" Alexandra and Nicholas in the centre and little Alexei in front. 21st November 1914. Had tea at home with Mama [we] four, and Malama sweetheart was [here]. [Was] awfully glad to see him. And we said goodbye as he is going to the front soon. If Dmitri and Tatiana corresponded while he was at the front, the letters have not survived. A year and a half later, once he had returned to Tsarskoe Selo, Alexandra wrote of him to Tsar Nicholas: ‘He had matured, though still a lovely boy. I have to admit, he would make an excellent son-in-law. Why are foreign princes not like him?’ Had it not been for the Revolution, there is a good chance Malama and Tatiana could have married: Malama’s family were part of Russia’s old nobility and there were precedents because Nicholas’s sister Olga had married an army officer in 1916. Tatiana also had an admirer called Volodya, but there is no doubt Malama was her favourite from the many times she mentions him in her diaries and from the "
― Gill Paul , The Secret Wife