My full, official name is Her Imperial Highness Maria Nikolaievna Romanova, but the people close to me call me Mashka. My Grandmama's (known to us as Amama and to her friends as Minnie) name is also Maria, now that she is Russian Orthodox. Sometimes you'll see or hear us mentioned as "Marie." I was born on June 27, 1899 according to the new calendar (June 14 according to the Old Style), at Alexandria Dacha, Peterhof. Mama remembers that summer as "cold and rainy." Although Mama and Papa were very happy to have me, I think that everyone in Russia would have rather they'd had a boy to inherit the throne. Here is how my Papa described that day in his diary:

"A happy day: the Lord sent us a third daughter - Maria, who was safely born at 12.10! Alix hardly slept all night, and towards morning the pains got stronger. Thank God it was all over quite quickly! My darling felt well all day and fed the baby herself...the evening was marvellous."

My Auntie Xenia wrote in her diary:

What a joy that everything has ended safely, and the anxiety of waiting is over at last, but what a disappointment that it isn't a son. Poor Alix! We, of course, are delighted either way - whether it's a son or daughter!

The day I was born, my parents sent out telegrams to all of our relatives bearing only my name: "THE GRAND DUCHESS MARIA NIKOLAIEVNA." That's a bit much for a tiny little baby, don't you think? That's why my family took too using nicknames quite early on! Occasionally, I've been called Mandrifolie and "Big Bow-wow." My sisters sometimes use that last nickname because I'm a big and clumsy girl at times, and because they like to make fun of my looks. Though my sisters like to joke, almost everyone thinks I'm quite nice and rather pretty. I've been called "darling Mashka" and "an angel and the best of us." Papa would even joke that he was "afraid of the wings growing." Father Grigory used to call me "his Pearl," and lauded my "simple soul." Our French tutor, Pierre Gilliard ("Zhilik") wrote this about me in his memoirs (it's complimentary...I think!):

"Maria was a fine girl, tall for her age, and a picture of glowing health and colour. She had large and beautiful grey eyes. Her tastes were very simple, and with her warm heart she was kindness itself. her sisters took advantage somewhat of good nature, and called her 'fat little bow-wow' ('Le Bon Gros Tou-tou'). She certainly had the benevolent and somewhat gauche devotion of a dog.'

Miss Eagar, my nurse, said of me...

"In Peterhof during the hot June weather, the little Grand Duchess Maria was born. She was born good, I often think, with the very smallest trace of original sin possible. The Grand Duke Vladimir called her 'The Amiable Baby,' for she was always so good and smiling and gay. She is a very fine and pretty child, with great, dark-blue eyes and the fine level dark brows of the Romanov family. Lately speaking of the child a gentleman said that she had the face of one of Botticelli's angels. But good and sweet tempered as she is, she is also very human, as the following stories will show. When she was a very little child, she was one day with her sister in the Empress's boudoir, where the Emperor and Empress were at tea. The Empress had tiny vanilla-flavored wafers called biblichen, of which the children were particularly fond, but they were not allowed to ask for anything from the tea table. The Empress sent for me, and when I went down little Marie was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes drowned in tears and something was swallowed hastily. 'Dere! I've eaten it all up,' said she, 'you can't eat it now.' I was properly shocked, and suggested bed at once as a suitable punishment. The Empress said, 'Very well, take her,' but the Emperor intervened, and begged that she might be allowed to remain, saying, 'I was always afraid of the wings growing, and I am glad to see she is only a human child.'

She was constantly held up as an example to her elder sisters. They declared she was a step-sister. Vainly I pointed out that in all fairy tales it was the elder sisters who were step-sisters and the third was the real sister. They would not listen, and shut her out from all their plays. I told them that they could not expect her to stand that kind of treatment, and that some day they would be punished. One day they made a house with chairs at one end of the nursery and shut out poor Maria, telling her she might be the footman, but that she should stay outside. I made another house at the other end for the baby, then a few months old, and her, but her eyes always kept traveling to the other end of the room and the attractive play going on there. She suddenly dashed across the room, rushed into the house, dealt each sister a slap in the face, and ran into the next room, coming back dressed in a dollıs cloak and hat, and with her hands full of small toys. ³I wonıt be a footman, Iıll be the kind, good aunt, who brings presents,² she said. She then distributed her gifts, kissed her ³nieces,² and sat down. The other children looked shamefacedly from one to the other, and then Tatiana said, ³We were too cruel to poor little Maria, and she really couldnıt help beating us.² They had learned their lesson - from that hour they respected her rights in the family. "

