page_title: Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia
section_title: Relationship with Grigori Rasputin
hierarchical_section_title: Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia / Relationship with Grigori Rasputin
caption_attribution_description: English: This photograph of Tsarina Alexandra of Russia with her daughter Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia in 1913 is from a posting at Alexander Palace.org Because of its age I believe it to be in the public domain. If I am mistaken, please delete the photograph.
context_page_description: Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia was the second daughter of Emperor Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and of Empress Alexandra. She was born at Peterhof, Saint Petersburg.
  Tatiana was the younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga and the elder sister of Grand Duchess Maria, Grand Duchess Anastasia and Tsesarevich Alexei. She was known amongst her siblings as "the governess" for her domineering but also maternal ways. Tatiana was the closest out of all the children to her mother, often spending many hours reading to her. She was often thought to be the most beautiful of all her sisters, and was the most aristocratic in appearance. During World War I, she chaired many charity committees and trained to become a nurse. She tended to wounded soldiers on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo from 1914 to 1917. Her time as a nurse came to an end with her family's arrest in 1917 after the first Russian Revolution.
  Her murder by communist revolutionaries on 17 July 1918 resulted in her being named as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
context_section_description: Tatiana doted on her younger brother, Tsesarevich Alexei. However, the long-awaited heir suffered from frequent, severe attacks of hemophilia. Tatiana, her mother, and her three sisters were all potential carriers of the hemophilia gene; the Empress was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who had passed down the hemophilia gene to her descendants. Tatiana's paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia reported that Maria, Tatiana's younger sister, hemorrhaged during an operation to remove her tonsils in December 1914. The operating doctor was so alarmed that the Empress needed to urge him to continue. Olga Alexandrovna claimed that all four of her nieces bled more than was normal and that they were carriers of the hemophilia gene. Symptomatic carriers of the gene are not hemophiliacs, but they can have symptoms of hemophilia, including an abnormally low blood clotting factor that can lead to heavy bleeding.
  The Empress relied on the counsel of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and wandering starets or "holy man", and she credited his prayers with saving the ailing Tsesarevich. Tatiana and her siblings viewed Rasputin as "Our Friend" and confided in him. In the autumn of 1907, Tatiana's father escorted his sister, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, to the nursery so that she could too meet Rasputin. Tatiana and her siblings all wore their long white nightgowns, and they were comfortable in Rasputin's presence. In February 1909, Rasputin sent the imperial children a telegram, advising them to "Love the whole of God's nature, the whole of His creation in particular this earth. The Mother of God was always occupied with flowers and needlework." In one letter, 11-year-old Tatiana asked Rasputin to visit her and lamented that she found it difficult to see her mother ill. "But you know because you know everything," she wrote.
   
  Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva, one of the sisters' governesses, was horrified that Rasputin was permitted access to the nursery when they were in their nightgowns and requested that he be banned from the household. She told Grand Duchess Xenia that he visited Olga and Tatiana before them, spoke to them, and "caressed" them. The sisters hid Rasputin's presence from Tyutcheva, and they were afraid to talk to their governess about him. Tatiana was aware of the tension and feared her mother's reaction to Tyutcheva's actions. On 8 March 1910, the 12-year-old Tatiana wrote to her mother, "I am so afr(aid) that S.I. can speak ... about our friend something bad. I hope our nurse will be nice to our friend now." Alexandra dismissed Tyutcheva.
  All accounts agree that Rasputin had an innocent relationship with the children, but Nicholas did ask Rasputin to avoid going to the nurseries in the future. Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia was horrified by Tyutcheva's story. On 15 March 1910, she wrote in her diary that she could not understand  she could not understand why her brother and his family regarded Rasputin, whom she saw as only a "khlyst", as "almost a saint". 
  Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, another nurse for the royal children, initially thought well of Rasputin, but she became disillusioned with him. In the spring of 1910, she claimed that Rasputin raped her, but the Empress refused to believe her because she saw Rasputin as holy. The Empress insisted to Grand Duchess Olga that she had investigated Vishnyakova's claim but that "they caught the young woman in bed with a Cossack of the Imperial Guard." In 1913, the Empress dismissed Vishnyakov.
   
  There were malicious rumors that Rasputin had seduced the Empress and the four grand duchesses. Rasputin had released the letters that the Empress and the grand duchesses had sent to him; although they were innocent in nature, they fueled the rumors about his alleged affairs. Pornographic cartoons depicted Rasputin having sexual relations with the empress and her four daughters as Anna Vyrubova stood nude in the background. Much to the Empress's displeasure, Nicholas ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg, and Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to th
caption: Grand Duchess Tatiana with her mother in about 1914. Her hair was cropped short following a bout of typhoid in 1913.
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