Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia (Russian: Мария Николаевна; romanized: Maria Nikolaevna)
26 June [O.S. 14 June] 1899 – 17 July 1918) was the middle child and third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
During her lifetime, Maria, too young to become a Red Cross nurse like her elder sisters during World War I, was patroness of a hospital and instead visited wounded soldiers. Throughout her lifetime she was noted for her interest in the lives of the soldiers. The flirtatious Maria had a number of innocent crushes on the young men she met, beginning in early childhood. She hoped to marry and have a large family.
She was an elder sister of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, whose alleged escape from the assassination of the imperial family was rumored for nearly 90 years. However, it was later proven that Anastasia did not escape and that those who claimed to be her were imposters. In the 1990s, it was suggested that Maria might have been the grand duchess whose remains were missing from the Romanov grave that was discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia and exhumed in 1991. Further remains were discovered in 2007, and DNA analysis subsequently proved that the entire Imperial family had been murdered in 1918. A funeral for the remains of Maria and Alexei to be buried with their family in October 2015 was postponed indefinitely by the Russian Orthodox Church, which took custody of the remains in December and declared without explanation that the case required further study; the 44 partial bone fragments remain stored in a Russian state repository.
Maria was born on 26 June 1899. She was the middle child and third daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra. She weighed 4.5 kg at birth. The birth of a third daughter led to widespread disappointment in Russia. Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, Nicholas' cousin, wrote, "And so there's no Heir. The whole of Russia will be disappointed by this news." Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom, Alexandra's grandmother and Maria's great-grandmother, wrote, "I regret the third girl for the country. I know that an heir would be more welcome than a daughter." Nicholas insisted that he was happy with Maria's birth, and he told Alexandra "I dare complain the least, having such happiness on earth, having a treasure like you my beloved Alix, and already the three little cherubs."
As a toddler, little Maria once escaped from her bath and ran naked up and down the palace corridor while her distracted Irish nurse, Margaretta Eagar, who loved politics, discussed the Dreyfus Affair with a friend. "Fortunately, I arrived just at that moment, picked her up and carried her back to Miss Eagar, who was still talking about Dreyfus," recalled her aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia.
Maria's siblings were Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, and Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. Maria's Russian title (Velikaya Knyazhna Великая Княжна) is most precisely translated as "Grand Princess", meaning that Maria, as an "Imperial Highness" was higher in rank than other Princesses in Europe who were "Royal Highnesses". "Grand Duchess" is the most widely used English translation of the title. However, in keeping with her parents' desire to raise Maria and her siblings simply, even servants addressed the Grand Duchess by her first name and patronym, Maria Nikolaevna. She was also called by the French version of her name, "Marie", or by the Russian nicknames "Masha" or "Mashka".
Maria and her younger sister, Anastasia, were known within the family as "The Little Pair". The two girls shared a room, often wore variations of the same dress, and spent much of their time together. Their older sisters, Olga and Tatiana, also shared a room and were known as "The Big Pair". The four girls sometimes signed letters using the nickname OTMA, which was derived from the first letters of their first names.
Maria and Anastasia were dressed similarly for special occasions, when they wore variations of the same dress. She tended to be dominated by her enthusiastic and energetic younger sister. When Anastasia tripped people who walked by, teased others or caused a scene with her dramatics, Maria always tried to apologize, though she could never stop her younger sister. Her mother's friend Lili Dehn said that while Maria was not as lively as her three sisters, she knew her own mind.
Young Maria enjoyed innocent flirtations with the young soldiers she encountered at the palace and on family holidays. She particularly loved children and, had she not been a Grand Duchess, would have loved nothing more than to marry a Russian soldier and raise a large family. Maria was fond of soldiers from a very early age, according to Margaretta Eagar: One day the little Grand Duchess Marie was looking out of the window at a regiment of soldiers marching past and exclaimed, "Oh! I love these dear soldiers; I should like to kiss them all!" I said, "Marie, nice little girls don't kiss soldiers." A few days afterwards we had a children's party, and the Grand Duke Constantine's children were amongst the guests. One of them, having reached twelve years of age, had been put into the Corps de Cadets, and came in his uniform. He wanted to kiss his little cousin Marie, but she put her hand over her mouth and drew back from the proffered embrace. "Go away, soldier," said she, with great dignity. "I don't kiss soldiers." The boy was greatly delighted at being taken for a real soldier, and not a little amused at the same time.
Until his own assassination in 1979, her first cousin Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, kept a photograph of Maria beside his bed in memory of the crush he had upon her. In 1910, Louis met the Romanov sisters. He later reflected that "they were lovely, and terribly sweet, far more beautiful than their photographs," and he said that "I was crackers about Marie, and was determined to marry her. She was absolutely lovely."
At age eleven, Maria apparently developed a painful crush on one of the young men she had met. "Try not to let your thoughts dwell too much on him, that's what our Friend said," Alexandra wrote to her on 6 December 1910. Alexandra advised her third daughter to keep her feelings hidden because others might say unkind things to her about her crush. "One must not let others see what one feels inside, when one knows it's considered not proper. I know he likes you as a little sister and would like to help you not to care too much, because he knows you, a little Grand Duchess, must not care for him so."
In 1917, Prince Carol of Romania visited Russia. Before he left for Moscow on 26 January, he made a formal proposal for Maria's hand. Nicholas "good-naturedly laughed the Prince's proposal aside" because Maria "was nothing more than a schoolgirl." Queen Marie of Romania was hopeful about "a marriage for Carol with one of Nicky's daughters," and she found the fact that Nicholas considered the match "flattering and... a good sign!"
Like her younger sister Anastasia, Maria visited wounded soldiers at a private hospital on the grounds of the palace at Tsarskoye Selo during World War I. The two teenagers, who were too young to become nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played games of checkers and billiards with the soldiers and attempted to uplift their spirits. A wounded soldier named Dmitri signed Maria's commonplace book and addressed her by one of her nicknames: "the famous Mandrifolie".
During the war, Maria and Anastasia also paid a visit to a nurses' school and helped to tend to the children. She wrote her father that she thought of him when she was feeding the children and cleaned the gruel running down their chins with a spoon. For a break during the war, Maria, her sisters and mother sometimes visited the Tsar and Tsarevich Alexei at the war headquarters in Mogilev. During these visits, Maria developed an attraction to Nikolai Dmitrievich Demenkov, an officer of the day at the Tsar's Headquarters. When the women returned to Tsarskoye Selo, Maria often asked her father to give her regards to Demenkov and sometimes jokingly signed her letters to the Tsar "Mrs. Demenkov".