Maria was very close to her father. Eagar noted that Maria's love for her father was "marked" and she often tried to escape from the nursery to "go to Papa". When Nicholas was ill with typhoid, she covered a miniature portrait of him with kisses every night. As she and her family waited for her father to return to Tsarskoye Selo after his abdication, she grew ill with measles. As she became delirious, she kept repeating, "Oh, I did so want to be up when Papa comes" until she lost consciousness.