7 People Who Pretended to be Royals - History Lists History Lists May 21, 2013 By Evan Andrews Share Did the Romanovs survive? Get the full story. Share this: 7 People Who Pretended to be Royals Author 7 People Who Pretended to be Royals URL Google History is filled with examples of ambitious swindlers who took on the identities of kings, queens and other royals—and it’s not always as easy as one might think to distinguish a king from a con artist. Some of these impostors sought to gain political power and wealth by masquerading as real monarchs, but others went so far as to invent fraudulent titles and even fake countries. Find out more about seven royal impostors who managed to con their way into the history books. Anna Anderson as Anastasia Romanov Anna Anderson and Grand Duchess Anastasia (Credit: Getty Images) In 1918, Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the Russian princess Anastasia, along with the rest of her family. However, rumors persisted of her alleged survival for decades and, over the years, several different impostors claimed to be Anastasia Romanova. None gained as much fame as Anna Anderson.

The would-be royal first surfaced in the early 1920s in a Berlin mental asylum, where she announced that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the deceased Czar Nicholas II. Although most of the surviving Romanovs dismissed her as a fraud, the girl bore a striking resemblance to the princess and even knew many personal details of her life. She soon won the support of a coterie of wealthy Russian emigrants, many of whom believed she was the legitimate heir to the throne. The supposed princess eventually moved to America in 1968 and took the name Anna Anderson. But while her story inspired several books and even a Hollywood movie, she failed to win recognition in court due to a lack of evidence. Her story remained the source of much debate until 1994, when a posthumous DNA test finally proved she was not related to the Romanov family. Anderson likely a Polish factory worker who disappeared in 1920, but her true identity has never been confirmed.

Gregor MacGregor as the “Cazique of Poyais” Dollar Bill from "Bank of Poyais" In the early 1820s, a dashing Scotsman named Gregor MacGregor rose to the top of London’s high society on the basis of a most unusual claim. A former soldier and mercenary who had fought in South America, MacGregor presented himself as the “cazique,” or prince, of a small Central American country he called Poyais. As evidence, the faux royal produced several maps, drawings and even a book, all of which described the mysterious country as a fertile paradise with a working government and friendly native population. MacGregor’s tiny principality seemed the perfect destination for European settlers, except for one small detail: It didn’t exist. Far from being a “cazique,” MacGregor was actually a con man who had cooked up a fairy tale country as a way of bilking investors out of huge sums of money. He eventually sold thousands of pounds worth of land rights for his phantom nation, and in 1822 the first would-be “Poyers” set sail across the Atlantic Ocean.

Arriving in Central America and finding only unsettled jungle, the pioneers—many of whom had converted their life savings into phony Poyais currency—soon realized they had been swindled. The stranded colonists were eventually rescued, but not before some 180 people perished from disease. Not surprisingly, MacGregor fled the country soon after the news reached England. He later resurfaced in France, but was arrested after he tried to set up a second Poyais-related scheme. False Dmitry I Capture of False Dmitry The man known as False Dmitry I not only successfully posed as a prince, he managed to con his way onto the royal throne of Russia. The pretender first became known to history in the early 1600s, when he appeared in Poland declaring himself to be Dmitry, the youngest son of the deceased Ivan the Terrible. The real Dmitry had supposedly been assassinated as a boy, but the imposter claimed he had escaped his would-be murderers and fled the country. The alleged royal went on to charm the Russian people, eventually riding a wave of public support all the way to Moscow. False Dmitry was crowned czar in July 1605, but his rule was ultimately short-lived.

The pretender’s policies proved too radical for Russia’s elites, and he was overthrown and assassinated less than a year later. Many have since speculated that his real name may have been Grigory Otrepyev, but this has never been proved. Amusingly, he was not the only impostor who claimed to be the real Dmitry. Two more pretenders emerged over the next decade, though neither succeeded in winning the throne. Perkin Warbeck as Richard of York Hanging of Perkin Warbeck (Credit: Getty Images) Not only did young Perkin Warbeck masquerade as a prince, he nearly succeeded in overthrowing King Henry VII of England. In 1491, Warbeck appeared in Ireland claiming he was Richard of York, the youngest son of the former King Edward IV. The real Richard was most likely murdered in the Tower of London as a boy, but at the time there was still much speculation about his fate. Capitalizing on this mystery, Warbeck presented himself as the missing prince, and eventually won support among Henry VII’s political enemies, who included such powerful figures as James IV of Scotland and Maximilian I of Austria.

Warbeck landed in Cornwall in 1497, and he soon galvanized his supporters into a rebel army of several thousand men. But when faced with the possibility of a battle with the king’s forces, the pretender lost his nerve and fled to the coast. He was eventually captured, and later admitted he was an impostor before being executed by hanging in 1499. Warbeck is widely regarded as a famous fraud, but some historians have noted that Henry VII could have fabricated the pretender’s backstory in an attempt to discredit him. With this in mind, there remains at least a small possibility that Warbeck may have actually been Richard of York. Mary Baker as “Princess Caraboo” Getty Images For several months in 1817, the village of Almondsbury, England fell under the spell of a phony island princess. The young woman had first appeared in the town clad in a black turban and speaking a mysterious language. Through a Portuguese translator, she identified herself as Princess Caraboo, a member of the royal family of Javasu, a small Indian Ocean atoll.

