Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia was the third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
During her lifetime, Maria, too young to become a Red Cross nurse like her elder sisters during World War I, was patroness of a hospital and instead visited wounded soldiers. Throughout her lifetime she was noted for her interest in the lives of the soldiers. The flirtatious Maria had a number of innocent crushes on the young men she met, beginning in early childhood. She hoped to marry and have a large family.
She was an elder sister of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, whose alleged escape from the assassination of the imperial family was rumored for nearly 90 years. However, it was later proven that Anastasia did not escape and that those who claimed to be her were imposters. In the 1990s, it was suggested that Maria might have been the grand duchess whose remains were missing from the Romanov grave that was discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia and exhumed in 1991. Further remains were discovered in 2007, and DNA analysis subsequently proved that the entire Imperial family had been murdered in 1918. A funeral for the remains of Maria and Alexei to be buried with their family in October 2015 was postponed indefinitely by the Russian Orthodox Church, which took custody of the remains in December and declared without explanation that the case required further study; the 44 partial bone fragments remain stored in a Russian state repository.
Early life
Maria was born on 26 June 1899. She was the third child and daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. She weighed 4.5 kg at birth. The birth of a third daughter led to widespread disappointment in Russia. Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Nicholas' cousin, wrote, "And so there's no Heir. The whole of Russia will be disappointed by this news." Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, Alexandra's grandmother and Maria's great-grandmother, wrote, "I regret the third girl for the country. I know that an heir would be more welcome than a daughter." Nicholas insisted that he was happy with Maria's birth, and he told Alexandra "I dare complain the least, having such happiness on earth, having a treasure like you my beloved Alix, and already the three little cherubs."As a toddler, little Maria once escaped from her bath and ran naked up and down the palace corridor while her distracted Irish nurse, Margaretta Eagar, who loved politics, discussed the Dreyfus Affair with a friend. "Fortunately, I arrived just at that moment, picked her up and carried her back to Miss Eagar, who was still talking about Dreyfus," recalled her aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia.
Maria's siblings were Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, and Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. Maria's Russian title is most precisely translated as "Grand Princess", meaning that Maria, as an "Imperial Highness" was higher in rank than other Princesses in Europe who were "Royal Highnesses". "Grand Duchess" is the most widely used English translation of the title. However, in keeping with her parents' desire to raise Maria and her siblings simply, even servants addressed the Grand Duchess by her first name and patronym, Maria Nikolaevna. She was also called by the French version of her name, "Marie", or by the Russian nicknames "Masha" or "Mashka".
Maria and her younger sister, Anastasia, were known within the family as "The Little Pair". The two girls shared a room, often wore variations of the same dress, and spent much of their time together. Their older sisters, Olga and Tatiana, also shared a room and were known as "The Big Pair". The four girls sometimes signed letters using the nickname OTMA, which was derived from the first letters of their first names.
Maria and Anastasia were dressed similarly for special occasions, when they wore variations of the same dress. She tended to be dominated by her enthusiastic and energetic younger sister. When Anastasia tripped people who walked by, teased others or caused a scene with her dramatics, Maria always tried to apologize, though she could never stop her younger sister. Her mother's friend Lili Dehn said that while Maria was not as lively as her three sisters, she knew her own mind.
Young Maria enjoyed innocent flirtations with the young soldiers she encountered at the palace and on family holidays. She particularly loved children and, had she not been a Grand Duchess, would have loved nothing more than to marry a Russian soldier and raise a large family. Maria was fond of soldiers from a very early age, according to Margaretta Eagar:
Until his own assassination in 1979, her first cousin Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, kept a photograph of Maria beside his bed in memory of the crush he had upon her. In 1910, Louis met the Romanov sisters. He later reflected that "they were lovely, and terribly sweet, far more beautiful than their photographs," and he said that "I was crackers about Marie, and was determined to marry her. She was absolutely lovely."
At age eleven, Maria apparently developed a painful crush on one of the young men she had met. "Try not to let your thoughts dwell too much on him, that's what our Friend said," Alexandra wrote to her on 6 December 1910. Alexandra advised her third daughter to keep her feelings hidden because others might say unkind things to her about her crush. "One must not let others see what one feels inside, when one knows it's considered not proper. I know he likes you as a little sister and would like to help you not to care too much, because he knows you, a little Grand Duchess, must not care for him so."
In 1917, Prince Carol of Romania visited Russia. Before he left for Moscow on 26 January, he made a formal proposal for Maria's hand. Nicholas "good-naturedly laughed the Prince's proposal aside" because Maria "was nothing more than a schoolgirl." Queen Marie of Romania was hopeful about "a marriage for Carol with one of Nicky's daughters," and she found the fact that Nicholas considered the match "flattering and... a good sign!"
