived from Gatchina. The three of us – she, Ella and I – were with Alix constantly. At exactly 9 o´clock a baby's cry was heard and we all breathed a sigh of relief! With a prayer we named the daughter sent to us by God 'Olga'! When all anxiety was over, and the terrors has ceased there was simply a blessed feeling at what had come to pass! Thank God, Alix came through the birth well, and felt quite alert in the evening. I ate at night with Mama, and when I went to bed, I fell asleep at once!“
The girl´s name was chosen because it was an ancient Russian name meaning „Holy“ or „Healthy“ and it was traditionaly used in royal family. Even Nicky´s youngest sister was a bearer of the same name. Her nameday was celebrated on July 11.
All family was delighted with a beautiful babygirl with clear eyes, but there was also a little disapointment. As Tsar´s sister Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna wrote: "The birth of a daughter to Nicky and Alix! A great joy, although it's a great pity it's not a son! The birth pains began already late at night. At 10 o´clock we went to Tsarskoe. Poor Nicky and Mama were quite weak with exhaustion. The baby is huge - weighing 10 pounds-and had to be pulled out with forceps! A terrible thing to witness. But thank God everything ended well. I saw dear Alix she looks well, little Olga lay next to her on the bed.“
Nicky and Alix were happy and satisfied. They were still very young and there was plenty time for an heir to the throne. Alix´s sister Elizaveta Fyodorovna wrote to her grandmother Victoria: "Alix is looking well and her nursing the Baby does her the greatest good possible . . . The joy of having their Baby has never one moment let them regret little Olga being a girl."
Nicolas was like every loving and adoring father - he was often present when baby was bathed or changed and made notes to his diary. "In the morning I admired our delightful little daughter; she does not at all look new-born, because she is such a big baby with a full head of hair. Went for a short walk alone. Returned to my darling qife at 3 o´clock. Thank God is all well; but the baby does not want to take her breast, so we had to call the wet-nurse again.“
Several days after the baby was born, Nicolas wrote a letter to Alexandra´s grandmother Victoria: "Dearest Alicky, who is lying near me in bed, begs to thank you most tenderly for your letter and good wishes. Thank God everything went off happily and both she and the little child are progressing most satisfactorily. She finds such a pleasure in nursing our sweet baby herself. For my part I consider it (Alix breastfeeding the child herself) the most natural thing a mother can do and I think the example an excellent one! We are both so pleased that you accepted to be Godmother of our first child, because I am sure it will prove a happiness to her after your constant signs of kindness and of motherly affection towards us."
Little Olga was christened on 14th November, when she was 11 days old. The ceremony took place in the Catherine palace church, to where she was taken in a gold coach. She was covered with a mantle of cloth of gold and carried into the church on a golden cushion by Princess Galitzin. Her godparents were the dowager Empress Maria (who also held her during the ceremony and later wrote: „Nicky’s [daughter] is an exceptionally large baby, unbelievably sturdy and fat and so heavy that one can really hardly carry her.“), Queen Olga of Greece, Queen Victoria of Great Britain, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, Empress Victoria of Germany, King Christian IX. of Denmark, Grand Duke Ernest Ludwig of Hesse and Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich. As was later noted: "The Grand Duchess Olga was a fair, fat baby, not showing as a tiny child good looks that were to be hers when she grew up."
In December of that year Olenka was intrusted to a nurse and moved to children quaters. Her parents, especially Alix were very unhappy about it. "Dear Alix was in a state, because the arrival of the new English nanny will entail some changes in our family life: our daughter will have to be moved upstairs, which is a pity and rather a bore!" And so the Empress popped into the nursery very often, which made the poor nurse very nervous.
Since March 10th, 1896 Olga was dressed in little short dresses. In a letter to her mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress Marie, Alix wrote: "Baby is flourishing and kisses her beloved Grandmama . . . it is so strange to see her such a big, fat little creature, laughing and cooing away . . . she weighs now a little more than Irina, but is of course not as long." Irina was Olga´s cousin, daughter of Xenia Alexandrovna, born just several months earlier.
All of the numerous relatives wanted to see Tsar´s first born daughter, and so Alix and Nicky had to take the baby with them on a "travelling tour", which took them to Austria, Kiev, Denmark, England, France and Germany. When they were in France, people used to shout: "Vive le bebe!" or "Vive la Grande Duchesse!" when they saw her in carriage with a nurse. The family returned home agter two months and could enjoy some peace again. Soon after their return, Xenia wrote into her diary: "Before tea we went into the nursery. Nicky and Alix sat in the playpen and played with their daughter! She is a splendid, huge little girl, and seems to have got prettier, taller and even fatter!"
„Yesterday our little daughter fell against a chair, and a large blue bump appeared on her forehead," writes Nicky. "She cried a little but then did not complain any more about her injury." Writing to his brother George, Nicky joked about an upcoming visit from Irina : "I can just see them pulling each other's hair and quarrelling over the toys."
