page_title: Princess Tatiana Constantinovna of Russia
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Princess Tatiana Constantinovna of Russia / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna in official court dress. Circa 1904
context_page_description: Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna of Russia was the third child and oldest daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia and wife, Princess Elisabeth of Saxe-Altenburg.
  Princess Tatiana Konstantinovna, had six brothers and two sisters, one which died at the age of two months.
context_section_description: Tatiana Konstantinovna was born on 23 January 1890. She was the first daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich and Grand Duchess Elizaveta Mavrikievna. At the time it was not usual for a member of the Romanov family to have many daughters, so she was gladly accepted. Her name, Tatiana, was the idea of her grandfather, and was taken from the character Tatiana Larina from Alexander Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin.
  She was close friends with Tsar Nicholas II's two eldest daughters, Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna, and was mentioned frequently in both their diaries.
  As a child she was described as a "quiet girl", and was reported to have a talent for the piano, something she got from her father, the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich.
  Tatiana made her first official court appearance on 11 August (24 August New Style) 1904, for the celebration of the christening of her cousin Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, who was to be baptised in the Church at the Palace of Peterhof. It was the first time she appeared in full Russian court dress. Earlier that morning, she left the Palace of Strelna, which was nearby, in a string of carriages, which went along the Finnish Gulf before reaching the Emperor's estate. She was said to be wearing "long white gloves" with "a string of her mother's pearls around her neck, and a satin kokoshnik with a large bow atop her hair."
  When she was young she enjoyed the company of animals. Once her brother Gavrill gave her a pink cockatoo, which he had been trying to teach to speak, but to no avail. Tatiana was playing with it when the bird suddenly turned on her, cutting her with its beak across her forehead. Although the cut was harmless, the scar remained the rest of her life.
  When she was nineteen years old, in the spring of 1909, Tatiana put on a play with the rest of her siblings in honor of the 25th anniversary of their parents' wedding. It was titled: "The Wedding of Sun and Spring", with Tatiana in the role of Spring. That year she also participated in an activity with her family where they recreated the famous portrait of Emperor Paul I's family.
caption: Tatiana Konstantinovna in official Russian court dress. Circa August 11th/24th 1904
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