Already know if you’re a Meg, a Jo, a Beth, or an Amy? A Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, or Samantha? Now you can find out which of Nicholas II of Russia’s daughters you are!
Russian names are infamous for declining into an endless variety of nicknames. However, your family favors euonyms just as much. Which embarrassing title would they call you?
- Fat Little Bow-Wow, because not even you take yourself seriously.
- Governess, because you know what’s best for everyone.
- Imp, because you’re a genius of mischief.
- Little Empress, because you have strong instincts and the entitlement to match.
Your education has been checkered, because your family is so focused on the health of your brother, the hemophiliac heir to the throne. Still, you have tutors in many subjects, including English, French, and religion. How would they describe your approach to academics?
- You’ve never been a focused student, in part because you pour energy into your artistic or athletic talents, but your sweet temper means you’re pleasant to teach.
- You don’t always feel inspired by your studies, but you’re a conscientious worker–it wouldn’t really occur to you to be otherwise–and have a gift for languages.
- Your tutors can’t get you to sit still through a single lesson. You’re a cut-up and a ham and a general pain to teach. Some suspect you’re secretly a genius.
- You love to read and write in your free time, but you can be stubborn when asked to study something you don’t care about.
You were born into the wealthiest ruling family in Europe, but because of gross patriarchal traditons, you’ll sleep on a camp cot and take a cold bath every morning until you’re married. Luckily, your bathwater is scented with your favorite flower to mitigate this indignity. Which sounds dreamiest?
- Lilac.
- Jasmine.
- Violet (but you’d be just as happy with dirt).
- Rose.
Your mother trains as a nurse and converts a spare palace into a hospital to serve Russian soldiers wounded in World War One. (This is a controversial decision, as many Russians prefer to see the empress as untouchable and glamorous, not as someone who touches bodily fluids.) How do you help out your countrymen?
- You love to build relationships, so you visit the soldiers every day to chat about their lives at home. By the time they leave the hospital, you know all their children’s names.
- You train as a nurse alongside your mother, proving yourself amazingly efficient–you’re not squeamish, and though you sympathize with the patients, you keep your sense of self.
- You are great at lifting people’s spirits, so you play cards and tell jokes with the patients, and even plan an amateur concert (starring you, of course!) to raise morale.
- You try to nurse, but you have a hard time compartmentalizing and find yourself overwhelmed. Also, you keep falling in love with the soldiers. So you do administrative tasks instead.
Your mother is in bed (again) because of her chronic pain and anxiety about your brother’s health. How do you cheer her up?
- Sketch or take pictures with her.
- Read to her.
- Do a mean and very on-point imitation of a lady-in-waiting.
- Write her a poem.
You are one of the most eligible princesses in Europe, but your betrothal plans keep falling through. (And sometimes you sabotage them, like the time you and your sisters purposely got sunburnt before meeting Prince Carol of Romania so he wouldn’t fall for any of you.) What do you think about love and marriage?
- You’re warm, you love kids, and you’re an incorrigible flirt. You declared at an early age that you were going to marry a Russian soldier and have twenty children.
- Vulnerability is scary for you. Also, you’re super attractive. This means that people find you alluring and mysterious, which is both a blessing and a curse.
- You are more invested in worm farming than romance at the moment.
- You fear losing your identity if separated from your family and country. You get intense crushes on inappropriate people and sulk about them in your journal.
You’ve finished your lessons early and you have some downtime. What are you reading?
- Fairy tales.
- Shakespeare.
- Not reading anything, but you’re writing an excellent skit.
- Victor Hugo.
You have an amazingly cozy and close-knit family, considering that your parents are the absolute monarchs of an empire. Still, you get anxious about the part you play in it. What scares you?
- Being forgotten about because you’re so low-maintainance.
- Not being strong enough to take care of those you care about.
- Not being funny enough to bolster the family.
- Being separated from your loved ones.
Even though you’re a grand duchess, you’re not perfect! What was the most deviant thing you did as a child?
- Once you stole a single cookie. Everyone was shocked.
- Acting eerily self-posessed at all times.
- Something puckish but violent, like throwing a rock at your sister and knocking her unconscious.
- Saying creepy things. Like, you once suggested that Joseph’s older brothers were justified in selling him into slavery, because he got privileges they deserved.
Russia gets awfully cold in winter. The Alexander Palace has very wide hallways with waxed floors. One of your sisters suggests that riding your velocipedes around indoors could be a novel winter diversion. Will you do it?
- Sure! You’re happy to be included.