Except Irina, Olga´s playmates were other cousins - Maria Pavlovna and her brother Dmitri, who were seven and six years old. Maria later recalled that she had found little olga "remarkably ugly", her head being too large to her small body. On the other hand Queen Victoria said olga to be "most beautiful, despite the immense head."
Her playmates used to tease Olga sayig: "What a Grand Duchess you are, when you can´t even reach the table? "I do
n´t know," Olga would sigh. "But ask Papa. He knows everything."
In the late 1897 Nicolas wrote into his diary: "Our little daughters are growing, and turning into delightful happy little girls...Olga talks the same in Russian and in English and adores her little sister...The Cossacks, soldiers and Negroes are Olga's greatest friends, and she greets them as she goes down the corridor."
When Margaret Eagar came to the palace for the first time in late 1898, she noted: „The little Grand Duchess Olga was at this time over three years of age. She was a very fine child, and had large blue-grey eyes and long golden curls.“
She was a bright and happy child. In 1902 Alexandra wrote to her husband: „To keep the children quiet, I made them think of things and then guess them. Olga always thinks of the sun, clouds, sky, rain or something belonging to the heavens, explaining to me that it makes her so happy to think of that."
The girl was very admired since her childhood. For example there was a tall young German officer in the Guards, and he used to ask the Grand Duchess Olga for a doll; a little tiny one that he could keep in his pocket and play with while he was on guard would give him much pleasure, so he declared. Poor little Olga did not know if he was joking, but nonetheless she brought her nurse a couple of very tiny dolls dressed as boys, one minus a foot, the other without an arm. The nnurse said that it would be better to give unbroken dolls, and she replied: „Yes, but these are boys and he is a man, I am afraid he would not like a little girl dollie." So she took one girl and one boy doll with her the newst morning and when she met the guard she plunged her hands inot her pockets and produced the dolls, holding them behind her back. „Which would you rather have," she said seriously, "a boy or a girl doll?" He answered: „A little girl doll would be like you, and I should love it very much, but a boy would be very companionable." She was quite delighted and gave him the doll, saying, "I am glad, I was so afraid you would not like the girl." He put the doll away most carefully. Shortly afterwards the young officer went for his holidays. When he returned, the first day he saw the little Grand Duchess he began as formerly to beg for a doll. She said reproachfully: „Is it possible you have already broken the nice little doll I gave you?" With great tact he explained that the little doll was lonely all by itself, and wanted a companion, and that it did not matter if it was broken; so another dollie was carried about for several days till she met him again and gave it to him.
But cutie Olga had yet to grow into a beauty. Lily Dehn remembered this way: „The Grand Duchess Olga was the eldest of these four fair sisters. She was a most amiable girl, and people loved her from the moment they set eyes on her. As a child she was plain, at fifteen she was beautiful. She was slightly above middle height, with a fresh complexion, deep blue eyes, quantities of light chestnut hair, and pretty hands and feet. She took life seriously, and she was a clever girl with a sweet disposition.“
The sweet disposition wasn´t „active“ all the time. In 1899 the Empress wanted to have her daughters portraited. The children were very small at that time – Olga was 4, Tatiana 2,5 and Maria only two months old. The artist took numerous photos of the girls, but found out he couldn´t work without them being present, although the nurse begged him to. He insisted it wouldn´t be an artistic thing to do and wanted the girlies to sit for him three or four hours a day – even when he painted only their dresses. Children of course were bored after a while. Finally Olga jumped to her feet and said: „You are a very ugly man, and I don't like you a bit!“ Master Big Artist felt insulted by the child and replied: „You are the first lady who has ever said I was ugly, and moreover, I'm not a man - I'm a gentleman!“ The nurse who witnessed the whole incident was dying of laugh, much to the confusion of the painter.
From the earliest childhood Olga was known for her kind heart and desire to help others, on the other hand she could be very moody and bluntly honest. While her sisters were helping maids to clean the rooms and make the beds, Olga sometimes tended to be lazy and bossy. Empress herself complained about Olga´s behaviour from time to time. During the war she wrote to her husband: „Olga is always most unamiable about every proposition, though may end by doing what I wish. And when I am severe — sulks me.” The children were taught to ask politely for what they wanted, Olga could give orders without thinking about the effect of her words. Even as a small child she sometimes did so. There was a collection of wonderful carriages in a museum – all of them gilded and full of velvet. Little Olga sat in each of them for a while, until she selected the largest and the most beautiful one and claimed: “I´ll have this one!” and seriously ordered that the carriage would be sent to Tsarskoe Selo and prepared fo her daily drive. This order wasn´t of course obeyed.
