Figure 1.--In recent years a wonderful trove of photographs has been found of the royal family. Most were taken by Grandduchess (Princess) Olga and often focus on her little brother Alexis. Here we see her with one of her sisters, probably Maria. We are not sure who took the photograph, perhaps Tsatiana. Her Kodak Brownie box camera is on her lap. She started taking photographs at a young age. She looks to be about 11 year old here, in a snapshot probably taken about 1906.

Olga was the oldest and Russian society was obcessed with her future marriage prospects. Propspective matches included Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, Crown Prince Carol of Romania, Edward, Prince of Wales (eldest son of Britain's George V), and with Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia. Olga had definite ideasabout this. The time when marriages werre decided entirely by the parents for political reasons had past. Olga did not want to marry a foreigner and leave Russia. Olga was interested in photography and as a result, we have many wonderful, intimate images of the royal family. These are not the formal portraits commonly produced by professional photographers outside the family. Olga like here mother was memverized by the illiterate Siberian monk, Grigory Rasputin. [Rappaport] Here the thoughts running through the Tsarina's and her daughter's head would have rocked the Empire and still cause a blush in our more jaded modern world. The Tsarina wrote to Rasputin that she wanted to fall asleep 'in your embrace'. Olga told an intimate that she could 'not control herself' when Rasputin was absent from the Court. And she wrote to Rasputin, that while kissing her pillow at night, 'I feel as though I am kissing you." After World War I broke out, Olga nursed wounded soldiers in a military hospital. The experience for a young girl brought up in privlige was horific. Her nerves eventuslly gave out. She shifted to administrative duties at the hospital. As with her sisters, she faced rising concerns with the drmatic changes that changed them fom orivlidged teenagers to house arrest and increasing privations. [Rappaport]

Sources

Rappaport, Helen. The Rappaport Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexander (2014), 448p.

Created: 9:10 PM 12/28/2007
Last updated: 2:21 AM 6/9/2014