The Children of Tsar Nicholas II ("OTMAA")


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The Lost Life of Alexis Romanov | with Jonathan Jackson

"For the first time, a video production tells the story of the life of Tsarevich Alexis Romanov, which was brutally cut short very early, leaving behind a legacy of love and forgiveness.

The story is narrated by five-time Emmy award-winning actor Jonathan Jackson, who also gives his personal testimony of love for the Romanov family at the end of the video.

Alexis was killed together with his entire family and four of their retainers. According to the accounts of the murderers, Alexis was the last one to die. He was 14 years old. Little Alexis was the first male child born heir to the throne during the reign of his father from the seventeenth century onward. The little boy suffered from hemophilia. The most terrible episodes for Alexis’ health happened when he was injured in the joints, which caused unbearable pain.

When Alexis was well, however, the whole life of the palace was transformed. Everything seemed bathed in sweet light. This a remarkable production featuring an abundance of black and white archival photos and astounding new colorizations by Olga Shirnina. Furthermore, the video includes all the newsreel footage with Tsarevich Alexis in the highest quality."


Link to the video at youtube (~ 35 min):
 
Thank you and I will watch it ! Poor boy ! Born to suffer !
 
Perhaps one or two of the daughters (if they had gotten to England) would have married into the British Royal Family. Perhaps the eldest daughter to Prince Edward? Mountbatten fell in love with one of the Grand Duchesses: Maria and had she survived may well have married her. He kept her picture with him for the rest of his life.
 
Yes, I've heard the story about Mountbatten and Maria. The Russian Orthodox Church didn't allow marriages between first cousins, which was why Grand Duke Michael couldn't marry Princess Beatrice of Edinburgh, but they could have married in an Anglican church. But, after what had happened in both Russia and Spain, I think an heir to the throne might have been nervous about marrying a potential carrier of haemophilia.
 
Yes, I've heard the story about Mountbatten and Maria. The Russian Orthodox Church didn't allow marriages between first cousins, which was why Grand Duke Michael couldn't marry Princess Beatrice of Edinburgh, but they could have married in an Anglican church. But, after what had happened in both Russia and Spain, I think an heir to the throne might have been nervous about marrying a potential carrier of haemophilia.

Yeah I can't think they'd have been very popular.. Not much money, disliked by most nations, and carriers of hemophilia....
 
The Romanov Sisters in World War I - Video

"When WW1 broke, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Romanov, after two months of classroom and practical nursing training, joined the Red Cross nursing staff, along with their mother. Every day, starting very early in the morning, they would always go first to the Church to pray, and then immediately after they began their work in the hospital in the wards which received the wounded daily. The three women, along with the rest of the nurses, immediately began the procedures of washing and dressing amputated limbs, deformed faces, gouged eyes, and all sorts of terrible wounds. Maria and Anastasia, fifteen and thirteen years old respectively in 1914, were too young to be trained as nurses. However, they also had their own hospital in which they performed their own services."

The pictures in the video don't show the brutal reality of a military hospital, but are rather "clean". Thank God! I at least did not know, that Tatiana was even a surgical nurse and helped with amputations - grueling!

(~ 12 minutes)
 
The Imperial children were beautiful, truly gorgeous in fact.

Their cousin Irina Alexandrovna was a lovely as a child as she was when she grew to adulthood.
 
Perhaps one or two of the daughters (if they had gotten to England) would have married into the British Royal Family. Perhaps the eldest daughter to Prince Edward? Mountbatten fell in love with one of the Grand Duchesses: Maria and had she survived may well have married her. He kept her picture with him for the rest of his life.

Edward, Prince of Wales was never interested in fresh, unworldly young girls like the Romanov sisters, regardless of religious and other obstacles. He liked brash women many of whom were already married, particularly American ones. This was true to a certain extent of Mountbatten also who was a very, very confident and strong personality in adulthood.
 
Besides the fact that Edward didn’t go for unworldly girls there is the question of religion. It’s extremely doubtful that Alexandra or Nicholas would have agreed to any of their daughters converting from the Orthodox Russian Church embraced by their whole family.

Just as it wasn’t insisted on by George Duke of Kent when he married Princess Marina I don’t think religion would have been a huge problem if Louis Mountbatten had married Marie. (His unequal rank and the fact they were first cousins might have been, however!) Marie could have kept her religion I believe.