Even more astonishing, she claimed she had been kidnapped from her homeland by pirates, and had only escaped by plunging into the freezing Bristol Channel and swimming ashore. The story of Princess Caraboo quickly took the town by storm. People flocked to get a look at the visiting royal, who slept on the floor, swam naked in a nearby lake and climbed trees to pray to a god called “Allah Tallah.” The fascination continued until a woman from a neighboring town noticed that her highness Princess Caraboo was in fact Mary Baker, an English girl who had previously been employed in her house as a servant. Baker later admitted that she had invented the princess and her bizarre language as part of an elaborate con, and the story of the hoax went on to become a minor sensation in the British press. Yemelyan Pugachev as Peter III Getty Images In 1773, a royal impostor sparked one of the largest revolts in Russian history. Capitalizing on his striking resemblance to the murdered Peter III, a former soldier named Yemelyan Pugachev took on the identity of the late emperor and incited a massive peasant uprising against Catherine the Great.

As Peter III, Pugachev promised populist reforms including autonomy for Russia’s Cossack population an end to the feudal system, and soon thousands of serfs had rallied to his standard. Initially catching the empress by surprise, Pugachev’s army laid siege to the city of Orenburg in late 1773, and then proceeded to raze Kazan the following year. But despite these early successes, by late 1774 Catherine’s generals had started to turn the tide of the conflict. Following a decisive defeat at Tsaritsyn, a group of Pugachev’s lieutenants betrayed him and turned him over to the empress. The impostor was executed in early 1775, and his revolt crumbled soon thereafter. Karl Wilhelm Naundorff as Prince Louis-Charles Getty Images Although he spent his life as a watchmaker and clock salesman, German swindler Karl Wilhelm Naundorff went to his grave insisting he was the rightful king of France. Naundorff arrived in Paris in the 1830s claiming to be Prince Louis-Charles, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, both of whom were beheaded during the French Revolution.

Naundorff was only one of several men who professed to be the long-dead dauphin, but he soon succeeded in winning the confidence of many high profile figures including the prince’s former governess. Despite having several physical characteristics in common with the Prince Louis-Charles, Naundorff never provided sufficient evidence for his assertion, and he was eventually branded a fraud. Even Princess Marie Therese—his supposed sister—refused to meet with him. After being expelled from France, Naundorff lived out his later years in the Netherlands, where he was recognized as Louis-Charles until his death in 1845. The mystery of his true identity would endure for another 150 years, but Naundorff was finally exposed as an impostor in the early 21st century, when DNA evidence proved he was not related to Marie Antoinette. Tags Explosive new book claims Princess Anastasia DID escape to the West | Daily Mail Online Did Grand Duchess Anastasia survive the Bolshevik bullets?

Explosive new book claims fresh evidence shows the Russian princess really DID escape to the West Veniamin Alekseyev says Grand Duchess Anastasia probably did escape Claims DNA testing in 1991 was flawed and bones found were not hers Says Tsarina and Anastasia's sisters Olga, Marie and Tatiana also got away Believes that impostor Anna Anderson was indeed telling the truth Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was executed on 17th July 1918 by Bolsheviks His son Alexei Nikolaevich also died along with family servants Confessions of a Ci-Devant: Missing Royals and Murder Mysteries: Anastasia and the allure of romance Musings on history, life, literature, movies, art and merriment by Gareth Russell, author of "Popular" Friday, 28 September 2012 Missing Royals and Murder Mysteries: Anastasia and the allure of romance The story of Anastasia Romanov is one of the great melodramas of royal history. In life, the real Grand Duchess Anastasia was the teenage daughter of Russia’s deposed emperor, Nicholas II.

Her father had lost his throne during the revolution of 1917 and the entire family had subsequently been deported to Siberia. In July 1918, they were herded into a cellar and shot by local Communists. Their bodies were then stripped, doused in acid, hurled down a mineshaft and buried in a forest. In 1991, geologists announced they had discovered the bodies and surviving releatives of the Romanovs - including Britain's Prince Philip - were asked to provide DNA samples to help with the identification. But between 1918 and 1991, no one knew, for sure, what had really happened to the Romanovs. The dishonesty and habitual secretiveness of the Soviet Union, the absence of the family’s corpses and rampant media speculation led to rumours that one, or more, of the Imperial Family had survived the massacre. By the 1920s, attention had narrowed to a single candidate – the youngest of the Tsar’s daughters, Anastasia, who had been seventeen at the time of her alleged murder. Why Anastasia became the centre of the greatest conspiracy theory of the twentieth century is hard to say.

