THE ROMANOVS

THE ROMANOVS

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On July 17, 1918, the last Czar of Russia Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and their five children, were brutally murdered by communist revolutionaries known as the Bolsheviks.

Though the Bolsheviks claimed to have murdered the entire family, their bodies had been so marred, and later buried in unmarked graves, that many speculated the youngest daughter of the five Romanov children, Anastasia, had escaped.

The rumors seemed true, when a mysterious woman, later identified as Anna Anderson, appeared in Berlin.

The legend of the escaped Grand Duchess, and the idea that the mysterious woman could be none other than her, swirled across Europe and well into the 1980s.

But were the rumors true?

The last Czar, Nicholas II, admitted that when he took the throne in 1894, he was unprepared, and not ready to rule.

This was apparently obvious to his people.

The Russian people felt that the Romanovs were responsible for both the country’s lack of military prowess, and the economic troubles within the working class as a result of the first world war.

The country began to question the Czar’s ability to be an effective leader.

Meanwhile, Czar Nicholas II’s youngest daughter, Anastasia Romanov, experienced a relatively humble childhood, despite her aristocratic background.

Born Anastasia Nikolaevna near St. Petersburg on June 18, 1901, the young Grand Duchess would have just 17 short years, with her family.

In February of 1917, the family was placed under house arrest.

The following month, Czar Nicholas abdicated his throne.

The Bolsheviks sent the Romanov family to live in exile in a small home, in the city of Yekaterinburg.

It has been believed, while the family were being transferred to Ipatiev House, Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia, were sexually assaulted by their guards.

For 78 days the family was held between five gloomy rooms under constant surveillance.

They covertly sewed jewels into the seems of their clothing, in the hope of an escape.

Their captors grew increasingly paranoid about a possible rescue mission for the Royals, and decided to hold them no longer.

On the morning of July 17th, the family was ushered into the basement.

The doors were nailed behind them.

The family of four girls and one little boy were told to line up as though for a picture.

Then a guard entered and sentenced them to death.

The family crossed themselves, and the Czar was shot at point-blank range in the chest.

Maria was shot in the thigh and as she lay bleeding, she was stabbed by bayonet, repeatedly in the chest.

Because of the jewels sewn into their clothing, the girls were momentarily protected by the bullets, until they were eventually finished off with eight-inch bayonets.

As Tatiana tried to escape, she was shot in the back of the head.

It was reported that Anastasia was one of the last to die.

A drunken guard tried to finish her with a bayonet to the chest, but it would be the leader of the firing squad, who took a gun to her head.

Little Alexei suffered the same.

The murder of the imperial family was no simple affair.

It took multiple attempts, and 20 minutes to kill every family member.

Butts of their guns, bayonets, knives and brute force, were used to finish off the Imperial Family, and their servants.

The men drove the bodies into the forest, stripped them down, confiscated their jewelry and the jewels that were hidden in their clothing, and buried them.

As they did so, they covered them in acid and buried them.

The grave, located in a mine, was too shallow, and when the men tried to collapse the mine with grenades, it failed.

Instead, they disinterred the bodies and searched for another grave site.

Finally, they dug another shallow grave, and, after abusing the corpses even more, buried all but two of the family members.

Two of the children were burned and the remnants of their bodies buried in another, separate grave nearby.

The family’s burial site remained hidden for 61 years following their execution.

During this time, the whereabouts of their burial site, and the knowledge that the children had jewels hidden in their clothing, led some to believe that a child could have escaped.

Rumors spread and impostors attempted to claim the royal fortune.

The most famous impostor of Anastasia Romanov, was a young woman named Anna Anderson.

In 1920, Anna attempted suicide, by jumping off a bridge in Berlin, Germany.

She survived the attempt, and was brought to Dalldorf Asylum, without any paperwork or identification on hand.

For six months she refused to identify herself, and didn’t speak a word to the hospital staff.

When she eventually did speak, it was discovered that the mystery woman had a Russian accent, and bore some surprising scars.