- You are busy reading, but agree to be on-call for first aid if necessary.
- “One of your sisters”? That was your idea.
- Why not? Sounds like a good way to burn off some nervous energy.
If you answered mostly As, you are MARIA.
Born June 13/26, 1899: Maria, Marie, Mashka, or “Fat Little Bow-Wow” (sigh). You are exceptionally sweet-tempered and easygoing, not unlike a golden retriever (or the Russian equivalent). You have a touch of middle-child syndrome and sometimes fear being lost in the shuffle, but your observant nature translates into artistic gifts, and your strength–both physical and emotional–is a great source of comfort to the people close to you. Don’t fear being forgotten, and don’t let your older sisters bully you into sweet-talking your mother on their behalf.
MARIA FACTS:
- Maria tripped when she entered her debutante ball and fell into a visiting dignitary. Instead of fleeing in horror, she plopped down on the floor and laughed.
- Maria’s eyes were known in the family as “Mashka’s saucers.”
- Maria was physically the strongest of all her sisters, and good-naturedly lugged their little brother Alexei around as often as he requested.
If you answered mostly Bs, you are TATIANA.
Born May 29/June 11, 1897: Tatiana, “The Governess”
“Regal Bearing” should be your middle name (or maybe not, because you’d say that that’s silly). Of all your sisters, it’s said, you are the one who looks and acts like a tsar’s daughter 24/7. This isn’t just because your clothes and hair are always perfect (even though they are). You also have a cool head and a deep well of compassion that serve you–and the projects you care about–well. It probably wouldn’t hurt you to let loose every once in a while, though!
TATIANA FACTS:
- Though her sisters teased her by calling her The Governess, Tatiana’s self-posession meant that she was the one they relied on to ask their parents for favors.
- Tatiana, along with Olga and their mother, worked as a Sister of Mercy during World War One. Many of the other nurses they worked with observed that Tatiana was a born caretaker. (A few were also surprised that she was so willing to cover her pretty hair with a wimple.)
- Tatiana had a French bulldog named Ortino that she took with her into captivity.
If you answered mostly Cs, you are ANASTASIA.
Born June 5/18, 1901: Anastasia, Nastasia, Nastia, or Shvybzik [“Imp”]
You are the family clown and you take this role very seriously! From an early age, you impressed onlookers with your control over your features, your sharp mimicry, and your iron will–you never do anything you don’t want to do, but when you care about something, you care completely. And despite your tendency to take a joke too far, your ability to cheer anyone up makes you a valuable presence.
ANASTASIA FACTS:
- Anastasia liked to push herself physically and once almost drowned during a family beach trip because she insisted on swimming out too far. Her father rescued her–by catching her hair!
- Anastasia had a dog named Shvybzik. Yes, she named a dog after herself.
- A diary entry that must be poetry, because it can’t be summarized: “…I am in Tatiana’s room. Tatiana and Olga are here… I am sitting and digging in my nose with my left hand. Olga wanted to slap me but I ran away from her swinish hand…” (May 18, 1913.)
If you answered mostly Ds, you are OLGA.
Born November 3/15, 1895: Olga, “The Little Empress”
According to former tutor Claudia Bitner, you love “solitude and books,” and there’s not a thing wrong with that. As the eldest, you have a sense of responsibility to your siblings, which can feel like a burden. In general, you form deep attachments, and you’ll push yourself past your breaking point for the people you love. Try going a little easier on yourself, and you might find that going easy on others comes more naturally.
OLGA FACTS:
- Olga was named after her father’s sister, Olga Alexandrova, who was similarly bookish and occasionally goofy.
- Ever contrary, Olga seems to have been the one cat person in a family of dog lovers.
- Olga was not above a pun in English, which she and her sisters spoke fluently (though she and Tatiana spoke with Scottish burrs picked up from a tutor). She referred to her nose as her “humble snub.”
Image: Grand Duchess Anastasia, Grand Duchess Olga, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarevich Alexei, Grand Duchess Tatiana, and Grand Duchess Maria visiting a Kuban Cossack regiment during World War I. Romanov Collection, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
Apparently, I’m equal parts Masha and Tatiana! I always loved reading about the Romanov daughters, ever since I picked up the Royal Diaries book about Anastasia.
I was just thinking about the Royal Diaries yesterday – mostly because I had a surprising flash of passion about British royal history during a conversation about the current queen Elizabeth and her hats (I was shocked – shocked! -that so many people had not devoured multiple YA novels about the Tudors. And then I realized that the Marie Antoinette one in particular was probably politically repugnant because it’s really only about her as a teenager (if I remember correctly) and not about how terrible France was.
