Tatiana being held by her uncle Ernst on the Standart, 1912
Tatiana, c. 1912
The tsar's second daughter, Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova was a model daughter, dutiful and obedient. She was strong and courageous, becoming a nurse during World War I and overseeing surgeries and amputations.
On June 10 (May 29 O.S.), 1897, Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova was born, the second child and daughter of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna. Another girl was not received well by the Russians, who once again started praying for a male heir. "My God, it is again a daughter. What will the nation say, what will the nation say?" Alexandra wept when she realized it was another girl: “everyone was disappointed as they had been hoping for a son.” At 8.75 pounds and 54 centimeters, Tatiana was by no means a small baby, but she was still considerably lighter than her four siblings would be; forceps were used in the birth, as they had been for her elder sister Olga. Already the baby Tatiana had pathetic dark eyes as well as a “tiny and beautiful mouth” that caused her to resemble her mother.¹
As a young child, Tatiana was playful and sharp in her movements, very pretty and graceful.¹ She had marked concern for others; when one of her undernurses had to marry and leave her, Tatiana wrote an admonishing but touching letter to the groom, Vladislav, telling him to “be good” with his new wife. Later, whenever Vladislav sent news back that he was being good, Tatiana would look pleased and say, “Well, I am glad.” Another time, one of her father’s corgis, of whom he was very fond, leapt up on her and caused her much terror and tears. Her nanny held her and told her, “Poor Sheilka! she did not mean to hurt you; she only wanted to say ‘Good-morning’ to you.” Tatiana, unconvinced by the dubious logic, remonstrated bitterly, “Is that all? I don’t think she is very polite; she could have said it to my face, not my back.”¹³
Her character in adolescence was more serious and grave, more responsible and devotional. She had a sharp, subtle sense of humor with her friends and family, but with her bashful and reserved nature, Tatiana often came across as haughty to strangers.⁸ The truth was that she was “so terribly embarrassed and frightened” at the bewildering influx of people she would meet.¹⁰ Her austere and polite exterior masked a friendly, gentle heart which “longed pathetically for friends.”⁹ Tatiana’s more poetic and abstract side¹was masked by the relentless pragmatism and love of details¹⁶—it was even said she had utterly no liking for art—that had characterized her mother before her. Indeed, Tatiana’s relationship with her mother Alexandra remained close throughout her entire life; Tatiana was the only one who could grasp Alexandra’s convictions—the other children, the mother complained, always thought they were right and never understood. “It was not that her sisters loved their mother any less,” Tatiana’s French tutor Pierre Gilliard explained, “but Tatiana knew how to surround her with unwearing attentions and never gave way to her own capricious impulses.”¹⁴ Favors from either parent were best obtained through Tatiana, who won them over with her selfless nature. She never hesitated to sacrifice her own plans to those of her parents.¹⁶
Tatiana being held by her uncle Ernst on the Standart, 1912
Tatiana, c. 1912
Tatiana was also close with her elder sister Olga; together, the two were known as “the big pair” or “the big ones,” eliciting countless comparisons between the two of them. The relationship seemed to benefit both, where Tatiana, with “her good looks and her art of self-assertion” took a more public role while Olga enjoyed a more private one. The general opinion echoed that of Gilliard: Tatiana was not so gifted, not so intelligent as her older sister, but more emotionally balanced and disciplined.¹⁴
Tatiana was the most popular sister among the public,⁹ mainly from her nursing work. She was beautiful, too, and was often called the most beautiful of the sisters—fitting, since she loved clothes and wore them, even the oldest ones, with grace. Tatiana's wide-set grey eyes and dark, possibly even auburn hair, lent her a “mystical beauty” that separated her from the more earthy looks of her sisters. Semyon Pavlov remarked that he had sometimes seen an expression in her eyes that he had seen in the eyes of the blind. She was the tallest of all the children, and impossibly thin.¹⁸
During World War I, Olga, Tatiana, and Alexandra became nurses. While Olga was not suited for nursing, Alexandra and Tatiana were. Tatiana was born to nurse: serious, passionate, and focused. She was decisive and precise yet kind and gentle at the same time and could perform gruesome surgeries without so much wincing and was described as the model Sister of Mercy. From her nursing, she fell in love with two men: Dmitri Malama and Vladimir Kiknadze. However, she could not have married either of them since they were so far below her rank, a fact which Alexandra lamented in Malama's case, declaring that the suitable candidates were not as nice. Kiknadze, however, was a different case. Fellow nurses saw him as a dangerous flirt and sent him away for Tatiana's safety.¹
Like the rest of her family, Tatiana was in the dark about the hatred for the Romanovs, but she would eventually feel its effects when she and her family were imprisoned under house arrest. Then they were moved to Tobolsk and finally to Ekaterinburg. The guards at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg considered her haughty and stern, but she smiled charmingly when she met polite and decent guards. She was thought of as the decided leader of the children, and Yakov Yurovsky, the man who would eventually organize her murder, considered her to be the most intelligent. And indeed, to those who saw her in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg, she seemed set apart from the others: "quite different from her sisters. You recognised in her the same features that were in her mother—the same nature and the same character. You felt that she was the daughter of an emperor. ... If any questions arose it was always Tatiana who was appealed to. She was nearer to her mother than the other children; and it seemed that she loved her mother more than her father."¹⁸
The family was killed on July 17, 1918. Tatiana was only twenty-one.
"It is hard that we cannot see each other, but God will surely help us, and we will meet again in better times."
Tatiana Nikolaevna
1897-1918
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