#romanov family

[roses-of-the-romanovs]

The foreheads are also very different. It's simply the beard. I could easily see how a stranger could see the mustache and beard and think it is one when it is actually the other.

Hot take: If Nicholas II and George V didn't have similar beards, no one would think they look alike. Their eyes are very different; if you could see their whole faces, I don't think people would see much of a resemblance.

[otmaaromanovas]

A French writer recalls meeting the Romanov sisters

During WWI, French journalist and writer Amélie de Néry, who went by the pen name Marylie Markovitch, was invited to have a private audience with Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. During this meeting, she was introduced to the four Grand Duchesses by the Tsarina.

In January 1916, her recollections were condensed and published in multiple newspapers throughout America and Europe. She wrote:

With a charming smile she took my hand and told me she was very happy to receive a representative of the women of France, who, like their sisters in Russia, had so bravely borne their burden of anxiety during this cruel war. 'Let me introduce you to my daughters,' she said as soon as I thanked her for granting me an audience. 'This is Tatiana.' Grand Duchess Tatiana also shook hands with me and said she was very much interested in meeting a woman journalist for the first time. She is a beautiful girl, with big blue eyes, full of life, illuminating her fair, young face. At this moment the door opened and a young girl, also in the garb of a sister of mercy, entered the room. 'And here is Olga, my little French daughter' said the czarina. Grand duchess Olga is no less beautiful and charming than her younger sister, but she is more calm and there is something of the serenity of the mystic about her. As the czarina referred to her stay in Paris, it seemed to me as if a dreamy expression came into the daughter's dark soulful eyes. ‘Colonel de Vitchkowsky will introduce you to my two other daughters,' said the czarina, as she parted from me to take up her duties in the operating room; and once more I felt the firm grip of her hand. The two little grand duchesses, Marie and Anastasia, were in the convalescent ward. I found that both, wearing plain white dresses and red hats, standing close to an officer who, seated on the window sill, was playing the balalaika. They both shook hands with me and the music went on.

📍SOURCES: Amélie de Néry; LA Raconteuce, ‘Find Writer Finds Czarina Hard At Work’, El Paso Herald newspaper, 6 January 1916. Her full recollections can be found in Amélie de Néry, ‘L’Imperatrice en Voile Blanc’ in Revue Des Deux Mondes, (1916), p. 566

📍PHOTOS: Photograph albums of the Grand Duchesses, public domain; Photographs of Amélie de Néry: Portrait de Mme Marlie [sic] Markovitch, Femina publication, 122, February 1906, p. 75, public domain

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Heinrich von Angeli, Alexandra Feodorovna, Tsarina of Russia (1896/1897)

via wikimedia commons

[roses-of-the-romanovs]

The Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna in 1911. Doesn’t she remind you of the Little Mermaid?

[maurineromanovs]

Costume Ball of winter palace 1903 Romanovs

[la-belle-histoire]

Grand Duchess Elizabeta Feodorovna (Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine), 1878.

[ella-indigo]

Finally, in big size: Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia with their brother, baby Tsarevich Alexei, in 1904.

This is one of my favourite OTMAA pictures.

[foreverinthepagesofhistoryy]

Extremely rare photo of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (sitting on the balcony), Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna (making a funny face), and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna (crouching), 1912

Source: Hessian State Archives

[ssselthrovv]

Tsar and his addiction…

… Yuuri, ahaha jk! but by the way Russian Tsar Nicholay II got a dragon tattoo during a trip to Japan. He liked Japan so much.

P.S: that he started a war with Japan a little later - a completely different story

[colourbymarie]

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, 1914

[gdanyanikolaevna]

Today’s episode of “my favorite taglines in the act I of the script”

[otmaaromanovas]

New photographs of the last Romanov family (scroll to see them all!)

Some of the photographs were previously only available for viewing in very low resolution - see these photos for before vs after to show the difference!

The photos mostly originate from the meetings of the Romanov family with their Hessian relatives: the Tsarina’s brother Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, his wife Grand Duchess Eleonore, and their children, Georg Donatus and Ludwig. Photographs include the family on the Standart yacht, in the Livadia Palace dining hall, and at events greeting the public, from around 1910 to 1912.

Sources and photos: 

📍Ольга, @om871218 (Pinterest), [accessed November 2024]

📍Darmstadt (Hesse), Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt

— I have cropped the photos so just the images are shown, and no background walls/screens 

[thepaleys]

Through her visits to her mother's family, Alexandra was no stranger to Russia or for that matter to the Orthodox religion, in which she too had been brought up. Settling into a palace of their own behind the Church of the Annunciation on the Neva embankment in St Petersburg, Paul and Alexandra's closest friends and companions were Ella and Serge. In fact, the two young grand duchesses, Elisabeth Feodorovna and Alexandra Georgievna, not only became great friends but were like sisters, as close to one another as their husbands had always been. 'I do love her so dearly', Ella wrote on one occasion to Alexandra's brother Prince Nicholas of Greece and in a further letter referred to herself as 'your own sisters sister'. (...) After doing the rounds of the family sick beds [after a typhus epidemic in 1889], which she likened to visiting a 'real family hospital', Ella, whose own evidently robust state of health saw her safely through the epidemic, went to sit with Alexandra Georgiyevna, who was now four months pregnant with her first child. Seeing Paul ill, Ella wrote, 'makes her very nervous and she will think it worse than it really is'. To help distract her, Ella took Alexandra to the opera (...). A month later, the epidemic had started to pass and the sick were restored to health. Despite a very high wind which whipped up the waters of the Neva and the city's canals, Serge and Paul both ventured out of doors, albeit by carriage. Their destination was the Winter Palace where, during the first week of December, they took part in a reading of a forthcoming production of Tolstoy's Tsar Boris, in which they were both to appear. With the Emperor's permission, the play was staged in the Hermitage theatre at the end of January.

"Ella: Princess, Saint And Martyr" - Christopher Warwick

[roses-of-the-romanovs]

“The only thing Maria does is talk. During breakfast, after, during rides. In short, whenever we are [with her], and there is no way to stop her.” —a disgruntled Tatiana, 1916

[maurineromanovs]

Romanovs lookalikes

[la-belle-histoire]

Portrait of Princesses Xenia and Nina Georgievna of Russia, Philip de László. 1915.