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Today marks the 125th Anniversary of the birth of Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, who was born on this day in 1897! The second child of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Princess Alix of Hesse (later Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna), Grand Duchess Tatiana was the second of four sisters and one brother, and was raised between the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, the Livadia Palace in Crimea, and the Royal Yacht Standart, educated by private tutors.
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During the First World War, Grand Duchess Tatiana joined her mother and sister, Grand Duchess Olga, as they became Red Cross Nurses in a hospital on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo, and was brave enough to handle the gruesome tasks while her mother and sister was reassigned to more sedate roles. The most beautiful of all her sisters and the most aristocratic in appearance, known amongst her siblings as “the governess” for her way of taking charge, Grand Duchess Tatiana chaired many charitable committees througout the War.
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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.