As a teenager Olga was often reminded by her mother that she should be an example for her younger siblings, and also was scolded for her behaviour and rudeness. In 1909 Alexandra told her that she must be polite to the servants, who looked after her and did their best for her, and she should not make her nurse "nervous" when she was tired and not feeling well. Olga responded that she would try to do better but it wasn't easy because her n
urse became angry and cross with her for no good reason – but since Olga could be spoilt, lazy and capricious, there probably were some good reasons. Not long after that the Empress had to scold the eldest Grand Duchess, who once signed another of her letters with the nickname "Unmounted Cossack", again: "You are growing very big — don't be so wild and kick about and show your legs, it is not pretty. I never did so when your age or when I was smaller and younger even."
But Alexandra could be also gentle, when not satisfied with her daughter: "Mama kisses her girly tenderly and prays that God may help her to be ALWAYS a good loving Christian child. Show kindness to all, be gentle and loving, then all will love you.“ „You know so well to be sweet and gentle with me, be so towards sisters too."
Once Olga was not good during a ride through St. Petersburg and her nurse was quite desperate because all her efforts seemed to fail. Suddenly the Grand Duchess sat still, folding her hands into her lap. After a while she asked: „Did you see the policeman?“ The nurse answered that it wasn´t anything unusuall to see a policemen and that he wouldn´t touch her anyway. But the child was still nervous. „But this one was writing something. I was afraid he might have been writing' I saw Olga, and she was very naughty.'“ The nurse wondered where she had got the idea and the girl explained, that not long ago she had seen a drunken woman being arrested in the street and she was told the woman had been naughty and policemen did right to take her. So the nurse explained,that one had to be big and very naughty before the police would take one to the prison. Olga was not completely calmed by this and when they arrived home she instantly made particular inquiries as to whether a policeman had come while she was out. The very same day Olga went to see her parents and told them about the whole incident, claiming happily that one can live all his life without going to prison and then she asked her father if he had ever been in prison. The Emperor denied it with a smile. Olga´s eyes widened and she happily exclaimed: „Oh! How very good you must have been too!“ This whole incident shows that Olga and her sisters didn´t really knew how the life outside the palace works. For example when the milliner brought new hats for the Grand Duchesses, Olga told Margaret Eagar that Madame B. was the kindest woman in the world. „She went all the way to Paris,“ she said, „and brought us a present of those beautiful hats.“ Miss Eagar explained that it was madame's business, and that the hats had been bought, not given as a present. She looked a little puzzled and then said: „I am afraid you are making a mistake; you did not give her any money, and I know she did not go to mama for it.“
toys to sell in the shops?“ And the Darmstadt shopping experience wasn´t all that great. When she and Tatiana were brough to a toy shop, and they were told that they might choose what they liked for themselves, and also for relations and friends at home. Olga looked at the things, and finally chose the very smallest she could find, and said politely: „Thank you very much." The shop people showed her more attractive toys; she always replied: „No, thank you; I don't want to take it." When those with her wondered, why she would not buy the toys, explaining that the people would be very sad if she would not take more, she said: „But the beautiful toys belong to some other little girls, I am sure; and think how sad they would be if they came home and found we had taken them while they were out." She was told how the things were and she and Tatiana happily laid in a large stock. When they were older and served as nurses in hospital during the war, the two Grand Duchesses also went to town, because the lady-in-waiting, who usually picked up the girls from the hospital was detained and sent a carriage without an attendant. They ordered the carriage driver to stop in a shopping district and went into a store where they were not recognized because of their nursing uniforms. However, they discovered that they didn't know how to buy anything because they had never used money. The next day they asked one of their friends how to go about purchasing an item from a store. Olga had always had a better relationship with her father than mother and sometimes would even argue with Alexandra. She also complained about her mother´s constant illnesses, during which the daughters had to tend her more than usual, in a letter to Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna: “As usual her heart isn't well. It's all so unpleasant." It was Queen Maria of
Anna Vyrubova remembered Olga as „perhaps the cleverest of them all, her mind being so quick to grasp ideas, so absorbent of knowledge that she learned almost without application or close study. Her chief characteristics, I should say, were a strong will and a singularly straightfor. ward habit of thought 
and action. Admirable qualities in a woman, these same characteristics are often trying in childhood, and Olga as a little girl sometimes showed herself wilful and even disobedient. She had a hot temper which, however, she early learned to keep under control, and had she been allowed to live her natural life she would, I believe, have become a woman of influence and distinction. Extremely pretty, with brilliant blue eyes and a lovely complexion, Olga resembled her father in the fineness of her features, especially in her delicate, slightly tipped nose.“
And Gleb Botkin in his memoirs remembered the Grand Duchess as „an avid reader and a poetess of considerable talent. In spite of the difference in age Grand Duchess Olga was particularly friendly with my father, with whom she felt free to discuss anything that interested or worried her. She said always that my father was a 'deep well of profound ideas,' and even adressed him in all her letters as 'Dear Well.' Olga and I were working seriously on poetry, and the Grand Duchess became interested in my verses. Her interest naturally added more zeal to my endeavors, and from then forward I submitted every new piece of verse I wrote to Olga, which she analyzed very carefully, often giving me valuable advice, and exchanging opinions about rhymes, rhythms, and other problems which are supposed to preoccupy the poets. Thus it was that I came to know and appreciate fully the fine sensitive character of Grand Duchess Olga....She was by nature a thinker and as it later seemed to me, understood the general situation better than any member of her family, including even her parents. At least I had the impression that she had little illusions in regard to what the future held in store for them, and in consequence was often sad and worried. But there was a sweetness about her which prevented her from affecting anybody in a depressing manner, even when she herself felt depressed."
