Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia

Born 14 June 1899, Maria Nikolaevna grew up too young to serve as a Red Cross nurse when war came, so she visited wounded soldiers instead - noted throughout her life for her interest in their lives, flirtatious and hopeful for a large family of her own. She was elder sister to Anastasia, whose rumored escape would haunt the century. After the Revolution of 1917, Maria was executed with her family on 17 July 1918. When the Romanov grave was exhumed in 1991 near Yekaterinburg, remains were missing; through the 1990s some believed they might be Maria's. Further bones surfaced in 2007. DNA analysis closed the question: the entire family had died that night. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized her as a passion bearer, took custody of the final fragments in December 2015, and postponed the funeral indefinitely without explanation. Forty-four partial bones still sit in a state repository.