page_title: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia
section_title: Court life
hierarchical_section_title: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia / Court life
caption_attribution_description: This is a photo of a cultural heritage object in Russia, number: 7810687000 This template and pages using it are maintained by the Russian WLM team. Please read the guidelines before making any changes that can affect the monuments database!
context_page_description: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was the youngest child of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Emperor Nicholas II.
  She was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg. Olga's relationship with her mother, Empress Marie, the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, was strained and distant from childhood. In contrast, she and her father were close. He died when she was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor.
  In 1901, at 19, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, who was privately believed by family and friends to be homosexual. Their marriage of 15 years remained unconsummated, and Peter at first refused Olga's request for a divorce. The couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before. During the First World War, the Grand Duchess served as an army nurse and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry.
context_section_description: Olga was due to enter society in mid-1899, but after the death of her brother George at the age of 28, her first official public appearance was delayed by a year until 1900. She hated the experience, and later told her official biographer Ian Vorres, "I felt as though I were an animal in a cage—exhibited to the public for the first time." From 1901, Olga was appointed honorary Commander-in-Chief of the 12th Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. The Akhtyrsky Hussars were famous for their victory over Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Kulm in 1813, and wore a distinctive brown dolman.
  By 1900, Olga, age 18, was being escorted to the theatre and opera by a distant cousin, Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, a member of the Russian branch of the House of Oldenburg. He was 14 years her senior and known for his passion for literature and gambling. Peter asked for Olga's hand in marriage the following year, a proposal that took the Grand Duchess completely by surprise: "I was so taken aback that all I could say was 'thank you'," she later explained.
  Their engagement, announced in May 1901, was unexpected by family and friends, as Peter had shown no prior interest in women, and members of society assumed he was homosexual. At the age of 19, on 9 August 1901, Olga married 33-year-old Peter. After the celebration the newlyweds left for the Oldenburg palace on the Field of Mars. Olga spent her wedding night alone in tears, while her husband left for a gambling club returning the next morning. Their marriage remained unconsummated, and Olga suspected that Peter was pushed into proposing by his ambitious mother. Biographer Patricia Phenix thought Olga may have accepted his proposal to gain independence from her own mother, the Dowager Empress, or avoid marriage into a foreign court. The couple initially lived with her in-laws Alexander Petrovich and Eugénie Maximilianovna of Oldenburg. The arrangement was not harmonious as Peter's parents, both well known for their philanthropic work, berated their only son for his laziness. Olga took a dislike towards her mother-in-law; although Eugénie, a close friend of the Dowager Empress, gave her daughter-in-law many gifts, including a ruby tiara that had been a present to Joséphine de Beauharnais from Napoleon. A few weeks after the wedding, Olga and her husband travelled to Biarritz, France, from where they sailed to Sorrento, Italy, on a yacht loaned to them by King Edward VII of Great Britain.
  On their return to Russia, they settled into a 200-room palace (the former Baryatinsky mansion) at 46 Sergievskaya Street (today Tchaikovsky Street), Saint Petersburg. The palace, a gift from Tsar Nicholas II to his sister, now houses the Saint Petersburg Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Olga and Peter had separate bedrooms at opposite ends of the building, and the Grand Duchess had her own art studio. Unhappy in her marriage, she fell into bouts of depression that caused her to lose her hair, forcing her to wear a wig. It took two years for her hair to regrow.
  Near the Oldenburg's estate, Ramon in Voronezh province, Olga had her own villa, called "Olgino" after the local town. She subsidized the village school out of her own pocket, and established a hospital. Her daughter-in-law later wrote, "She tried to help every needy person as far as her strengths and means would permit." At the hospital, she learned basic medical treatment and proper care from the local doctor. She exemplified her strong Orthodox faith by creating religious icons, which she distributed to the charitable endeavours she supported. At Ramon, Olga and Peter enjoyed walking through the nearby woods and hunted wolves together. He was kind and considerate towards her, but she longed for love, a normal marriage, and children.
  In April 1903, she was introduced to a Blue Cuirassier Guards officer Nikolai Kulikovsky by her brother Michael during a royal military review at Pavlovsk Palace. Olga and Kulikovsky began to see each other, and exchanged letters regularly. The same year, at the age of 22, she confronted 
caption: The Baryatinsky mansion, Saint Petersburg, in 2009
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon DIGITAL IXUS 75", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2009:09:16 16:05:04", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2258", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "7644", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5391", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:09:16 16:05:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:09:16 16:05:04", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "223/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "95/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode, red-eye reduction mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "29/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3072", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2304", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "3072", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2304", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "7480", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "40960/3", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2304000/169", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4146"}