Mama used to worry so about my weight, but I lost most of my baby fat when I got older. I'm big, but I'm also strong - unusually so, wrote one of my childhood tutors. I have big, blue-gray eyes that my family sometimes refer to as "Marie's Saucers." I am about 5'7" tall, and I have lots of long, brown hair that I wore down until I was sixteen. In 1917, when we children got the measles, it started falling out (due to the medicine we took, I think). Mama had what was left shaven off. We looked rather silly with no hair. We took delight in sometimes shocking people with our baldness (especially our poor Mama and Papa!), as the famous photograph taken by Monsieur Gillard in 1917 attests. When my hair started growing back, it curled rather nicely.

Though some people noticed more of an attachment between Papa and me, I was very close to both of my parents when growing up. I loved them both very much, and it made me very sad when they, my sisters, or my brother, were sick or in pain. Of the subject, Miss Eagar wrote...

"On our return to Tsarskoe Selo the Empress manifested symptoms of whooping cough. It speedily spread to the nurseries and the four children. The Russian nurse and I contracted it. I had told the children they were to be most careful not to cough on anyone, or that person might take the disease from them, and they were very obedient. One day the little Grand Duchesses Nastyastasia was coughing and choking away, when the Grand Duchess Maria came to her and putting her face close up to her said, "Baby, darling, cough on me. 'Greatly amazed, I asked her what she meant, and the dear child said, "I am so sorry to see my little sister so ill. I thought if I could take if from her she would be better.'"

When my Papa had typhoid, she remembers me doing this...

"When he was ill in the Crimea her grief at not seeing him was excessive. I had to keep the door of the day nursery locked or she would have escaped into the corridor and disturbed him with her efforts to get to him. Every evening after tea she sat on the floor just inside the nursery door listening intently for any sounds from his room. If she heard his voice by any chance she would stretch out her little arms, and call "Papa, Papa," and her rapture when she was allowed to see him was great. When the Empress came to see the children on the first evening after the illness had been pronounced typhoid fever, she happened to be wearing a miniature of the Emperor set as a brooch. In the midst of her sobs and tears little Marie caught sight of this; she climbed on the Empress's knee, and covered the pictured face with kisses, and on no evening all throughout his illness would she go to bed without kissing this miniature."

When Mama and Papa were forced to leave Tobolsk for Ekaterinburg in 1918, we decided that I should go with them to take care of Mama, leaving my sisters behind with my brother Alexei, who was too ill to be moved. It was terrible to be separated from them. During those months in captivity, I lost lots of weight, though my mind and body stayed strong (In Tobolsk, I could lift my English Tutor, Mr. Gibbes, off of the ground!). Some will tell you that the Revolution turned me "from a child into a woman" almost overnight. Lili Dehn, a friend of Mama's, wrote of me:

"When I first knew the Grand Duchess Marie, she was quite a child, but during the Revolution she became very devoted to me, and I to her, and we spent most of our time together...she was a wonderful girl, possessed of tremendous reserve force, and I never realised her unselfish nature until those dreadful days. She too was exceeding fair, dowered with the classic beauty of the Romanovs; her eyes were dark blue, shaded by long lashes, and she had masses of dark brown hair. Marie was plump, and the Empress often teased her about this ; she was not so lively as her sisters, but she was much more decided in her outlook. The Grand Duchess Marie knew at once what she wanted, and why she wanted it. ."

I don't know about the selflessness Lili mentions (Mama can tell you about how grumpy and grumbly I can get when Madame Becker visits each month!), but I can tell you that I tried my best to help my family however I could. Life in Ekaterinburg was downright horrible...much worse than it had been in Tobolsk. Tobolsk had been alright, really. At times I even thought I wouldn't mind staying there forever, if only we were allowed to leave the yard sometimes. Our captors treated us mostly with respect, until close to the end of our stay. Pankratov, the commissar of the guards, became rather fond of me, even. I tried to find positive in every negative, as you can see in this letter I wrote my sisters and brother in Tobolsk:

"It's difficult to write about anything cheerful, because there's all too little cheerfulness here. On the other hand, God doesn't abandon us. The sun shines, the birds sing, and this morning, we heard the bells sounding matins..."