We can also add her description by A.A. Mordvinov: „Olga was at seventeen already quite a young lady, but she still behaved like a girl. She had beautiful light hair, her face - a wide oval - was purely Russian, not particularly regular, but her remarkably delicate coloring and her pretty smile, which disclosed remarkably even, white teeth, gave her a great freshness...Olga's character was even, good, with an almost angelic
kindness."
Olga used to be convinced that as the eldest child she should have special privilleges. And not only her, but all first-borns. When she was told the story of Joseph and his brethren, she exclaimed: „What a shame!“ The nurse said: „Yes; it was indeed a terrible shame for them to be so jealous and so cruel to their young brother.“ But the girl shook her head. „I mean it was a shame of the father. Joseph was not the eldest, and the beautiful coat should have been given to the eldest son; the other brothers knew that, and perhaps that was why they put him in the pit." All the explanations were useless and all her sympathies were given to Reuben. She was also very angry with King David because he killed Goliath, and said: „David was much younger and smaller, and poor Goliath never expected him to throw stones at him." Once there was a cinematograph exhibition for the children and some friends. One picture showed two little girls playing in a garden, each with a table before her covered with toys. Suddenly the bigger girl snatched a toy from the little one who, however, held on to it and refused to give it up. Foiled in her attempts, the elder seized a spoon and pounded the little one with it, who quickly relinquished the toy and began to cry. Little Tatiana wept to see the poor little one so ill-treated, but Olga was very quiet. After the exhibition was over she said: „I can't think that we saw the whole of that picture.“ The nurse said she hoped the end of it was that the naughty big sister was well punished, but Olga said: „I am sure that the lamb belonged at first to the big sister, and she was kind and lent it to her sister; then she wanted it back, and the little sister would not give it up, so she had to beat her."
While listening to the stories, Olga made often notes to them. While listening to the story of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" she was entirely horrified at the manners of the queens. "No queens," she said, "would be so rude." When the nurse read about Alice's journey by railway, Olga was exceedingly amused, and thought it very funny that she had not a compartment to herself. The nurse told her in travelling each person took one ticket and occupied just one seat in the train, and that some tickets cost more than others, and the highest-priced tickets meant a better place in the train. She listened and said: „And when you travel can anyone with the same kind of ticket you have get into the same carriage as you do?“ The nurse admited that yes. So Olga said: „If I were you, I should take a whole compartment for myself." But the nanny opposed: „But you forget that these other people might object to me, and say, 'I won't sit beside that person.'" "Oh no," said she. "Everyone in the whole world would be glad to sit beside you."
Another time Olga was reading about the English cutting off the Welsh Prince Llewellyn's head, and sending it to London. She was awfully shocked, and exclaimed: „Well, it was a good thing he was dead before they cut off his head; it would have hurt him most awfully if he was alive." Her nanny said that they were not always so kind, and sometimes cut the heads off living people, and later she would read of them doing such things. She said: „Well, I really think people are much better now than they used to be. I'm very glad I live now when people are so kind."
Of all his pupils Pierre Gilliard seemed to like Olga the best. When he first came into the palace in the summer of 1905, he was taken up to a small room furnished in English style. The door opened and the Empress came in, holding her two eldest daughters by the hand – she wanted to be present during the first lessons so she would know what kind of teacher Gillard was. When the girls sat at each end of the table, the new tutor could finally examine them. Later he recalled the first impression: „Olga, the eldest of the Grand-Duchesses, was a girl of ten, very fair, and with sparkling, mischievous eyes and a slightly retroussé nose. She examined me with a look which seemed from the first moment to be searching for the weak point in my armor, but there was something so pure and frank about the child that one liked her straight off.“ He also noted that he had expected the girls to be more advanced than they actually were – years after that another teacher proclaimed the Imperial children being less educated than an average secondary school student.
As Gilliard was coming to know the girls better, he noticed that Olga possessed a remarkably quick brain, had good reasoning powers as well as initiative, also a very independent manner and a gift for swift and entertaining repartee. „She gave me a certain amount of trouble at first, but our early skirmishes were soon succeeded by relations of frank cordiality. She picked up everything extremely quickly, and always managed to give an original turn to what she learned. I well remember how, in one of our first grammar lessons, when I was explaining the formation of the verbs and the use of the auxiliaries, she suddenly interrupted me with: "I see, monsieur. The auxiliaries are the servants of the verbs. It's only poor 'avoir' which has to shift for itself."
