Olga Nikolayevna Romanova (1895-1918)

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolayevna of Russia (Russian: Великая Княжна Ольга Николаевна; C.J. November 3, C.G November 15, 1895 – July 17, 1918) was a Russian Grand Duchess, eldest daughter of the Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra Fyodorovna. She was born in Tsarskoye Selo. Then, when she was of age, her parents thought of marrying her to Prince Charles of Romania, the future Charles II of Romania, and her name was also linked to that of her cousins Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov and Prince Constantine Constantinovich, but None of these marriage possibilities came to fruition.

During World War I she served as a nurse.

Russian Revolution

When the February Revolution occurred, she was confined with her parents and siblings in the Alexander Palace, in Tsarskoye Selo. In August 1917, she was transferred with her family to Tobolsk (Siberia) and in the spring of 1918 to Yekaterinburg, where she was confined to the Ipatiev house. At the time she was taken into captivity in Tobolsk and because of the trauma she experienced, she was mute and bedridden most of the time due to nervous attacks. It was there that she was assassinated by the Bolsheviks in the early morning of July 17, 1918.

The killings were carried out by Bolshevik secret police forces under Yakov Yurovski. The armed men initially killed Nicholas, the Empress, and two male retainers; Grand Duchess Maria, Dr. Botkin, and Anna Demidova, the empress's lady-in-waiting, were injured, and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia were unharmed. The gun smoke and plaster dust had grown so thick that the gunmen could no longer see their targets and they left the room for a few minutes to let the haze clear, leaving the victims in the room.

When they returned, the first to die was Dr. Botkin, after which Tsarevich Alexis was sacrificed; a man tried several times to shoot or stab the boy with a bayonet, but the decorations sewn into his clothing protected him. After a few minutes, another armed man fired two shots into the boy's head.

After this they turned on the grand duchesses. Olga and Tatiana crouched against the back wall of the room, when they got closer, the sisters tried to get up, but a gunman shot Tatiana in the head, killing her instantly. The other gunman kicked Olga back to the ground and fired a shot, which entered her jaw and passed through her brain. Like Tatiana, she died instantly.

The discovery of the bodies

After the fall of the Soviet regime, his remains were exhumed and entombed with those of his parents and two of his sisters in the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Paul in Saint Petersburg. She was canonized as a martyr by the Orthodox Church in 2000.

The remains, later identified by DNA testing as the Romanovs and their servants, were discovered in the woods near Yekaterinburg in 1991. Two bodies, that of Alexis and one of her sisters, are generally thought to be Maria or Anastasia, they had disappeared. On August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two partial burned skeletons at a site near Yekaterinburg in a pit that seemed to match the location described in Yakov Yurovski's memoirs.

Archaeologists said the bones were those of a boy who was approximately thirteen years old at the time of his death and of a young woman between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three. At the time of the murder, Anastasia was seventeen years and one month old, while her sister Maria hers was nineteen years old and her brother Alexis was two weeks shy of her fourteenth birthday. Olga and Tatiana were twenty-two and twenty-one years old.

Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "fragments of a sulfuric acid container, the nails, the metal strips of a wooden box and bullets of different calibers." The bones were found using metal detectors as probes. Preliminary tests indicated a high "degree of probability" that the remains belong to Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters, Russian forensic scientists announced on January 22, 2008.

On April 30, 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that DNA tests show the remains belong to Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters. In March 2009, Michael Coble, a US Armed Forces DNA Identification Physician, concurred with the results, which were also obtained by Russian and Austrian scientists. This proved that the Russian royal family died together.

Honorary Distinctions

• Lady of the Order of Saint Catherine (Russian Empire)
• Lady of the Royal Order of Victoria and Alberto (United Kingdom)

Ancestors

Gallery

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  Olga and Tatiana Románova (1904).

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  During a summer holiday (1906).

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  Grand Duchess Olga with his brother, zarevich Alexéi (1910).

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  Grand Duchess Olga with her mother, the Alexandra zarina (1908).

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  Grand Duchess Olga reads a book that her sister the Grand Duchess Anastasia (Winter 1912-1913).

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  Grand Duchess Olga Nikoláyevna and Pável Vóronov, 1912. Olga fell in love with Vóronov and grieved when he married, though she so desired.

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  Great duchess Olga (left) and Tatiana Nikoláyevna treating a patient (1915).

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  Grand Duchess Olga Nikoláyevna with her nursing uniform in a formal portrait (1915).

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  Grand Duchess Olga Nikoláyevna with her nursing uniform, the Alexandra zarina, and the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikoláyevna in the room of the zarina around 1916.

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  From left to right, great duchess Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana Nikoláyevna in captivity in Tsárskoye Seló in the spring of 1917.