Maria and Tatiana, "The Middle Pair"

[Amelie Von Habsburg]

Hello everyone!

My name is Amelie and this is my first post on this wonderful forum! It is a real plasure to meet you all. Please forgive [and correct, if possible, ] my grammar mistakes, English is not my mother tongue, nonetheless I'll try my best to explain and share with you my own personal impressions about Grand Duchess Maria and her relationship with her sister Grand Duchess Tatiana.

In most of the photos I've seen they do not very often appear together. On the contrary, when we often see Maria posing next to Olga or Anastasia, smiling most of the times. As far as we know "The Middle Pair" [That is how I call T. and M. ] temperaments and personalities were too different therefore they did not have much in common. But... here is my doubt: I have always had the feeling that Grand Duchess Maria and Tatiana were emotionally distant towards each other. Does anyone shares my impressions? Also, I'd like to know if there are letters or other sourcers that could help to clarify or correct this.

I look forward to hear from you.

Thanks for reading!


Best Regards,

Amelie

[Sarushka]

I don't know whether T&M were emotionally distant from each other, but it is interesting how few photographs show the two of them together. The O&M/O&A pairings are much much more common than T&M. So far I've only been able to find four in my collection:

[Jen_94]

Welcome, Amelie!

I've also got these ones of T&M, I am unable to find many photos of them together!




I especially love the second one with the kittens!

[Sarushka]

Here's one more:



I've noticed just now that there are also very few photos of T&A together. Tatiana is much more likely to be found with adults (particularly her mother) than with any of her younger siblings. She's also frequently absent from group snapshots of her sisters. There are not many pictures of Tatiana and Aleksei, either. We know Tatiana was devoted to her mother, and she also had a very adult personality. My guess is that she simply preferred the company of the adults in her family over her younger siblings.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

I also noticed that there aren't much photos of the two sisters together, one more (a well known one):



Much bigger here!

[nena]

Welcome, Amelie, I hope that you'll enjoy being here. ;-) Surely you'll.

I love these kinds of discussion - I get thrilled with everything that has something to do with numbering, Combinations, Statistics and mathematics models, especially in its application in the photos of the Imperial family. (Am thinking to make some math models regarding the IF, but we'll see...).

There are not many pictures of Tatiana and Aleksei, either.

Correct -- but comparing to Aleksei and Maria photos together, Tatiana and Aleksei's photos together are not so rare (Remember cruising along the Dnieper with GD Dmitry Pavlovich in 1916). There are only a FEW ones of Maria and Aleksei photos together. I don't remember seeing so much Tatiana and Anastasia either.  

Well done on good observation, Amelie and Sarah, that 'middle-pair' relationship between Gds Maria and Tatiana triggers questions within us.

We can make some statistic as well.

There were five Imperial Children.

Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Aleksei.

We will observe the situations of two or more participants in taking the photos, {2,3,4}. (The whole OTMAA and each single of them are not interesting to us.)

1. We can take two subjects of five in 10 ways. (So called Binomial coefficient).So, we have the next combinations :

1. OT
2. OM
3. OA
4. OAleksei
5. TM
6. TA
7. TAleksei
8. MA
9. MAleksei
10. AAleksei

2. Analogically, we can take three of five subjects/objects in 10 ways again. Here they are:

1. OTM
2. OTA
3. OTAleksei
4. OMA
5. OMAleksei
6. OAAleksei
7. TMA
8. TMAleksei
9. TAAleksei
10. MAAleksei

And finally, we have 5 ways to take four of five subjects/objects.

1. OTMA, of course.
2. OTMAleksei
3. OTAAleksei
4. OMAAleksei
5. TMAAleksei.

How to do statistics? Collect ALL your OTMAA photos and just - count and put them in these 25 categories. It is bit hard due to two reasons -- we will never have ALL OTMAA photos and the second one -- it takes a lot of time. The two-pairs are most interesting to us, of course. In the end, we could make percentage, and see many other things, for example, whom Tatiana enjoyed taking the photos most with?
 
Probably with Olga. Normally, she was older and there is bigger probability of existing more Olga and Tatiana than Tatiana and Anastasia (who was born 4 years after Tatiana) photos. Or we can see with whom Maria and Olga preferred taking photos with?  

[clockworkgirl21]

That's actually how I used to sort my collection of Romanov photos. The only problem was that some albums got so big it was nearly impossible to find photos when I needed them.

[Sarushka]

That's actually how I used to sort my collection of Romanov photos. The only problem was that some albums got so big it was nearly impossible to find photos when I needed them.

I remember that. It was kind of amazing the first time I saw your photobucket.

[Olga Maria]

Two more:

I believe this is the same day as that one posted by dear Yelena ^^

The body figure of the GD helped on the fence tells it’s Tatiana.

It’s difficult to look up for evidence in their letters because we only have a “few” (considering the countless letters they may have written throughout their lifetime), but I hope there are a lot more of photos of them together not yet revealed or unfortunately, did not survive the times.
I like to think that they were close as what the people who have been with them (OTMA) attested. (If they are very close as OTMA, surely any pairing would be very close, too.)
However even if I say this, I’ll still leave a little room for a possibility that they weren’t close (but I don’t like to think about this!)

This photo of them posted by dear Jen may be taken the same day as these photos:




They were with Olga but she didn’t have a solo photo like Tatiana and Maria. I think TM were the only ones together at that place (with their papa Nicholas). I also think they took turns to take a photo of each other that day! (Or is it the officer or Nicholas who took their photos?) Could this be called a proof of their closeness?
Also look at the background of that photo of Nicholas… The one sitting at the tree stump is clearly Tatiana (as what her solo photo shows), and that one talking to the officer near a tree is clearly Maria (see her solo photo^^).

[Olga Maria]

Horse Riding

Not really the 2 of them but it seems like both of them were playing with that jacket (that seemed to annoy the officer between them, IMO).

[Jen_94]

Grand Princess Shandroise, I assume they were. Same outfits, same type of environment. And I'd forgotten about the horse riding one! I like that one.

[Amelie Von Habsburg]

I thank you all so much for your replies!