Although Olga was definitely the most intelligent of the children, she disapointed her teachers in the end. „Olga Nicolaievna did not fulfil the hopes I had set upon her. Her fine intellect failed to find the elements necessary to its development. Instead of making progress she began to go back. Her sisters had ever had but little taste for learning, their gifts being of the practical order.“
Unlike her siblings Olga enjoyed reading and she read a lot even apart the lessons. It wasn´t unusuall for her to came into mother´s room, take a book from the shelf and say playfully: „You must wait Mama, I must find out if the book is a proper one for you to read!“ She liked historical books very much (although history lessons were far from being her favourite) usually in English and French. Once Gilliard gave her „Les Misérables“ for reading. He was used to indicate by notes in the margin the passages and chapters she was to leave out, them being either uninteresting or too difficult, and later he gave her a summary of those. Once he forgot to do so and when Olga started to read the description of the battle of Waterloo, she handed a list of words she didn´t understand to Gilliard. He couldn´t believe his eyes to see in it „it the word which is forever associated with the name of the officer who commanded the Guard.“ He asked the girl for the book to verify his marginal note and realized his omission. To avoid a delicate eplanation Gilliard without a word struck out the incriminated word and handed the list back to the Grand Duchess. She immediately protested: "Why, you've struck out the word I asked papa about yesterday!“ Gilliard was as thunderstruck. All he managed to say was: „What! You asked your...“ "Yes,“ said Olga, „and he asked me how I'd heard of it, and then said it was a very strong word which must not be repeated, though in the mouth of that general it was the finest word in the French language." – Just a few hours later the tutor met the Tsar while walking in the park. The Emperor took him on one side and said in a very serious tone: "You are teaching my daughters a very curious vocabulary, monsieur. . . . " But then the Tsar burst out laughing: "Don't worry, monsieur. I quite realised what happened so I told my daughter that the word was one of the French "army's greatest claims to fame."
Olga was very religious and passionately devoted to Orthodox church. She made her first confession in Moscow, during Lent in 1903. There she received a gift from the children of the city: an icon of Virgin Mary, whose face and hands were painted and all draperies executed with pearls. Since she was a baby she visited the church regularly. It was in that time when she started to listen what was said there, when she came home and told her nanny: „The priest prayed for mama and papa, and Tatiana and me, the soldiers and the sailors, the poor sick people, and the apples and pears, and Madame G." The nurse exclaimed at this last, so she said: "But I heard them say 'Maria Fyodorovna.'" The nurse explained that they meant her grandmama. She said, "No, Amama is called Amama, and your Majesty, but not Maria Fyodorovna." „And also Marie Feodorovna," insisted the nurse. But Olga replied: „No one has more than two names, and I am quite sure Madame G. would be very much pleased if she knew that the priests prayed for her in church."
When princess Elisabet of Hesse died, it was right before Christmas. On Christmas morning Olga awoke and first thing she asked was: „Did God send for cousin Ella's body in the night?“ The nurse answered: "Oh no, dear, not yet." The girl was greatly disappointed, and said: "I thought He would have sent for her to keep Christmas with Him."
But her habit to think about everything was there when she was even smaller. On one occasion Tatiana told Olga a story which ended: „So my little girl and my niece went into the wood and a big wolf ate my little girl, so she went to heaven." "Oh no!" cried Olga. „She could not have gone to heaven, because the wolf ate her, and God does not allow wolves to go to heaven. She is walking about the wood inside the wolf." Tatiana calmly accepted this correction.
Olga was also probably the most sensitive of her siblings. Since childhood she suffered with those who had some grief or pain. While in Poland she saw people kneeling in the road whenever the children's carriage approached. The little Grand Duchess used to look at them with tears in her eyes and beg her nurse to tell them not to do it. When she grew older she sacrificed her own small allowance to support people in need – everything in private since she didn´t desire any attention for herself. When she was twenty and began to have some of her money in her own hands, the first thing she did was to ask her mother to allow her to pay for a crippled child to be treated in a sanatorium. On her drives she had often seen this child hobbling about on crutches, and had heard that the parents were poor and could not afford a long and costly treatment. She had at once begun to put aside her small monthly allowance to go towards paying for the treatment. Her modesty was greatly admired among those who knew her. One of them was baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden.
