How well they would have aged.......

[carkuczyn]

Has anyone here ever wondered what the Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexei would have looked like as old people?  I find the thought fascinating.  Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[nena]

I though about it, carkuczyn----one fact stands: Alexei wouldn't live long, because his illiness was dangerous. People with hemophilia live around 45 -50 years, if they care themself, and were carefully.
For GDs I don't know. They would(IMO) live long, because their cousins lived long:Irena and Victoria of Darmstadt, Princes Dimitri, Rostislav,....GD Olga and Ksenya Alexandrovna, etc. But if OTMA were hemophilia carriers, and if they gave born boys, their life would be very sad, at the same time their health wouldn't be good. OK?

[Lalee]

I often do wonder about this. Who would the children marry? What would their children be like? Would the Grand Duchesses have sons suffering from haemophilia, and suffer the same anguish as their mother did? What other important events would happen in their life? Would it be happy, like fairy-tale lives? Would Alexei live long? (Personally I think he would have lived as long as any other person, unless some tragic, fatal accident occurred.)

As for looks? Well I think they all would have been quite attractive as they were all throughout their lives.

Yes, there's lots to wonder about. But in the end I always think that it was fate, so we can't really have a precise picture on how things would have turned out.

[Imperial_Grounds]

I have been wondering that too.

Personaly I think Alexei would live long, as long as possible for someone in his condition(at that time). I think he might have made a good Tsar too, i don't know why, but he knew suffering and that might made him realize that the people didn't have such a good life as they had at the Court. The fact also is that Alexei was young, and therefore might have different ideas then his father. He might have seen the danger, that his father didn't see, and teherfore give Russia a parlement and the people the right to vote.

I think the girls might have been in good marriages too, maybe even in happy ones since we all knew their parents wanted their children to have the kin'd of love they found in each other. But then you had Alexei's Hemophelia, and that might have made him being married rather out of politic reasons then love. And spoken of Hemophilia, the girls all cared the virus within them, and if they might had sons that were Hemophiliac, houw would they react? Would they feel guilty for passing on the disease, or try and to handle with the situation. I think they might have reacted the way Alexandra did, turning to faith, since they all were brought up close to the Faith in God and therefore might have asked for answers that way.

But then again, we'll never know how they would've looked troughout their further life, and the way I see it, everything happens for a reason and when your time is come you just have to let go. Even at such a young age, even if you knew there was a life before you. Death comes when it is time to go, even if that moment is too soon...

[Sarushka]

Given their parents' history, I think you've also got to factor in common things like stress and smoking. For example, Nicholas's chain smoking had already contributed to serious gum disease and deterioration of the jaw by the time of his death. If the girls continued smoking, the habit would have affected their later appearance. Also consider how drastically the Spala crisis aged Alexandra over a matter of days. Their childhood was relatively idyllic and they died young, but the revolution already impacted them by then. In particular, the stress of captivity had already begun taking its toll on Olga when she died, IMO. If they'd been spared by the Bolsheviks and their parents had been killed, the children's grief and survivor-guilt would likely compound the aging process. I also agree that bearing hemophiliac children would add to the mix.

For the sake of comparison, their cousin Irina Aleksandrovna aged dreadfully. There are photos of Irina with Ksenia in later years where if you don't recognize their facial features, you can't tell which is mother and which is daughter.

[Janet_W.]

I agree that the girls, if they had survived, would not have aged terribly well. On their mother's side they had many long-lived relatives--those who were not felled by early illnesses, that is--but on their father's side the record was not as solid. The fact that they enjoyed smoking and probably would have continued that habit, as did so many women from the 1920s-1960s, would have tipped the balance.

[AnastasiaExpert]

This is an interesting topic, IMO,  I think that as many have said the stress of the revoultion had started to take effect on their apperances as too was from smoking.

As we had seen in the picture of Olga with Alexei that was taken on the Russ and the last known photograph of Anastasia, their appereances started to look haggard.  Espeically Olga's her face looked tired and drawn, she looked to be in her 30s instead of her early 20s.
Looking at the photo reminded me of the photo of Olga being photographed with the peasent woman and her children.  It was obvious the woman was of similar age to Olga but the woman looked tired and beaten down.

Smoking can cause stress on the skin, my cousin who is 16 smokes and has smoked since she was 14/15.   Her skin is very dry looking and she actually looks older then her age. 

If the Imperial family were not caught up in the revoultion or had escaped and had not smoked, I'm very well aware that they would have aged beautifully.  Although as mentioned before the likely hood that each of the GDs would have a child that had hemophilia, could also place on the stress and which can affect their apperance.

[Lalee]

For Olga Nikolayevna, I think I read somewhere that during captivity (during which she was very distraught and worried) it certainly did appear that she had aged, looking like a "middle-aged woman", if I'm remembering correctly.

In my opinion, on each of their parents' side, the aging seemed okay (I think Ella, Alix's sister, aged extremely well), but sometimes they did look much older than what they really were. I don't know how well the girls and Alexei would have aged (probably well, in my personal opinion), but, considering that it was highly possible that the Grand Duchesses also carried the haemophilia gene like their mother and therefore likely to pass it on to their sons, could have caused intense grief and stress for them, perhaps also making them age very quickly, like their mother had, especially during the terrible Spala incident in 1912 (who, already within a number of days, noticeably aged, also with white hair beginning to appear).

And exactly like Sarushka, Janet and AnastasiaExpert said, smoking could have also caused aging, had the children survived.

[Sarushka]

For Olga Nikolayevna, I think I read somewhere that during captivity (during which she was very distraught and worried) it certainly did appear that she had aged, looking like a "middle-aged woman", if I'm remembering correctly.

It's from Buxhoeveden's memoir, Left Behind:

"Olga Nicolaevna had also greatly changed. The suspense and anxiety of her parents' absence, and the responsibility she bore when left as head of the house with her sick brother to look after, had changed the lovely, bright girl of twenty-two into a faded and sad middle-aged woman. She was the only one of the young girls who acutely realised the danger that their parents were in."

Honestly, I'm not sure if Buxhoeveden was referring to Olga's physical looks or her general outlook. Maybe both...

[Lalee]

For Olga Nikolayevna, I think I read somewhere that during captivity (during which she was very distraught and worried) it certainly did appear that she had aged, looking like a "middle-aged woman", if I'm remembering correctly.

It's from Buxhoeveden's memoir, Left Behind:

"Olga Nicolaevna had also greatly changed. The suspense and anxiety of her parents' absence, and the responsibility she bore when left as head of the house with her sick brother to look after, had changed the lovely, bright girl of twenty-two into a faded and sad middle-aged woman. She was the only one of the young girls who acutely realised the danger that their parents were in."

Honestly, I'm not sure if Buxhoeveden was referring to Olga's physical looks or her general outlook. Maybe both...

Thank you, Sarushka! Yes, I thought I read it from the memoirs of Sophie Buxhoeveden. I also can't figure out if she is talking about her physical appearance or behaviour. I think she might mean both...

[Holly]

She meant both I'm sure.

We'll never know what would've become of them had they been given the chance to age.