Oh man, the Anastasia Royal Diaries was probably the worst in the series. Like half of it was just chilling in the Crimea in summer 1914, and then the entire war was just a series of increasingly shorter and more depressing entries. It definitely gave me a biased sense of how rad it was to be a Romanov daughter.
I am Olga! Which makes total sense, because we share a birthday.
Where were all of you when I was eleven and making my way through all the Romanov books at the library? (This was just after my parents’ split so no one thought to screen these books for mentions of, you know, Russian Orthodox sects fond of orgies, murder, infidelity, tsaricide, peasants getting trampled to death (they just wanted those souvenir mugs!) etc etc.)
THE DAMN SOUVENIR MUGS
I remember skipping over the parts about the revolutions in Massie, because I was like who CARES about the proletariat, I want to know more about what the girls did at the palace!
Then my mother moved in with a Russian guy and I dropped the Romanovs like a hot potato because I didn’t want to seem like I was interested in my mother’s new boyfriend or anything to do with his country. How teenagery of me. Although, now that I think of it, maybe my abandonment of the lives of Russian princesses was a necessary step on the path to becoming interested in social history and popular movements. I might have become an insufferable reactionary monarchist otherwise…
Wikipedia’s few sentences on the ending of the trampling:
“Despite the tragedy, the program of festivities continued as planned elsewhere on the large field, with many people unaware of what had happened.”
REALLY GUYS
We ARE talking about the same country that came up with Potemkin villages, so this is not exactly surprising. “No more souvenir mugs? WhatEVER.”
I am Anastasia, both in this quiz and in life. SURPRISE!
And I’m an Olga who’s actually an Olga. High five?
I’m a mix of Olga and Tatiana, more Olga.
Same here!
It me.
Ditto.
Me too. Mostly Olga, Tatiana in distant second (1 point to Anastasia as I would definitely do a “mean and very on-point imitation of a lady-in-waiting”)
Hello, friend(s).
I had more Tatiana answers, but remain convinced that I’m actually an Olga because of this: “You get intense crushes on inappropriate people and sulk about them in your journal.”
I feel sad for anyone who DOESN’T do this. It’s very Romantic.
My friends and I used to argue about this CONSTANTLY when we were in the fourth grade (along with which Greek goddesses we were human incarnations of, obviously). I wanted to be Tatiana, but like it or not I’ve always been an Olga.
Which god were you?
I wanted to be Athena, but I was in a Very Special Classroom For Gifted Children and so allllllllll of the girls thought they were qualified to be the goddess of wisdom and I got stuck with Hestia instead.
Hestia is cool too! Try being all wise and warlike when you’ve got no hearth, Athena.
I was Hestia because I like cooking.
I will have you know that I was obviously Artemis because I HATED BOYS.
Me too! My fourth grade best friend was Aphrodite, and a complete mystery. We even took a picture of us goddessing once: she looks like a little flirt, and I look like a wild animal that’s about to bite someone. (We were both trying to look glamorous at the time. I was Artemis all the way down, I guess!)
I always wanted to be Artemis, and spent nearly all my time barefoot in trees, but I felt disqualified by liking boys too much….
I think probably ALL of us here did the Greek gods thing. I was Athena. Still like to assume I am.
Team Olga.
I got Olga because I am an archetypal oldest sister.
yyyyyyyup.
yyeaaaahhh. i read that description and thought “okay, well then, fine”.
Mostly Olga, with some Tatiana mixed in there. I’m an only child, that probably explains it.
Count me as another Olga/Tatiana only child with a fascination for stories about families containing lots of sisters.
Olga/Tatiana only child with Russian shtetl-born grandparents who would be amused and horrified to know I was two grand duchesses.
I’m also split between Maria and Tatiana, but one moment of my childhood solidifies my spot on Team: Fat Little Bow-Wow forever:
I was 6 or 7, and Dad came home from work to find me sobbing in the front room while the rest of the family got on with life. I tearfully explained that nobody cared about me, and he picked me up and carried me through the house so Mom and my siblings could all say, “I love you, Mel.” My older brother didn’t want to say it, but Dad made him.
This is among my most cherished childhood memories.
Okay, now I am also sobbing.
That is some A+ dadding there.
I seem to be a tie between Maria and Olga (with a drop of Tatiana and none for Anastasia, bye)
I’m Tatiana, though most of my second choices were Olga. But out of all of these anecdotes, tripping and then laughing about it from the floor (Maria) sounds the most like me/is something I do on a fairly regular basis. I don’t think I’m graceful enough to be Tatiana.
