Anastasia Brasil

ANASTASIA NIKOLAEVNA ROMANOV

Learn about the history of Grand Duchess Anastasia.

By Bianca Nobre

Updated in 10/29/2016

Birth

In the fall of 1900, Tsar Nicholas II had a terrible typhoid fever and on that occasion Tzarina Alexandra found herself before the Imperial succession! All of Europe turned to Russia, where the Tsar was dying and her three beautiful little daughters (Olga, Tatiana and Maria) became disappointments. Yes, they were beautiful, intelligent, lovely and perfectly healthy, but the Tsarina should have a Tzarevich (a son) for succession to the throne; If that did not happen, the Tsar's brother Mikhail would be the next Tsar of all Russia.

Although they related well, he preferred his son to succeed him, and then Tzarina Alexandra became pregnant. And they all expected him to be a boy, but in the summer of 1901, the Tsar recovered from the fever, and the family awaited the birth of the child In the summer house, the Peterhoff Palace. Thus, on June 5, 1901, Anastasia Nicolaevna Romanov was born at 6am.

At that time, neither Russia nor the neighboring countries had the delicacy of concealing their feelings: The baby wasn't universally welcome. "The Empress failed again!"

The Tzar's sister, Xenia, wrote about the baby arrival: "Alix (Tzarina) feels good, but, my God! What a disappointment! ... A fourth girl!"
Mother sent me a telegram: "Alix (Tzarina) gave birth to a girl again!"
And so the fourth daughter was named: Anastasia! That means "She who will rise" (and many believe that she has lived up to him).
Anastasia - pronounced in Russian is as: Ah-nah-stah-ssi-ya - was a legend in the Romanov family almost from its birth.

Personality

Perhaps Anastasia was the most beautiful of the Romanov sisters. Her features were beautiful and regular, the shape of her face delicate and aristocratic. She had inherited her famous sapphire blue eyes from her father, but in her there was a playful gleam and she never faced anyone directly, she preferred to say something and look out of the corner of her eye. Her hair was blond with a touch of reddish like her mother's. The combination of it all made the younger Grand Duchess the most different from her sisters.
When she was born, everything good and proper had already been done by her sisters - Olga was the perfect student, Tatiana was beautiful, Marie, "a lovely angel". But Anastasia was "the devil disguised as a plump little girl," she must have decided to be both "bad" and funny since there was no other way to compete with her sisters. It was impossible not to laugh with her, but sometimes their games were evil.

Anastasia was extremely intelligent, her cunning almost always found the points of everyone, but she was so full of life and her joy was so contagious that even so many members of the court called her "sunshine," the nickname. That her mother won from the English Court.
Seen by many as the only one of the sisters who never knew the meaning of shyness, even when small entertained elderly people and important political figures at the dinner table of their parents with their surprising opinions. Ladies who came to see Tzarina, they never suspected that hiding somewhere, the youngest daughter of the Tzars was watching each of her peculiarities, and that later they would come to the surface when the family was alone.
Her French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, remembered Anastasia as: "the clown of the family, freely speaking her stern criticisms, with sarcastic humor." The whole family was dying of laughing at their jokes. No one was safe from her clever and cruel tongue " .
No one was sure of what to expect from her, the memories of the Russian court are full of their tricks, tales of their imagination and their incredible personality.
As a child, Anastasia was very small and 'sharp' that gave her a special charm. However, she suffered greatly because of her size, Anastasia was known to defend herself coarse when someone tried to let her down. Her teachers thought she learned faster than her sisters, with a mind that remembered anything she wanted. His French accent was excellent, he had a talent for paintings, and he played three musical instruments - the piano, the guitar, and the balalaika (a typical three-stringed Russian strum with a triangular body slightly curved and made of wood). Grammar was the one thing she definitely could not learn, even in Russian, and almost all her studies in that area were a disaster.

As a teenager, that little, cute little girl did not exist, but decidedly fat, fattening in a way that alarmed her mother. However, everyone agreed that this was part of the age, which Anastasia would transform in the same way as Marie, a year or two earlier. Though she remained low and never had the elegant grace of her older sisters, Anastasia was charming in her own way, even more so than now a young lady with the same personality.

Linking

Anastasia had two dogs, her first one was called Shvibzik, which is little known until he suddenly died of a brain disease. His death was a shock to her as they were inseparable, and for weeks Anastasia was inconsolable.
Later, Anna Vyrubova, a close friend of the Tsarina, gave the girls another dog - a spaniel named Jemmy who belonged to Tatiana but was fond of Anastasia, and was the dog that accompanied the Tsar's family in Siberia.
Maria and Anastasia were friendlier, since her days as a child who still learned to walk, already dominated the little Maria. And people noticed that "the dominant personality of the younger girl came to the surface and captivated Mashka." They shared a room, which was above her mother's reception room, so that they could hear who was with her and preach afterwards.
In many ways Anastasia was like her paternal grandmother, the Empress Marie Feodorovna. The Tsar, too, though always rigid, secretly admired her daughter's lack of prudence. And almost always saved her from punishments she might have deserved. In return, she gave him her obedience - in many cases, Tsar Nicholas was the only one capable of making the little rebel do what is required.
But Anastasia's closest and special relationship was with her little brother. The two generally seemed to communicate without speaking, using some kind of sixth sense, and over time Anastasia would be able to predict her brother's pains, knowing how to distract him, and almost feeling his suffering. Together, they learned to play the balalaika by imitating melodies they listened to from the music player, invented the mysterious "Tarabar" language, and they ran and jumped in the spacious gardens of Peterhoff and Tsarskove Selo.

Photos restored by Deviantart artists.