Embed from Getty Images

Today marks the 125th Anniversary of the birth of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, who was born on this day in 1895! The first child of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Princess Alix of Hesse (later Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna), Grand Duchess Olga was the eldest of three sisters and one brother. The siblings were raised between the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Livadia Palace in Crimea, and the Royal Yacht Standart, educated by private tutors. During the First World War, Grand Duchess Olga joined her mother and sister, Grand Duchess Tatiana, as they became Red Cross Nurses in a hospital on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, though Grand Duchess Olga was reassigned to more sedate roles after the operating theatre took a big toll. A keen reader who actively followed the state of the war and country, Grand Duchess Olga was aware of the general mood in Russia and the situation that would overtake them. After the Tsar’s Abdication in 1917, the Imperial Family were first imprisoned at the Alexander Palace, then in Tobolsk, Siberia, and finally at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, where on the morning of July 18, 1918, the family and some members of their staff was herded into the basement and executed. Their bodies were buried down a mineshaft and then disappeared until being found in 1991 and 2007. They are buried at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, and they were canonization as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church.