The Fallen

There was a guard, Stanislav, who piqued Maria's interest. He was tall, probably around six feet, and had a strong build that could have picked her straight up off the ground. And this is what she wanted more than anything else.

Alexandra, or Mama, often did embroidery in the bedroom. She frowned upon Maria's flirtatious interactions with the guards. Meanwhile, Nicholas, or Papa, seemed complacent; to the guards, he seemed resigned to his fate.

Maria wrote to her sisters: "Oh, how complicated everything is now."

She missed Tsarskoye Selo. Even Tobolsk had been better than this.

Weeks later, her three sisters and brother joined her, Mama, and Papa. They were all now assigned this residence, this house surrounded by shoddy wooden fence in Yekaterinburg.

And everything remained complicated.

Walks around the house were their sole exercise, their sole excitement. Anastasia especially took advantage of this time, when she rolled Alexei around in circles in his wheelchair; his hemophilia had left him unable to walk just a short while ago.

While Olga and Tatiana sulked in their bedroom, Maria showed the soldiers photographs. She especially wanted to show off to Stanislav. Her beautific childhood at Tsarskoye Selo, her summers at Peterhof. Their adventures on their yacht, Standart. Swims in the Crimea.

Perhaps it was the photographs of her hiking up her skirts to feel the waves, but Stanislav seemed too interested. And that's when the fun stopped.

In fact, the fun was soon to stop for everyone. The house in Yekaterinburg became a real prison, one where the entire family was soon to face anguish that they could never have imagined in their years inside palaces.

And when Maria sewed jewels into her corsets and bodices, planning her eventual escape from Yekaterniburg, she imagined Stanislav with her.

But there was to be no escape, and her captors became her executioners.

For it was, afterall, The House of Special Purpose.