Tatiana Alexeievna "Tania" Romanova[1] is a fictional character in the 1957 James Bond novel From Russia, with Love, its 1963 film adaptation and the 2005 video game based on both.

In the screenplay adaptation, Klebb has defected and is secretly an agent for SPECTRE – who manipulates Romanova into believing that she is on an important mission for her country, when she is in fact merely a pawn in the terrorist organisation's latest bid to destroy MI6.

Romanova's mission is to seduce Bond and have him take her to England to deliver a code machine (a Spektor in the novel, a Lektor in the film), as well as planting false information, before being rescued from prison and returned to the USSR.

Despite this, Bond elects not to leave the train for a plane or the consulate, after having fallen for Romanova and not wanting to cut their time short.

It is unclear as to what ultimately becomes of Tatiana in the novel as in her last appearance, she is still heavily affected by the sedatives, sleeping in the British consulate, while Bond confronts Klebb.

In the film, after meeting Romanova again to verify the authenticity of her information, Bond and Kerim blow up the Soviet consulate in Istanbul to cover their escape.

It is there they meet Klebb again who, in an attempt to retrieve the code machine and kill Bond, disguises herself as a maid and tries to eliminate the agent with a dagger-tipped shoe poisoned with blowfish venom.

The Burgess-Maclean affair of 1951, when two senior British diplomats, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, defected to the Soviet Union, added to these fears.

Since Maclean and Burgess were both members of "the Establishment", having attended public schools and Cambridge University; the defection of the two attracted much attention at the time.

[4] Fleming's intention in writing From Russia with love was at least in part to promote a "West is the best" message by creating two parallel characters who would prove Western superiority over the Soviet Union.

[6] However despite her repulsive superiors in the MGB, Romanova is portrayed as a committed communist who is at the same time vaguely unhappy with her existence – as Fleming wrote: "The Romanov blood might well have given a yearning for men other than that type of modern Russian officer she would meet-stern, cold, mechanical, basically hysterical and because of their Party education infernally dull".

[6] Romanova even prefers Bond for his smell as Fleming portrays Russian men as refusing to bathe and hence have unpleasant body odours.

[6] Grant is described as a man from Northern Ireland who joined the British Army in the late 1940s, an experience which briefly contained his insanity and his love of killing.

[10] Helena Bassil-Morosow suggests that[11] Tatiana's representation throughout the film is marked by a lack of agency, and this is independent of the types of media and focalisation through which she appears to the audience.

She is not shown to be displaying the physical prowess, weapon handling or intellectual agility required of a professional spy, but the multiple focalised gaze lingers on her slender figure, tight-fitting or sheer clothes and pretty face.According to Cubby Broccoli, Ian Fleming modelled Romanova on Anna Kutusova, a Russian involved in the Metro-Vickers Affair.

[12] The character's role in the video game adaptation of From Russia With Love is more or less the same as in the novel and film, the only major difference being that she is now an unwitting double agent for a terrorist organization called "OCTOPUS".