Page "Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia" Paragraph 36

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia and the dog Ortino in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo in the spring of 1917 At Yekaterinburg, Tatiana occasionally joined her younger sisters in chatting with some of the guards over tea, asking them questions about their families and talking about her hopes for a new life in England when they were released.

On one occasion one of the guards forgot himself and told the grand duchesses an off-color joke.

The shocked Tatiana ran from the room, " pale as death ," and her younger sister Maria scolded the guards for their bad language.

She " would be pleasant to the guards if she thought they were behaving in an acceptable and decorous manner ," recalled another of the guards in his memoirs.

Later, when a new commander was placed in charge of the Ipatiev House, the family was forbidden from fraternizing with the guards and the rules of their confinement became more strict.

Tatiana, still the family leader, was often sent by her parents to question the guards about rules or what would happen next to the family.

She also spent a great deal of time sitting with her mother and ill brother, reading to her mother or playing games to occupy the time.

At the Ipatiev House, Tatiana and her sisters were required to do their own laundry and make bread.

Her nursing skills were called upon at the end of June 1918 when she gave an injection of morphine to Dr. Eugene Botkin to ease his kidney pain.