Like her younger sister Anastasia, Maria visited wounded soldiers at a private hospital on the grounds of the palace at Tsarskoye Selo during World War I. The two teenagers, who were too young to become nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played games of checkers and billiards with the soldiers and attempted to uplift their spirits. A wounded soldier named Dmitri signed Maria's commonplace book and addressed her by one of her nicknames: "the famous Mandrifolie".
File:MariaAnastasiasoldiers1915.jpg|alt=photograph|left|thumb|Grand Duchess Maria and Anastasia pose with wounded soldiers while visiting the hospital located into the Feodorovsky Gorodok village, 1915. All the four OTMA sisters served there daily during the war.
During the war, Maria and Anastasia also paid a visit to a nurses' school and helped to tend to the children. She wrote her father that she thought of him when she was feeding the children and cleaned the gruel running down their chins with a spoon. For a break during the war, Maria, her sisters and mother sometimes visited the Tsar and Tsarevich Alexei at the war headquarters in Mogilev. During these visits, Maria developed an attraction to Nikolai Dmitrievich Demenkov, an officer of the day at the Tsar's Headquarters. When the women returned to Tsarskoye Selo, Maria often asked her father to give her regards to Demenkov and sometimes jokingly signed her letters to the Tsar "Mrs. Demenkov".
Appearance and personality
Maria was a noted beauty. She had light brown hair and large blue eyes that were known in the family as "Marie's saucers." Maria, Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Maria's great-aunt, declared that Maria was "a real beauty... with enormous blue eyes." Her mother's friend Lili Dehn wrote that she "was exceeding fair, dowered with the classic beauty of the Romanoffs." A gentleman at the Imperial court said that the infant Maria "had the face of one of Botticelli's angels." Her French tutor Pierre Gilliard said Maria was tall and well-built, with rosy cheeks. Tatiana Botkina thought the expression in Maria's eyes was "soft and gentle". Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, her mother's lady-in-waiting, reflected that " was like Olga in colouring and features, but all on a more vivid scale. She had the same charming smile, the same shape of face." She would also go onto say that her eyes were "magnificent, of a deep blue," and that "her hair had golden lights in it."Like her grandfather Alexander III of Russia, Maria was unusually strong. She sometimes amused herself by demonstrating how she could lift her tutors off the ground.
Maria had a talent for drawing and sketched well, always using her left hand. Sophie Buxhoevedon described Maria as the only artistically talented one of her sisters. However, Maria was uninterested in her schoolwork.
Maria could be stubborn and lazy. Her mother complained in one letter that Maria was grumpy and "bellowed" at the people who irritated her. Maria's moodiness coincided with her menstrual period, which the Tsarina and her daughters referred to as a visit from "Madame Becker".
Maria had a kind, sweet personality. Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia nicknamed her "The Amiable Baby" because of her good nature.
Margaretta Eagar said that "Maria was born good... with the very smallest trace of original sin as possible." According to Eagar, her older sisters Olga and Tatiana once referred to Maria as their "stepsister" because she was so good and never got into trouble. When she stole biscuits from her mother's tea table, Nicholas said that he was relieved "to see she is only a human child" because he "was always afraid of the wings growing."
Maria's sisters took advantage of her. Her sisters nicknamed her "fat little bow-wow". In 1910, Maria wrote Alexandra a letter asking to give Olga her own room and allow her to let down her dresses. Maria tried to persuade her mother that it was her own idea to write the letter, including at the end of the letter "P.S. It was my idea to write to you."Maria was very close to her father. Eagar noted that Maria's love for her father was "marked" and she often tried to escape from the nursery to "go to Papa". When Nicholas was ill with typhoid, she covered a miniature portrait of him with kisses every night. As she and her family waited for her father to return to Tsarskoye Selo after his abdication, she grew ill with measles. As she became delirious, she kept repeating, "Oh, I did so want to be up when Papa comes" until she lost consciousness.
As the middle child of the family, Maria felt insecure about her role and worried that she was not as loved as her siblings were. She apparently worried that her mother preferred Anastasia to her, as Alexandra sent her a note "I have no secrets with Anastasia, I do not like secrets." Alexandra sent Maria another note: "Sweet child, you must promise me never again to think that nobody loves you. How did such an extraordinary idea get into your little head? Get it quickly out again." Feeling excluded by her older sisters, Maria tried to befriend her cousin Princess Irina Alexandrovna, but Alexandra warned her that this would only make her sisters "imagine... that you do not want to be with them."