Firstly, it was assumed the woman was Anastasia’s sister, Tatiana.

Former Romanov servants and friends visited, and many of those who looked at the mystery woman, claimed that she was indeed, Tatiana.

Out of fear, and refusing to co-operate, the woman hid under the sheets, appearing to all, mentally unstable and a nervous wreck.

She neither confirmed, or denied that she was a Romanov....

If she was showed pictures of her 'Romanov family', she would stay silent.

One day, Captain Nicholas von Schwabe, a personal guard to Anastasia Romanov’s grandmother, showed her old pictures of her family.

She refused to talk to him, but later apparently told nurses,

“The gentleman has a photo of my grandmother.”

One of the Grand Duchess’ former ladies in waiting, Sophie Buxhoeveden, observed the woman for herself, and reported that she was “too short for Tatiana” to which the mystery woman replied,

“I never said I was Tatiana.”

This was the first time the mystery woman had ever answered a question regarding her identity.

When Anderson left the hospital in Berlin, she was able to find housing with various aristocrats, who had been friends to the Romanov family.

Despite the fact that Anastasia’s former nursemaid, tutor, and multiple other former servants, denied that Anderson was Anastasia, Russian aristocrats who escaped the Bolshevik takeover, heard the rumors of Anastasia’s resurrection, and believed Anderson's story.

In 1927, Gleb Botkin, son of an attendant to the Romanov family, called a lawyer to prove Andersons identity.

For 32 years, the remaining Romanov family members fought against Anderson in court, to protect the remainder of their fortune.

At the time, nobody but the murderers knew where their bodies were buried, and without a body, the deaths could not be legally proven.

This meant that whatever was left of the Czar’s vast fortune, could still be claimed.

Ultimately, in 1970, a judge ruled in court that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that Anderson was the Grand Duchess Anastasia.

Meanwhile, Anderson was instead identified as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who had gone missing shortly before Anderson turned up in Berlin....

Schanzkowska had allegedly been declared insane, just after sustaining an injury during a factory fire, which would explain the scars and bruising on her body, as well as her odd behavior once admitted to the Dalldorf hospital.

Anna Anderson would die in 1984, married to a man who only ever referred to her, as Anastasia.

Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was extracted from samples, and compared with that of the Romanovs, and their relatives.

Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh~ himself the Great-Nephew of Tsarina Alexandra, gave a sample.

Anna Anderson's sample did not match his, or that of any of the bones found at the burial site.

This confirmed that Anderson was, without any shadow of doubt, un-related to the Romanovs.

Finally, the burial site of the Romanovs was discovered in 1979.

This information wasn’t made public until 1991, as two bodies were still missing.

DNA samples of the remains of Nicholas were found to match those taken from a bloodstained shirt worn by the Czar, during a previous attempt on his life.

The sarcophagus of his father, Alexander III, was opened and genetic samples taken.

DNA was taken from the bloody uniform of his grandfather, Alexander II, who was assassinated in 1881.

In 2007, two more human remains were discovered near the burial site.

DNA showed one of the missing bodies was Alexei - and the other was one of the Czar’s four daughters.

Because the corpses were so mangled, the notion that the missing daughter could be Anastasia Romanov persisted.

After extensive analysis it was proven to be the remains of Maria.

Anastasia was then identified among the bodies from the previous burial.

Nearly a century after her death, the morbid mystery of young Anastasia was allowed to rest.

The Royal remains of The Romanovs, were buried in St. Petersburg cathedral in 1998.

The Romanovs were cannonised and declared saints in the Russian Orthodox church.

As of 2019, Alexei and Maria, are still waiting to be interred with the rest of their family.

Only 44 pieces of their bones had been found at the site.

The rest of the area of that forest glade where they were found, will need to be further searched, to make sure that all their remains, if they are there, are found.

It is up to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the local authorities to make a final decision, with respect to continuing the search for the rest of Alexei’s and Maria’s remains.......

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Source~Wikipedia/historytoday/Romanovs

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders