historyofromanovs:

The Romanov Family’s Alphabet v.2 - T is for Tercentenary.

“The morning of March 6, 1913, was cloudy in Saint Petersburg - leaden would be a better word to describe the heavy skies, the mist, the torrents of rain and occasional roll of thunder that broke over the city on what was meant to be a day of national rejoicing, the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty.

Three hundred years before, at a sixteenth-century monastery on the banks of the Volga River, a deputation of princes, warriors, boyars and clergy had hailed Michael Romanov, the teenage nephew-by-marriage of the late Ivan the Terrible, as the new tsar of Russia, thus putting to an end the twenty years of civil strife known as the Time of Troubles.

Cossacks, lancers, cavalry, dragoons, scarlet-clad trumpeters, and teams of prancing white horses did nothing the dispel the general gloom. Neither did the gravity of the tsar’s expression nor the appearance of his son, Tsarevich Alexei, the eight-year-old heir to the throne who had to be carried during the celebration. The child’s left leg was bent at the knee which was due to the 1912 accident in Spała, crippled beyond any attempt to hide it. That the Tsarevich was ill was known, but the nature of his illness remained a mystery to all but the immediate family.

Immediately behind the tsar, his wife, and his mother the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, stood the tsar’s daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, teenage girls of particular loveliness. There was hardly a soul in St. Petersburg who could have distinguished one of the girls from the other, so sheltered were their lives. For the rest of that tercentenary spring, the sun saw fit to shine on the Romanovs, at least when it came to official appearances.

In May, the imperial family took a week-long boat trip along the Volga, retracing the journey of the first Romanov tsar from Kostroma, where he had been called to the throne, to Moscow, the ancient capital and spiritual heart of Russia. In the winter of 1913 the dowager empress gave a brilliant ball at the Anichkov Palace for the tsar’s eldest two daughters the Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana, who danced till four in the morning. But when the proud father took his daughters home on the last train from town, he unknowingly brought down the curtain on the girls’ first and last appearance in St. Petersburg society.”

→ Peter Kurth - Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra.

naotmaa:

Great photo of the White Flower Day, in Livadia, a picture from the same time is the link below, also, it has an explanation!

Link

Woot Woot!

historyofromanovs:

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna Romanova of Russia, 1899-1918.

OTMA Romanov in 1914 …

 http://otma-romanov-forever.tumblr.com/page/4