Four sisters and their little brother, Livadia, The Crimea, 1914

 

Teenage dress-up - the daughters of Nicholas II, circa 1916

Maria, Tatiana, Olga, and Anastasia.

Anastasia.

Maria.

Tatiana.

Olga.

***

Four teenage girls. Innocent to a degree unusual, even for the time. In a room they share, family photographs all around, books and papers, a bust of their father on the table. Just a happy evening playing dress-up. But is there something else about the poorly focused photographs, taken without sufficient light, bearing the scratches and fading of time? Are they more than casual snapshots; is there something other to the images? Or is it merely our inability to overlook their deaths, only two years later - shot and bayoneted in a basement - and see these as just five photographs of loving sisters at play? 

The Tsar's daughters, formal portraits, 1914

Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia. The four sisters in the year the Great War began. The War that would bring the Revolution, the revolution that ended everything.

Tatiana's hair wasn't cut short for fashion's sake - Irene Castle's "Castle Bob" was still a year off - she's been ill with typhus the
year before and her hair had been cut as a preventative measure, common practice at the time; when all four girls came down
with measles three years later, just as the Revolution was breaking out, they would all have their heads shaved.

The Empress Alexandra and her three eldest daughters, Peterhof, June 1915.

Marie, Olga, and Tatiana (behind).

The three eldest daughters of the Imperial couple pose on the terrace of the family's home in the park at Peterhof, what was called the Lower Dacha or New Palace, now destroyed. All wearing the sash and star of the Order of St. Catherine, they are dressed to accompany their father to the requiem services at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg, for the funeral of the much beloved Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, who had died on June fifteenth. The youngest daughter, Anastasia, and the Tsarevich were considered too young to attend. This photograph was most likely taken before the girls and their father left for St. Petersburg.

Depending on the source, the Empress did or did not attend the solemn ceremonies.  But the Tsar's entry in his diary that day only mentions that he was accompanied into town by the three girls and by his sister-in-law, the Empress' sister Ella.  And though Alexandra is certainly dressed in mourning here, she doesn't look to be wearing any orders and would appear unprepared for such an important event.

Marie, Olga, Tatiana.

The four daughters of Nicholas II, circa 1915-1916

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna.

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna.

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.