In life she used to be overshadowed by her elder sisters, in the years post her death it was the name of Anastasia that drew attention. Maria Nikolaevna, third daughter of the last Tsar, had a reputation of being placid and almost angelic, as well as often ending as the butt of a joke because of her clumsiness. By nature Maria was essentially a Mother. Extremely earthy and straightforward, she felt awkward during official occassions, but would lose any shyness when face to face to an ordinary person. With remarkable memory for faces, Maria never forgot anyone and felt keen interest in other people. Occassionally there would be pangs of loneliness and jealousy in her heart, owing to the fact she suffered from the middle child syndrome, but her inborn unselfishness and devotion always triumphed over them.
Maria was the only one of the four sisters whose birth disappointed the Emperor so much that he had to take a long, solitary walk in the park before he could face his wife and greet the new baby. But it was also this daughter, who stood as the greatest support and pillar of strength to her parents during the days of February revolution in 1917, and a year later during their transport to Ekaterinburg. She died a horrible death in the hail of bullets and thrusts of blunt bayonets, just one among millions of innocent victims of the Russian Civil War. Today she is considered a martyr and a saint. But all she ever wanted was to have a family of her own.
