During her lifetime, Maria, too young to become a Red Cross nurse like her elder sisters during World War I, was patroness of a hospital and instead visited wounded soldiers.

"[7] As a toddler, little Maria once escaped from her bath and ran naked up and down the palace corridor while her distracted Irish nurse, Margaretta Eagar, who loved politics, discussed the Dreyfus Affair with a friend.

"Fortunately, I arrived just at that moment, picked her up and carried her back to Miss Eagar, who was still talking about Dreyfus," recalled her aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia.

"[18] Queen Marie of Romania was hopeful about "a marriage for Carol with one of Nicky's daughters," and she found the fact that Nicholas considered the match "flattering and... a good sign!

"[19] Like her younger sister Anastasia, Maria visited wounded soldiers at a private hospital on the grounds of the palace at Tsarskoye Selo during World War I.

The two teenagers, who were too young to become nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played games of checkers and billiards with the soldiers and attempted to uplift their spirits.

"[35] Maria, like all her family, doted on the long-awaited heir Tsarevich Alexei, or "Baby", who suffered frequent complications of hemophilia and nearly died several times.

Her mother relied on the counsel of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and wandering starets or "holy man" and credited his prayers with saving the ailing Tsarevich on numerous occasions.

can speak ... about our friend something bad," Maria's twelve-year-old sister Tatiana wrote to her mother on 8 March 1910, after begging Alexandra to forgive her for doing something she did not like.

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was told that Vishnyakova's claim had been immediately investigated, but "they caught the young woman in bed with a Cossack of the Imperial Guard."

A. Mordvinov reported that the four grand duchesses appeared "cold and visibly terribly upset" by Rasputin's death and sat "huddled up closely together" on a sofa in one of their bedrooms on the night they received the news.

Maria herself reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils, according to her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, who was interviewed later in her life.

[49] Symptomatic carriers of the gene, while not hemophiliacs themselves, can have symptoms of hemophilia including a lower than normal blood clotting factor that can lead to heavy bleeding during childbirth or surgical procedures such as a tonsillectomy.

They continued in their claim that Maria slipped away from the group with Ivan Skorokhodov for a private moment and they were discovered together in a compromising position when two of his superiors conducted a surprise inspection of the house.

The original note, in place of an alleged implication that an "imperial soul" needed passage for inappropriate behavior, reports that the Deacon actually said "This is what happened before and not with such important people.

Consequently, the passage cited by King and Wilson as evidence of Maria being shunned is based on nothing more "than perhaps faulty translation in the original publication that referenced the alleged incident".

[61] The following day, on 15 July, Maria and her sisters appeared in good spirits as they joked with one another and moved the beds in their room so visiting cleaning women could scrub the floor.

[62] On the afternoon of 16 July 1918, the last full day of her life, Maria walked in the garden with her father and sisters and the guards observed nothing unusual in the family's spirits.

Dr. Botkin and Tatiana went that evening to Yurovsky's office, for what was to be the last time, to ask for the return of the kitchen boy who kept Alexei amused during the long hours of captivity.

Maria and her family had time only to utter a few incoherent sounds of shock or protest before the death squad under Yurovsky's command began shooting.

A heavy layer of smoke had accumulated in the room from the gunfire and from plaster dust released from the walls by errant bullets, and the gunmen could see only the lower bodies of those who were still alive.

The assassins then left the room for several minutes to let the haze clear, and when they returned they killed Dr Botkin, Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana.

The facial area of Maria's skull was indeed destroyed, but Yurovsky wrote that the victims' faces were shattered with rifle butts at the burial site.

Brimeyer was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a Belgian court after he was sued in 1971 by the Dolgoruky family and the Association of Descendants of the Russian Nobility of Belgium.

[69] As late as 2004, Gabriel Louis Duval wrote a book, A Princess in the Family, claiming that his foster grandmother "Granny Alina" might have been the Grand Duchess Maria.

Once the grave was opened, the excavators realized that instead of eleven sets of remains (Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, Tsarevitch Alexei, the four Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia; the family's doctor, Yevgeny Botkin; their valet, Alexei Trupp; their cook, Ivan Kharitonov; and Alexandra's maid, Anna Demidova) the grave held only nine.

Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber".

Preliminary testing indicated a "high degree of probability" that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters, Russian forensic scientists announced on 22 January 2008.

The burial of what now are considered to be Maria's and Alexei's remains, to be with those of the family, was planned for 2015 but has been delayed mainly due to the insistence of the Russian Orthodox Church on more DNA-testing.

The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years after they were murdered.