In her book Sophie writes about the eldest Grand Duchess: „The girls were all very good-looking. The eldest, the Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaevna, was fair and tall, with smiling blue eyes, a somewhat short nose, which she called „my humble snub," and lovely teeth. She had a remarkably graceful figure and was a beautiful rider and dancer. She was the cleverest of the sisters, and was very musical, having, her teachers said, an "absolutely correct ear." She could play by ear anything she had heard, and could transpose' complicated pieces of music, play the most difficult accompaniments at sight, and her touch on the piano was delightful. She sang prettily in a mezzosoprano. She was lazy at practising, but when the spirit moved her she would play by the hour. Olga Nicolaevna was very straightforward, sometimes too outspoken, but always sincere. She had great charm, and could be the merriest of the merry. When she was a schoolgirl, her unfortunate teachers had every possible practical joke played on them by her. When she grew up, she was always ready for any amusement. She was generous, and an appeal to her met with immediate response. "Oh, one must help poor so-and-so. I must do it somehow," she would say....Olga Nicolaevna was devoted to her father. The horror of the Revolution told on her more keenly than on any of the others. She changed completely, and all her bright spirits disappeared.“
When Olga reached her 16, she was considered an adult and there was a great ball to her honour at Livadia. She received for the occasion a beautiful diamond ring and a necklace of diamonds and pearls.
Her first long gown was pink and filmy, and the Grand Duchess was flushed and fair in her excitement. Her blonde abundant hair was worn for the first time coiled up young.lady fashion, and Olga bore herself as the central figure of the festivities with a modesty and a dignity which greatly pleased her parents. There was dancing in the great state dining room on the first floor, the glass doors to the courtyard thrown open the music of the unseen orchestra floating in from the rose garden. It was a very clear and warm night, and the gowns and jewels of the women and the brilliant uniforms of the men made a striking spectacle under the blaze of the electric lights. The ball ended in a cotillion and a sumptuous supper served on small tables in the ballroom.
This was only a beginning of a series of festivities which Olga and a little later her sister Tatiana enjoyed. Besides the dances given at Livadia that year, large functions attended by practically everyone in the neighborhood who had Court entrée, there were a number of very brilliant balls given in honor of Olga and Tatiana after the family returned to Tsarskoe Selo. Two of these were given by the Grand Dukes Peter and George and the girls enjoyed them so much that they begged for another before Christmas. They looked very attractive, the one fair and the other dark.
Some time before that Olga had been given her own regiment as was the tradition. It was the 3rd Hussar Yelizavetgradsky regiment. She petitioned that the troops might wear white fur-lined cloaks with their dress uniforms, which spurred them to add the following to their regimental song:
We Hussars are not of foil,
We are all of damask steel.
How we value Olga's name,
Our white cloaks and our flag of fame!
During the war Olga became, to her great pleasure, also a chief of another regiment: the 2nd Kubansky Platustunsky battalion
As the eldest daughter of the wealthiest man in the world Olga was one of the most desirable brides in Europe. The foreign matches were, however, a difficult question because of the religion. Also the Emperor and Empress considered a loveless marriage for their daughters impossible. Alexandra wrote: „...with anguish I think of their future - so unknown! Well, all must be placed into God's hands with trust and faith. Life is a riddle, the future hidden behind a curtain, and when I look at our big Olga, my heart fills with emotion and wondering as to what is in store for her - what will her lot be?"
There was a faint hope that Olga could marry Prince Edward of great Britain (called David within the family). When she was fifteen, a group of officers aboard the imperial yacht teased her giving her a portrait of him cut out from a newspaper, as a present for her nameday. “Olga laughed at it long and hard," Tatiana wrote to her aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrova, “and not one of the officers wishes to confess that he has done it. Such swines, aren't they?"
Probably the first man to officialy ask for Olga´s hand was her father´s first cousin Prince Christopher of Greece. In early 1914, while he was stying with his sister Maria Georgievna and her husband Grand Duke George Mikhailovich at their Crimean estate of Harax, he attended a reception at whichc the 18-years-old Olga was also present. She then returned to Livadia, and Prince was „suddenly overcome with a apssionate desire“ to propose the Emperor for her hand. His sister´s lady-in-waiting wrote: "He told me, that he greatly admired the Grand Duchess Olga...and asked me if I thought he had any chance. To me this was nothing very new, as I was accustomed to his short-lived enthusiasms, but this time I decided it would be a very good idea. After endless discussion, we decided to speak to his sister, the Grand Duchess George, and she suggested, 'Why not try?' So, having been given a stiff whisky and soda, he started for Livadia that afternoon. Whilst he was away, we three, the Grand Duchess, Zoia [the Baroness's daughter] and I, walked about aimlessly. We worked ourselves into a perfect fever of excitement. When we heard the wheels of the car returning we nearly broke our necks trying to get to the door. I slid down the staircase in my haste but neither I nor anyone else took the least notice of that. He looked pale but dignified. We imagined he would have returned triumphant with a ring on his finger. Pushing him into the small writing room, we yelled at him, 'Well?' He slumped into a chair, and with a bewildered expression said, 'I don't know.' 'What do you mean, you fool, you don't know?' 'Well, I don't.' Then, when we had ceased insulting him, he told us that the Emperor had been most kind but said firmly, 'Olga is too young to think of such a thing as marriage yet.“
In fact the Emperor had already had a clear idea about his future son-in-law. His choice was the Crown Prince Carol of Romania. Nicolas and Alexandra had already invited him and his parents to Tsarskoe Selo before, and though nor Olga, neither Carol showed any real interest of each other, the Tsar didn´t give up his hope. In 1914 the Imperial family made a visit to Romania on the Standart, the Romanian Royal family meeting the yacht at Constanza, on the Black Sea. During this visit Olga struggled to make small talk with the Romanian prince. However Carol's mother, Queen Maria of
She may also have been still thinking of Pavel Voronov – an officer from Standart whom she fell in love with in 1913. She must have known this relationship was hopeless since she was a Grand Duchess, but it still hurt when Voronov got married several months after she had met him. She wrote into her diary on his wedding day: “God grant him good fortune, my beloved. It's sad, distressing."
