I think they did not know, but one would suppose they always lived with a sense of danger and peril at every point. They still had hope to the end, but maybe that was a brave front for when they thought about it, they must have realized it might be a dark future for them. But, though some of their relatives died, some of them escaped. They must have hoped for escape too. Apart from Nicholas, who was in the most danger, one wonders if the girls ever thought they woudn't get out of the situation alive. But, I think whatever their fate, they accepted it. Although it is true they wanted to get to a better point in their life.
I wonder if this is true.
Even today, when rereading FOTR, I was impressed by the chapters "A happy hour with the grandest people in the world" and "Goetterdaemmerung". I got to understand that:
- relations between the prisoners an their guards became less and less divined, the youngest three girls chatting to the soldiers as if they were their fathers' soldiers, like in the old days (did they differentiate?);
- some flirtations even sprung up;
- some soldiers felt more and more sorry for the ones they guarded;
- the prison regime was not as harsh as was earlier on assumed;
- the girls mentioned finally emigrating to Great Brittain;
- the total surprise at Yurovsky's declaration.
It may as well be that the IF still assumed they were going to be shipped to Moscow, like they should have been in April of that same year. Such was known to them. They can have been thinking/hoping that the civil war made their transfer impossible at the time, but then later on they still would be moved to Moscow, and then abroad.
Had the IF been afraid and have haid premonitions about their gruesome fate, would they have felt at ease in making small-talk to their guards, have Yurovsky chat with Aleksej, note that Yurovsky seemed to do better than Avdayev, etc., etc.?
Just some thoughts...
Theories pointing the other way involve assumptions that Olga "knew" better what the circumstances were, which is yet to be proven, and Alexandra's ominous referrals to the end of live on earth and coping with the ' vale of tears' for a glorious eternal life in heaven, which is something she has been known to focus on already in her early adult years (so nothing new there)....
Erichek