I’m a proud Olga with some Maria tendencies (I think roses are bullshit, for example, and lilacs are divine).
Cosigned. Started off on an Olga tear, then got to that question and thought “Roses? No. LILACS. ONLY.”
Lilacs are one of my most favorite things ever.
The worst thing I did as a child was drop a wooden staff I was using to pretend to be a witch with on my sister’s hand to stop her usurping my space on the magic wall and I broke her finger, so I guess I’m Anastasia guys, who’s up for card games and velocipedes?
I’m a Tatiana-Olga mix! Buuut probably more of an Olga, let’s be real.
“You get intense crushes on inappropriate people and sulk about them in your journal.”
…Yes.
I got Tatiana! I mean, I want to be Anastasia, but I’m all for a combination Scottish and Russian accent. Also Tatiana seems…very close to my personality. I think we could be friends, even though our politics would not mesh whatsoever (murdering the royal family was morally wrong, etc., but god DAMN did the Russian aristocracy need to go! Including the Romanovs!) and she would probably think I was horrendously rude.
Olga straight up. Didn’t even need quiz to verify.
Fun fact: When the animated Anastasia movie came out I was in the prime age to want to go see it (very early middle schoolish if you’ve got like one that starts in fifth grade) and I wanted to see it so bad and I was cruelly denied by my mother. Before very grudgingly letting us see Pocahontas she had read us book after book about the real woman and the history of the Jamestown settlement, but she drew the line at animated Bolsheviks. My family continues to have very strong feelings to this day about the Russian Revolution, to the point where I think she wrote an angry letter to Time magazine when their review suggested it might be a history lesson. It wasn’t published. I still never got to see it. Instead she read us selections from college textbooks about massacres and collectivization.
My life as a baby history major.
When the Anastasia movie came out I was on the outside INDIGNANT about how historically inaccurate it was, but secretly I still enjoyed it. Whoohoo baby history majors!
Oh man, my parents definitely took us to all of the animated movies without much in the way of lecturing about historical accuracy. Which means I got to discover it on my own adulthood nostalgia rewatches.
Once, we did Hercules and Anastasia on the same day. Now that was a day of “HUH LOOK AT THAT HUH”.
Little me was highly unimpressed with Hercules when it first came out. I started complaining that it wasn’t called Herakles and it all went downhill from there.
ME TOO. Sorry, I’m way late to this conversation. The inaccuracies in “Hercules” bothered me far more than the ones in “Anastasia”!
(Given what website I’m on I probably shouldn’t be surprised by so many baby history majors with intersecting interests, but this whole comment section has been a /very/ pleasant surprise)
I was huge into greek myths and spent that entire movie whining about it until Meg turned out to be really attractive to like 10 year old me and then I shut up.
I remember having the whole first opening scene of that film imagined as them being led into the basement and then clouding over amidst the sound of gunfire. And then I saw it and was like, “Huh, okay, that works too.” I don’t even know WHY I thought as a kid that they’d show an entire family being massacred in a cartoon movie. (And I was also the kid who, at the end of “Pocahontas,” stood up in her movie theatre seat at the end and yelled to the screen, “WHERE IS JOHN ROLFE.”)
Tatiana has always been my favorite for being tallest and prettiest, but in looks and birthdays I resemble Anastasia and in temperament and smoking habits I resemble Olga.
Also, a place where we can discuss which Romanov sister we are and also the Royal Diaries series…*sigh* *tear* my people!
Who wants to have a discussion about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, my second favorite doomed member of European royalty?
I saw a collection of Elisabeth’s dresses at a museum in Budapest. The corseting she went through, I can’t imagine.
Oh, Sisi! I used to live in Vienna, and going to her museum was a dream come true (although I will admit to being more sympathetic to Franz Joseph, because at the end of the day I appreciated that he worked so hard). But I always loved the Sisi films starring Romy Schneider, which my high school German teacher let us watch at the end of the year.
I think my favorite Royal Diaries book was about Cleopatra, mostly because at the end, Marc Antony kisses her for the first time and Young Me had lots of FEELINGS about that.
After the Royal Diaries book I remained lowkey obsessed with Sisi and found something that I immediately used to justify my identification with her: that many historians find her life to make much more sense if you see her as a lesbian with a severe ED. Ah, Sisi – I hope you had some secret nice times that weren’t documented.
