Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia - Adolescence and Relationships With Parents

Adolescence and Relationships With Parents

"Her chief characteristics ... were a strong will and a singularly straightforward habit of thought and action", wrote her mother's friend Anna Vyrubova, who recalled Olga's hot temper and her struggles to keep it under control. "Admirable qualities in a woman, these same characteristics are often trying in childhood, and Olga as a little girl sometimes showed herself willful and even disobedient." Olga idolized her father and wore a necklace with an icon of St. Nicholas on her chest. She, like her siblings, enjoyed games of tennis and swimming with her father during their summer holidays and often confided in him when she went with him on long walks. Though she also loved Alexandra, her relationship with her mother was somewhat strained during her adolescence and early adulthood. "Olga is always most unamiable about every proposition, though may end by doing what I wish", wrote Alexandra to Nicholas on March 13, 1916. "And when I am severe — sulks me." In another letter to Nicholas during World War I, Alexandra complained that Olga's grumpiness, bad humor and general reluctance to make an official visit to the hospital where she usually worked as a Red Cross nurse made things difficult. Olga also occasionally found her mother's attitude trying. Parlormaid Elizaveta Nikolaevna Ersberg told her niece that the Tsar paid closer attention to the children than Alexandra did and Alexandra often was ill with a migraine or quarreled with the servants. In 1913, Olga complained in a letter to her grandmother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna about her mother's invalidism. "As usual her heart isn't well", Olga wrote. "It's all so unpleasant." Queen Marie of Romania, who met Olga and her sisters when they visited Romania on a state trip in 1914, commented in her memoirs that the girls were natural and confided in her when Alexandra wasn't present, but when she appeared "they always seemed to be watching her every expression so as to be sure to act according to her desires."

As an adolescent, Olga received frequent reminders from her mother to be an example for the other children and to be patient with her younger sisters and with her nurses. On January 11, 1909, Alexandra admonished thirteen-year old Olga for rudeness and bad behavior. She told the teenager that she must be polite to the servants, who looked after her well and did their best for her, and she should not make her nurse "nervous" when she was tired and not feeling well. Olga responded on January 12, 1909 that she would try to do better but it wasn't easy because her nurse became angry and cross with her for no good reason. However, Ersberg, one of the maids, told her niece that the servants sometimes had good reason to be cross with Olga because the eldest grand duchess could be spoiled, capricious, and lazy. On January 24, 1909, Alexandra scolded the active teenager, who once signed another of her letters with the nickname "Unmounted Cossack", again: "You are growing very big — don't be so wild and kick about and show your legs, it is not pretty. I never did so when your age or when I was smaller and younger even."

Three years later, Alexandra blamed sixteen-year-old Olga, who was sitting beside her seven-year-old brother, for failing to control the misbehaving Tsarevich Alexei during a family dinner. The spoiled Alexei teased others at the table, refused to sit up in his chair, wouldn't eat his food and licked his plate. The Tsarina's expectation was unreasonable, said Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, a distant cousin of the imperial family. "Olga cannot deal with him", he wrote in his diary on March 18, 1912. Court official A. A. Mossolov wrote that Olga was already seventeen, but still "she had the ways of a flapper", referring to her rough manners and liking for exuberant play.