But once an adult Grand Duchess Olga found herself in the spinning world of possible marriages. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Elder known as aunt Miechen, once sent an official proposal for Olga´s hand for her son Boris Vladimirovich. The Empress having received the proposal during the stay at Peterhof, was according to Anna Vyrubova reduced „to mortified tears“. No only Boris was a lot older than Olga, but he was very well known in questionable circles in Paris and the mere suggestion of a marriage with one of the innocent Imperial daughters was a nightmare for Alexandra. The proposal was of course rejected, and this was never forgiven by Maria Pavlovna, who considered the affairs of her son as natural things for a man. Alexandra wrote to Nicolas: „An inexperienced girl would suffer terribly, to have her husband 4, or 5th hand or more.” She also added, that other things were occupying Olga´s mind at that time.
Olga was destined to see many suffering. She was confronted with human violence for the first time when she was only 15 years old, when she was a witness to the assassination of the government minister Pyotr Stolypin during a performance at the Kiev Opera House. "Olga and Tatiana had followed me back to the box and saw everything that happened," Nicholas wrote to his mother on September 10, 1911. 
Olga, unlike Tatiana, didn´t cry. But she had troubled sleep for a long time. Only three years later the first world war broke out and her life changed completely. Tsarina Alexandra, always seeing herself as motherof the nation and also feeling pity with the soldiers, founded several hospitals. Together with her Olga and Tatiana she became a nurse. When the wounded from the battle field started to flow into the hospitals, they weren´t spared almost nothing. For the sensitive Olga it was crucial to see all the pain and waste of the war. She was presented during operations, treated the wounded afterwards, tried to help them forget their pain at least for a little while. But this princess born to silk and velvets was too fragile to endure the suffering of the others for too long. She was reported by Maria to break three panes of window with her umbrella. On another occasion she destroyed items in a cloakroom when she was „in a rage“. On October 19th, 1915, she was assigned office work at the hospital, because she was too exhausted and unnerved to continue in her work. She was given arsenic injections, at the time considered a treatment for depression or nervous disorders. Since then Olga only supervised the hospital wards because she had "overtired herself" and became "nervous and anaemic."
After she overcame her nervous breakdown, Olga had finally since the war had started some time to look around. On the other hand there were millions of Russian men and boys fighting for their country on the front, on the other hand there were some, that didn´t even bother to go to the front. One of them, to Olga´s great shame and anger, was Irina´s husband Felix Yussupov, the man who eventually murdered Rasputin in December 1916. He had had taken advantage of a law permitting men who were only sons to avoid military service. "Felix is a 'downright civilian', dressed all in brown, walked to and fro about the room, searching in some bookcases with magazines and virtually doing nothing; an utterly unpleasant impression he makes -- a man idling in such times," Olga wrote to her father on March 5, 1915 after paying a visit to the Yussupovs. She herself was still visiting the hospital, though didn´t all the nursing as before. She made friends among the fellow nurses and when they found some time, liked to chat with them.In July 1915, while discussing the wedding of an acquaintance with them, Olga said she understood why the ancestry of the groom's German grandmother was being kept hidden. "Of course he has to conceal it," she burst out. "I quite understand him, she may perhaps be a real bloodthirsty German!“ This hurt her mother, who had been born in Germany, although she repeatedly claimed to feel Russian.
Although working in the hospital was hard, it was also the period when Olga lived some of the most beautiful moments of her life. Looking into her diary, we can see quite often one name there – Mitya. According to Valentina Chebotareva, a woman who nursed with Olga, this Mitya was in fact a wounded soldier Dmitri Chakh-Bagov. Chebotareva wrote that Olga's love for him was "pure, naive, without hope" and that she tried to avoid revealing her feelings to the others. She talked to him regularly on the telephone, was depressed when he left the hospital, and jumped about exuberantly when she received a message from him. Dmitri adored Olga in return and often talked about killing Rasputin for her if she only gave the word, because it was the duty of an officer to protect the Imperial family even against their will. However, somme reported that he showed other officers the letters Olga had written to him when he was drunk.
There was also another young man, named Volodia Volkomski, who was very fond of her. Alexandra wrote to Nicolas in 1916 that he “always has a smile or two for her."