Until 1917, I lived with my three sisters and Alexei (also called "Alyosha" and "Baby"), in rooms above my Mama's Mauve Boudoir in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. Our rooms were called "The Children's Apartments." My two older sisters, Olga and Tanyana, are called "The Big Pair," and shared a bedroom. My little sister Nastyastasia and I are called "The Little Pair," and also had a room together. Starting in 1902, our two bedrooms at the Alexandrovsky were linked by pass-through doors and had a common bathroom, which had a big silver bathtub! Until that time, the place where Nastya's and my room was built had been the upper portion of the music room downstairs. Our room was painted with a pretty butterfly motif, while the Big Pair's frieze depicted dragonflies.

Olishka, Tanya, Me, and Nastya in 1906.

Olga, or Olya, is the oldest sister. She is four years older than me. She is very smart, and a great reader. She has a very pretty gray-stripy kitty-cat named Vaska. Tanyana, or Tanya, is two years older than me. She is very beautiful, and very decisive. We girls often call her "The Governess" because she manages us all so very efficiently. She has a French Bulldog named Ortino. My sister Nastyastasia, and my best friend, also known as Nastasia or "Shvibz" ("shvibzik" is Russian for "imp"), is two years younger than me, and quite a scamp. She has a doggie named Jemmy (she used to have another dog named Shvibzik, but he died. As for me, I haven't had many pets...unless you count that little mouse that scampered about the walls of our room, which I adopted, and a pretty siamese kitty that Lili might mention to you!). Nastya and I always have lots of fun together. We've even been known to play tennis in our room, making enough noise to disturb poor Mama in her Mauve Boudoir below us.Until Nastya came along, it was sometimes hard dealing with my two older sisters. They would exclude me from their games, or make me play the role of a servant while they got to be fine ladies. Even so, all of us girlies (as our Mama calls us!) are very close now. Since we didn't have many friends from "the outside" while we grew up, we became utterly devoted to eachother. Together, my sisters and I often write letters and give gifts as "OTMA," a name we made from our first initials. Miss Eager remembers...

"She was constantly held up as an example to her elder sisters. They declared she was a step-sister. Vainly I pointed out that in all fairy tales it was the elder sisters who were step-sisters and the third was the real sister. They would not listen, and shut her out from all their plays. I told them that they could not expect her to stand that kind of treatment, and that some day they would be punished. One day they made a house with chairs at one end of the nursery and shut out poor Maria, telling her she might be the footman, but that she should stay outside. I made another house at the other end for the baby, then a few months old, and her, but her eyes always kept traveling to the other end of the room and the attractive play going on there. She suddenly dashed across the room, rushed into the house, dealt each sister a slap in the face, and ran into the next room, coming back dressed in a dollıs cloak and hat, and with her hands full of small toys. 'I won't be a footman, I'll be the kind, good aunt, who brings presents,' she said. She then distributed her gifts, kissed her 'nieces,' and sat down. The other children looked shamefacedly from one to the other, and then Tanyana said, 'We were too cruel to poor little Maria, and she really couldn't help beating us.' They had learned their lesson - from that hour they respected her rights in the family."

Growing up, my sisters and I were lucky to have nice things. I like girlish things like clothes and perfume, though I'm nothing of the clotheshorse that my sister Tanya is. Jewelry is alright. Mama gave us a diamond and a pearl every year on our birthdays, so we would have a nice broach and pearl necklace by the time we were 16 years old. We girlies would share our jewels amongst ourselves. I'm fond of the first ring my parents gave me, when I turned sixteen. It's set with one of Mama's and Papa's Buchara diamonds. My favorite perfume is Coty's Lilas, which I came to like after trying many others. My sisters and I all had box-cameras from when we were pretty young, and loved to take pictures. We also liked putting together photo albums and scrapbooks which we would decorate ourselves. Nastya and I both liked to paint, but I was never very serious about it. I had a knack for drawing and needlework, too. People thought that my sketches were very good, but thought it strange that I drew only using my left hand.I was good at schoolwork, and enjoyed learning, but not to the same extent as my brilliant sister Olya. The fact that I was lazy and daydreamed a lot didn't help much, either! I had tutors for languages, arithmetic, history, art, dancing, and other subjects. I learned French and some German, but spoke mainly Russian and English. With Papa, we always spoke Russian. With Mama, we spoke English. I'm not the best speller or writer in the whole world (some people have even remarked at how childlike we girls speak Russian and English!), but I can get the point across, as you can see. My sisters and I all kept journals, and liked to write letters to friends and relatives when we were parted from them.

