Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia - Early Life and Characteristics

Early Life and Characteristics

Grand Duchess Tatiana's siblings were Grand Duchesses Olga, Maria, Anastasia, and the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. All of the children were close to one another and to their parents up until the end of their lives.

Tatiana was described as tall and slender, with dark auburn hair and dark blue-gray eyes, fine, chiseled features, and a refined, elegant bearing befitting the daughter of an Emperor. She was considered the most beautiful of the four grand duchesses by many courtiers. Of all her sisters, Tatiana most closely resembled their mother.

Tatiana's title is most precisely translated as "Grand Princess," meaning that Tatiana, as an "imperial highness", was higher in rank than other princesses in Europe, who were "royal highnesses." "Grand Duchess" became the most widely used translation of the title into English from Russian. However, her friends, family and the household servants generally called her by her first name and patronym, Tatiana Nikolaevna or by the Russian nicknames "Tanya," "Tatya," "Tatianochka," or "Tanushka."

Like the other Romanov children, Tatiana was raised with some austerity. She and her sisters slept on camp beds without pillows, took cold baths in the morning, and were expected to keep themselves occupied with embroidery or knitting projects if they had a spare moment. Their work was given as gifts or sold at charity bazaars. According to one story, Tatiana, accustomed to being addressed only by her name and patronymic, was so disconcerted when she was addressed as "Your Imperial Highness" by lady-in-waiting Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden when she was heading a committee meeting that she kicked the woman under the table and hissed "Are you crazy to speak to me like that?"

Tatiana and her older sister, Olga, were known in the household as "The Big Pair." According to a 29 May 1897 diary entry written by her father's distant cousin, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, she was given the name "Tatiana" as an homage to the heroine in Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse Eugene Onegin. Her father liked the idea of having daughters named Olga and Tatiana, like the sisters in the famous poem. Like their two younger sisters, the two older girls shared a bedroom and were very close to one another from early childhood. In the spring of 1901, Olga had typhoid fever and was confined to the nursery for several weeks away from her younger sisters. When she began to recover, Tatiana was permitted to see her older sister for five minutes but didn't recognize her. When her governess, Margaretta Eagar, told her after the visit that the sickly child she had been conversing so gently with was Olga, four-year-old Tatiana began to cry bitterly and protested that the pale, thin child couldn't be her adored older sister. Eagar had difficulty persuading Tatiana that Olga would recover. French tutor Pierre Gilliard wrote that the two sisters were "passionately devoted to one another."

Tatiana was practical and had a natural talent for leadership. Her sisters gave her the nickname "The Governess" and sent her as their group representative when they wanted their parents to grant a favor. Though she was eighteen months Tatiana's senior, Olga had no objection when Tatiana decided to take charge of a situation. She was also closer to her mother than any of her sisters and was considered by many who knew her to be the Tsarina's favorite daughter. Tatiana was the conduit of all her mother's decisions. "It was not that her sisters loved their mother any less," recalled her French tutor Pierre Gilliard, "but Tatiana knew how to surround her with unwearying attentions and never gave way to her own capricious impulses." Alexandra wrote Nicholas on 13 March 1916 that Tatiana was the only one of their four daughters who "grasped it" when she explained her way of looking at things.

Gilliard wrote that Tatiana was reserved and "well balanced" but less open and spontaneous than Olga. She was also less talented than Olga, but worked harder and was more dedicated to seeing projects through to completion than her elder sister. Colonel Kobylinsky, the family's guard at Tsarskoye Selo and Tobolsk, felt Tatiana "had no liking for art. Maybe it would have been better for her had she been a man." Others felt Tatiana's artistic talents were better expressed in handiwork and in her talent for choosing attractive fashions and creating elegant hair styles. Her mother's friend Anna Vyrubova later wrote that Tatiana had a great talent for making clothing, embroidery and crochet and that she dressed her mother's long hair as well as any professional hair stylist.