"It was said that four Grand Dukes [the Tsar's sons] were shot, among others Nikolai was named, who was so exhausted from starvation they had to carry him on a stretcher and shot him like that. Oh what fiends."
Months earlier the family had been put on soldiers' rations.
This would be Nicholas Mikhailovich grandson of Nicholas I who was shot along with Grand Paul Alexandrovich, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich and Grand Duke Dmitri Constantinovich.
And they not all a tsar's son. Three were the grandsons of a tsar. Only Paul Alexandrovich was a son.
Yes, the Telegraph got this wrong, but Olga does also say quite a bit about her own brother's family. Coryne Hall and two other researchers have been working on transcribing these letters (which, by the way, are in English with Russian words in places) so people present at the Royalty Digest weekend this year in April are lucky enough to have heard extracts. Perhaps someone who was there can afford to buy them!
As late as 1919 Olga writes that she has heard on the grapevine that Gilliard's family have news of him from Siberia. "So he must be still at his post," she writes hopefully, thinking he would not be in Siberia if the family were dead. She also wrote that Miechen had heard Botkin and Tatischev had been seen in Petersburg. All very poignant, and it shows how widespread such "sightings" were in those days (an interesting counterpoint to Mangold and Summers who when they heard in the 1970s of tales that people had seen the family alive in 1919 assumed these were the first and must therefore have a grain of truth!)
The other thing that emerges is Olga's optimism, sense of humour and pleasure in small things such as the blossom on the trees and watching her son Tikhon toddle round the room with her bra over his head!