We travelled a lot - we would usually spend Easter in the Crimea and portions of the summer cruising on the Standart and at Peterhof. In Finland and at our Crimean estate - known as Livadia - we would enjoy many adventures. We would hike, ride, bike...and even raise money for Crimean hospitals on White Flower Day.

We like to have fun as a family, but we have our serious side, too. My whole family is very religious. We are Russian Orthodox Christians. Orthodoxy is the oldest Christian denomination, and we are very proud of our religious heritage. Miss Eager recalls this conversation about death, illness, God, and our Uncle Ernie's daughter, cousin Ella, who died of typhoid when she was only eight years old...

"One day Maria was looking at a picture of Nydia, the blind girl of Pompeii. She asked me why she was blind. I replied that God sometimes made people blind, but none knew why. So she said, 'I know someone who knows.' I said, 'No, dear, think not; no one knows.' 'Cousin Ella knows,' came the answer; 'she is in heaven, sitting down and talking to God, and He is telling her how He did it, and why.'"

The feast day of my patron saint (and my Grandmama's!) - my Name Day - is August 4 (July 22 according to the old system). My family and I wear our baptismal crosses always. Sometimes, you will see pictures of my sisters and I wearing chains under our pearl necklaces. Those chains hold our crosses. Mine was given to me by my Godmother and aunt, Ella. She is Mama's older sister, and was married to my Papa's Uncle Sergei. She is now a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church. My other favorite aunts are my papa's sisters, Xenia and Olga. Auntie Olga - who is Nastya's and Olya's Godmother - is especially wonderful. She would have us girlies over to her house in St. Petersburg for parties and other fun things.In 1914, when the Great War broke out, Olishka and Tanya went to work as Red Cross nurses with Mama and Auntie Olga. Since Nastya and I were too young to be nurses, we got to sponsor the palace hospital at Feodorovsky Gorodok. Nastya and I - sometimes with Alyosha - would go visit the wounded soldiers as often as possible. Ever since I was little, I've always enjoyed meeting and talking with people. Since my sisters and I grew up in such a sheltered manner, I liked getting to know members of the Imperial Household. I would often sit and chat with officers aboard our yacht, the Standart, about their lives and their families. I love children - and desperately want babies of my own (when I was little, I wanted at least twenty!) - and so I'll never pass up an opportunity to meet or talk about someone's family.

Click on the picture for a larger view.	Click on the picture for a larger view.

My sisters and Mama and Papa will tell you that I'm also a tremendous flirt. I like officers tremendously, and used to spend lots of time playing billiards with them. Once, when I was little, I saw a military review, and upon seeing all of the soldiers, declared that I should like to kiss them all! But flirtations were not always frivolous fun for me. When I was eleven, my open and loving nature made me miserable for a time. Of the matter, Mama wrote to me:

"I had long ago noticed that you were sad, but did not ask because one does not like it when others ask...Try not to let your thoughts dwell too much on him, that's what our Friend said...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...Be brave and cheer up and don't let your thoughts dwell so much upon him. It's not good and makes you yet more sad."

During the War, I came to like one soldier very much. His name was Nickolai "Kolya" Dmitrievich Demenkov, and he was an officer of the Guards' Crew. For awhile, I would jokingly sign my letters to Papa as "Mrs. Kolya Demenkov." Nothing ever happened with Me and "my Kolya," though I adored him. I even made him a shirt once. As it turns out, none of us children ever married. Our parents tried to set Olishka up with Princes David and Edward of England, Prince Carol of Romania, and others, but my proud sister wouldn't even consider marrying any of them! She wanted to marry for love, like our parents did, which I think is wonderful! Carol was interested in me for a time, as well, but Papa just laughed at him, telling him that I was still just "a schoolgirl." The Great War was a souce of great upheaval among the ruling houses of Europe, and by the time it was all over, my own family had been destroyed. Papa, Mama, OTMA, and Alexei were murdered by our Bolshevik guards on July 17, 1918, at Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Siberia. There are many Orthodox Christians that believe we are Martyrs. Recently, the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia cannonized us as saints. It all seems so odd when I think about it - that I should be a saint!