I’m equal parts Anastasia and Olga, and not just because I read books about the Romanovs and then imagined how my life would proceed when I inadvertently but inevitably discovered that I was somehow not only adopted but OF COURSE descended from Anastasia who OF COURSE survived (damn you, newfound DNA evidence!) and thus the heir to the Russian throne.
All of this was later utterly and completely mortifying to my college-communist incarnation, of course. In fact, much of my adult life has been about discovering how horrible and reactionary many of my childhood fantasies were.
Scoring split between Maria and Olga, but it only took “you love solitude and books” to know the scale topples to Olga. (Also, no one would ever compare me to a golden retriever [or its Russian equivalent].)
Tatiana/Maria blend right here!
This post was great, and made me want to read about the Romanov sisters.
Go read “The Romanov Sisters” by Helen Rapaport (sp?) It’s. So. Good.
I just placed a library hold on it! Thank you so much for the recommendation. ^_^
Olga through and through, with tinges of Tatiana and Maria. I tried my best to not let my foreknowledge color my answers, but it was bound to happen this way regardless.
I had a very satisfactory (you know, to me) conversation with a near-stranger who was an Anna Anderson believer, after the whole thing was signed, sealed, delivered, post second Massie book. She was all, “There is still a lot of doubt, but plenty of people know she was the real princess,” and I was all, “NO. That Charlottesville lady was Franziska Schanzkowska, and TWO DNA tests proved it. Guard! Turn! Parry! Thrust! HaHA!”
I dunno, man… being a potential rightful owner of HALF of the Bank of England’s holdings is a pretty big deal to some people who would maybe be able to rig the results of any DNA test… I thought the Franziska link was tenuous to begin with. Honestly I would have believed the DNA results more if they pointed to some other person.
</conspiracy rant>
(honestly this is the only wacko conspiracy I believe in…no, really)
Total Olga, hardly surprised.
How do you solve a problem like Mariiiiiiiiaaaaa? I am also strong, chubby, and clumsy, but I’m also a total crybaby so I would have fled the debutante ball like the hounds of hell were after me.
Tatiana and Olga. I think I can pretend to be Tatiana for awhile, but I’m more Olga. The having inappropriate crushes and writing about them in my journal clinched it. A couple points for Marie, though, and like, one, for Anastasia. Because I do enjoy being meanly funny on occasion.
Me and Olga with our oldest sister syndrome! And cats. Because cats are civilized.
Anastasia!
Olga with a touch of Tatiana on the quiz. All Olga all the time from the description. Bookish and older sistery and cat-loving and prone to inappropriate crushes and sulking? Yeah, that’s definitely me.
Olga, just as I expected. (Although I got more Tatiana than I thought I would? Like, I too project an image of distance and self-possession to mask my fear of vulnerability! TWINS.)
I was always Team Olga as a kid, largely due to oldest-sibling solidarity. Others this made me unduly sympathetic toward include Beezus Quimby, Meg March, Mary Tudor, and Dmitri Karamazov.
Woah! I just noticed. Olga= Meg=Mary (very good, serene) Tatiana=Jo=Laura (interesting, intelligent, slightly bossy, the star of everything) Maria=Beth=Carrie (sweet tempered, love of the family) and Anastasia=Amy=Grace (spoiled, silly.) Possibly a stretch… BUT NOT ACTUALLY A STRETCH… they are all reincarnations of each other… I choose to believe this.
Surely Anastasia would be Jo (lively, mischevious, enjoys play acting and messing around) and Tatiana would be Amy (very pretty, spoiled, turns out to be really good at caring for people)?
Tatiana’s expression in that photograph is everything.
This was totally pointless, because I purposefully chose all of Anastasia’s answers. I’m afraid I’m more of an Olga, but I can’t help but want to be an Anastasia instead.
I had 3 Maria and 3 Anastasia, and then 2 of each of the others. I’m probably more Maria, but I couldn’t help going for some of the comedy answers (and violets smell the best! <3) Also, I have big eyes that could probably be described as saucers. Possibly flying saucers.
Mostly Tatiana, with a little Olga.
I am a mix of Olga and Tatiana, which seems right, although in real life I am named Anya and also I am not at all likely to ever be considered glamorous.
So Olga it hurts xD Definitely an eldest child thing.
I bet 90% of people who are Olgas have a younger sibling who is an Anastacia that they adore/resent in equal measure.
Same! And the Montefiore is good – a little sparse but he is covering so much time it's to be expected. I saw him talk about it, did you know he listens to Pitbull when he writes?
I’m Olga. Oldest child syndrome FTW – here’s to getting my brother and cousins to refer to me as “Little Empress”.