In late February 1917 Olga and her brother as first of all the children succumbed to the attack of measels, they caught it from one of the Tsarevich's friends, who had been spending the week-end at the Palace. Olga had high temperature around 39,9 (103 F) and soon followed complications, in Olga´s case pericarditis superneved. Because of her serious condition Olga lost contact with the outside world and could only guess what was happening outside. On March 13th, when the rebels from near Petersburg came to Tsarskoe Selo, she only heard several shots. When she asked Lily Dehn what the noise signified, Lily said: „Darling, I don't know - it's nothing. The hard frost makes everything sound much more.“ „But are you sure, Lili?" asked anxiously the Grand Duchess. „Even Mamma seems nervous, we're so worried about her heart; she's most certainly overtiring herself - do ask her to rest.“
When Olga began to recover, she already knew, that everything she had feared had come true. The Revolution swept through Russia, her father abdicated and she was together with her family under house arrest in Alexander palace. 
Unlike her younger sisters she realised all too well how serious things were becoming. Little later she told to Sophie Buxhoeveden that she and Tatiana put on brave faces for their parents' sake. All that was left of her own world was her beloved family, and Olga tried to be patient, drawing comfort from her religion and people she loved. To her mother she wrote a poem in April 1917, as if an apology for all the conflict they used to have. "You are filled with anguish for the sufferings of others. And no one's grief has ever passed you by....” – all those beautiful words were born in the head of 21-years-old woman. But during the captivity Olga lost her bright beauty, as her spiritual turmoil marked her face. Within several months she aged, lost a lot of weight and looked like a middle aged woman.
After the family was moved to Siberian city of Tobolsk, Alexandra wrote to one of her friends: „They have all grown, Marie is now much thinner, the fourth is stout and small. Tatiana, helps everyone and everywhere, as usual; Olga is lazy, but they are all one in spirit.“ It was reported, that while still in Tsarskoe Selo her father gave Olga a small revolver, which she concealed in a boot. She probably had it still with her in Tobolsk. But before she was transferred to Ekaterinburg, Colonel Kobylynsky, their sympathetic jailer, pleaded the Grand duchess to surrender the weapon. Olga reluctantly gave up her gun and was left unarmed. That was probably even more stressing for her during the journey to Ekaterinburg.
While sailing on the steamer “Rus”, the Grand Duchesses were not allowed to lock their cabin. In the night the drunk guards would burst in, they would threaten and harras the girls, who were totally shocked and scared. One of their companion, English tutor Gibbs later wrote that their terrified screams haunted him till the end of his life. He couldn´t help them since he was locked in his cabin. According one of the guards who was present on the Rus that night, all were so drunk that they fortunatelly weren´t able to harm the Grand Duchesses physicaly.
Despite the horrible experience Olga never forgot her Christian thinking and she was greatly distressed when she saw one of the guards slip from a ladder and injure his foot. She ran to the man and explained that she had been a nurse during the war and wanted to look at his foot. He refused her offer of treatment. All through the afternoon, Olga fretted over the guard, whom she called "her poor fellow."
Ekaterinburg was the last place Olga visited in her life. From some of the soldiers who guarded the Imperial family, we have a report about what impression she made on them: „The eldest, Olga Nicolaevna, was, like her brother, pale and sickly, but that did not prevent her from being boisterous. Her eyes, most of the time, appeared sad and tired. During the walk she stood apart from her sisters and looked sadly into the distance. She played the piano more often than her sisters, and when she would play a piece, she would choose something sad and plaintive.“ Another one reports: „The eldest daughter stayed mostly away from her younger sisters, behaving like her arrogant mother. By the end, she was only skin and bone.“
Once Olga spoke to a Lett while they were out walking and asked where he had served; he answered that he had been in a Grenadier Regiment where he had sometimes seen the daughters of the Emperor. Olga called to Nicolas: “Papa, it’s our grenadier!” Nicolas stepped nearer and said: “But I know you, you served in my Grenadier Guards Regiment.” He said “Good day,” perhaps in the hope of receiving, “We wish you health.” Instead he got only another “Good day” back.
During her stay in the Ipatiev house Olga withdrew even more from everyone. She read a lot still, if not Bible, then one of her books she treasured so much she had taken them with her from Tsarskoe Selo. Among them was for example „Princess and a goblin“ given to little Olga by her aunt Irene. There was also a book about the son of ex-Emperor Napoleon. In this book Pierre Gilliard later found two poems. They were both prayers written by Olga. In both of them Olga begged her heavenly Father to give her strengh to carry the cross set upon her back.
Not long after writing this prayer, Olga was finally faced with her destiny. It was certainly not the destiny anyone would have predicted when she was born in 1895. She could have been Queen or Empress, she could have had children and a family of her own. All that was denied her. Her life ended in the early morning hours of July 17th 1918 in the cellar in Ekaterinburg.