However, it’s a whole different kettle of fish for a future Queen of GB to do so, at least in modern times. One of the advantages of a speculated Prince Carol of Romania match with Grand Duchess Olga, part of the reason why the IRF visited Romania in 1914, was that the pair shared the same religion. They just weren’t interested in each other, however.


Incidentally, research done on the remains of Marie in more recent times has apparently revealed that she, out of all the sisters, may have been a carrier for haemophilia. A story that has been around for a while concerns Marie bleeding heavily herself during a medical procedure when she was a child. I think it was a tonsillectomy. The doctors apparently panicked and stopped operating and the Tsarina, waiting nearby had to intercede to calm them.
 
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It's an interesting question as to whether the prospect of hemophilia would have bothered Dickie Mountbatten much, considering he certainly knew that his other aunt Irene and her sons dealt with it. Perhaps it all seemed fatalistic to him, or the fact that his offshoot of the family apparently escaped just buoyed his self-confidence some more. He had an enormous crush on Maria, but then lost her not very much later. No real way of knowing how it would have played out.
 
It seems to have been a reason that the Spanish establishment opposed King Alfonso's marriage to Alix's cousin Ena, as well as the religious issue, and it might well have been an issue if considering a match between an heir to a throne and any of the Grand Duchesses. Dickie and Marie were first cousins so, like Marie's uncle Michael and Beatrice of Edinburgh, would not have been allowed to marry in the Russian Orthodox Church anyway. But who knows how it would've turned out? Dickie does seem to have been in love with Marie, but he was only about 16 at the time.
 
It's interesting to think about who the OTMA sisters might have married. Even because none of them had a fiancé.
I always think of them as if they had always been children but Olga was 22, Tatiana was 21 and Maria was 19.
Anastasia is that she was only 17 years old.
Some possible fiances for Olga were discussed, but nothing ever happened.
 
well IMO the hemophilia rumours were a problem and also the fact that the girls led a very sheltered very Russian life, so I think none of them wanted to leave their homeland or their home. Dickie mgiht have been in love with Marie, but he was only a boy. It might not have lasted.
 
It's interesting to think about who the OTMA sisters might have married. Even because none of them had a fiancé.
I always think of them as if they had always been children but Olga was 22, Tatiana was 21 and Maria was 19.
Anastasia is that she was only 17 years old.
Some possible fiances for Olga were discussed, but nothing ever happened.

There was also the war intervening for the last four years of their lives, so there wasn't exactly an opportunity for any of them to do anything, go anywhere, or meet anyone, unfortunately. Even if their mother had been interested in marrying them off.

We all know Dickie was nuts about Maria, but I'm not even sure when the last time they met was -- it would have been sometime before he was 14. Is there any evidence she reciprocated at all, or was it just one-sided?
 
Romanov family in Romania in 1914.

If I remember it right, the Romanovs were in Romania looking for a suitable husband for one of their daughters too. And the girls did what: Sunbathing until they had a really deep tan.

And their visual impression was so shocking for the Romanian court, where very white skin was prefered... - that the girls got away and sucessfully sabotaged the planned connection.
 
There were supposed to be marriage negotiations with one of the daughters for one of the Serbian Princes I think, but nothing came of it as WWI was approaching and Nicholas and Alexandra were too attached to their family.
 
I just wish that the lady in waiting took the children
 
:previous: The lady in waiting may not have had a lot of children to take.
Grand Duchess Olga was the first child of Tsar Nicholas II.
Nicholas' sister Grand Duchess Xenia's daughter, Princess Irina Alexandrovna was born July 15, 1895.
 
:previous: The lady in waiting may not have had a lot of children to take.
Grand Duchess Olga was the first child of Tsar Nicholas II.
Nicholas' sister Grand Duchess Xenia's daughter, Princess Irina Alexandrovna was born July 15, 1895.
The lady actually asked Nicholas and Alexandra but they refused
 
:previous: The article stated: The birth of the Tsarevich Alexei gave the Empress popularity.
If the Tsarevich had been a Grand Duchess instead, how devastated Alexandra would have been!
 
:previous: The article stated: The birth of the Tsarevich Alexei gave the Empress popularity.
If the Tsarevich had been a Grand Duchess instead, how devastated Alexandra would have been!

So she had a handful of days of being happy and then was devastated that he had a tortuous, incurable disease that she gave to him, instead. :ermm:
 
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