Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia

Life & Legacy

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia (Russian: Татьяна Николаевна; romanized: Tatiana Nikolaevna)
(10 June [O.S. 29 May] 1897 – 17 July 1918) was the second child of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. She was born at Peterhof Palace, near Saint Petersburg.
Tatiana was the younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga and the elder sister of Grand Duchess Maria, Grand Duchess Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei. Throughout her life, she was considered to be the most beautiful of all her sisters and the most aristocratic in appearance. She was known amongst her siblings as "the governess" for her domineering but also maternal ways. Tatiana was the closest of all the children to her mother (Tsarina Alexandra), often spending many hours reading to her. During World War I, she chaired many charitable committees and (along with her older sister, Grand Duchess Olga) trained to become a nurse. She tended to wounded soldiers on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo from 1914 to 1917. Her time as a nurse came to an end with her family's arrest in 1917 after the first Russian Revolution.
Her murder by Bolshevik revolutionaries on 17 July 1918 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church. Tatiana and all her siblings were soon rumored to have survived the murder, and dozens of impostors claimed to be surviving Romanovs; author Michael Occleshaw speculated that a woman named Larissa Tudor might have been Tatiana. However, the deaths of all the last Tsar's family, including Tatiana, at the hands of Bolsheviks have since been established by scientific evidence.