Maybe it was because the name ‘Anastasia’ has links to the theme of resurrection in the Russian language or maybe because it was the unconscious allure of the youngest princess (a favourite phrase in fairy stories.) For whatever reason, it was Anastasia who became fixed in the public’s mind as the 'one who got away,' whilst her three sisters faded into the history books as victims of the October Revolution. In time, the most famous of all the pretenders was a woman who travelled under the false name of ‘Anna Anderson,’ and who had first made the claim that she was Anastasia when she was recovering in a German mental asylum after a failed suicide bid in 1920. Anderson’s claim attracted global attention and she prosecuted the longest court case in European history trying to have her claim legally recognised. Some of her supporters included the Duke of Leuchtenberg, the Kaiser’s aging daughter-in-law Crown Princess Cecilia, the children of the doctor who had died alongside the royals in 1918, Anastasia’s childhood playmate who was now a wealthy American socialite called Xenia Leeds, the famous composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, the real Anastasia’s cousin Grand Duke Andrei, and, later, several prominent historians.

However, there were notable dissenters – not least amongst them Prince Felix Yusupov, who called Anderson ‘an adventuress’ and ‘a horrible creature,’ the real Anastasia’s godmother the Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the real Anastasia’s cousin Princess Irina, several of the Tsarina’s surviving ladies-in-waiting, the real Anastasia’s French tutor Pierre Gilliard, the real Anastasia’s nursemaid Shura Tegleva, and the real Anastasia’s uncle Ernest, the deposed Grand Duke of Hesse. Ernest in particular became so incensed by Anderson that he spent years obsessively tracking down who she might really be instead. Eventually, he put forward the theory that Anna wasn’t a Russian princess at all, but a missing Polish factory worker called Franziska Schanskowska. Anderson’s claim, and her court case, helped ensure Anastasia’s place in popular legend.

The myth spawned several plays and movies – including the magnificent Oscar-winning Anastasia in 1956 (above), in which Anderson was played by Ingrid Bergman and her Danish grandmother was played by the ‘queen of Broadway,’ Helen Hayes; there was also a 2-part television movie in 1986, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, which had an impressive all-star cast that included first-time-actor Christian Bale (as Anastasia’s younger brother, Alexei), Amy Irving as Anna Anderson, Rex Harrison (in his last movie) as Grand Duke Cyril Romanov, Gone with the Wind’s Olivia de Havilland as Anastasia’s royal grandmother, Brideshead Revisited’s Claire Bloom as the Tsarina Alexandra and Oscar-winner Omar Shariff as Tsar Nicholas II. And, of course, there was the romantic 1997 musical cartoon Anastasia (below), with the voices of Meg Ryan, Kelsey Grammer, Angela Lansbury, Christopher Lloyd, John Cusack, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters and Kirsten Dunst.

However, it is now absolutely impossible for any rational human being to persist in the belief that Anastasia Romanov lived beyond the massacre of 17th July, 1918. If she did survive the initial gunfire, she did so only by a matter of hours. When the bodies of the Romanovs were first unveiled to the world in 1991, it did admittedly seem as if Anna Anderson (below) might have been telling the truth, because two were missing. Scientists eventually confirmed that the absent corpses belonged to one of the Tsar’s daughters and to his only son, Alexei. Even by the time the bodies were ceremonially reburied in the Romanovs’ splendid Saint Petersburg crypt in 1998, the two missing skeletons had still not been found. Admittedly, many scientists insisted that the real Anastasia’s body was actually one of those being buried and that the missing princess was her elder sister, 19 year-old Maria.

Supporters of Anderson responded by claiming that Maria and Anastasia had been so close in age and physical appearance that the scientists had mistaken Maria’s body for that of her younger sister – who, they believed, had survived the massacre, lived under the name Anna Anderson and died in Virginia at the age of eighty-three in 1984. But ten years later, in 2008, the last two royal bodies were discovered near the original burial pit. One of the Romanovs’ executioners had left records indicating that they had desperately tried to burn two of the bodies and, eventually, scientists were able to confirm his testimony. The bodies of Maria and Alexei Romanov were discovered near the site of the fire and at some point they will presumably rejoin their family in their Saint Petersburg tomb. In a final twist, DNA tests on a surviving scrap of intestine left from an operation undergone by Anna Anderson in the 1970s confirmed that Anastasia’s seemingly-paranoiac uncle Ernest had been right all along. Anderson wasn’t related to the Romanovs, but she was related to the Schanskowska family.

Anna Anderson may have ended her life claiming to be the daughter of a tsar, but she had started it as the daughter of a penniless Polish factory worker. Anderson’s claims have therefore been conclusively debunked and the body of the real Grand Duchess Anastasia rests inside the Peter and Paul Fortress of Saint Petersburg. But, incredibly, there are still those who refuse to accept that Anastasia died alongside the rest of her family in 1918 or that Anderson was nothing more than an extraordinarily gifted fraudster. What they're arguing is logically impossible, so why continue to cling to a belief that science and history have both debunked? Part of the reason, I suspect, is that Anastasia was the last of a trinity of royal mysteries that have exercised and excited our curiosity for centuries. The other two are the missing Princes in the Tower and the ‘lost king of France,’ little Louis XVII, who disappeared at the height of the French Revolution. They died centuries apart, but there are similarities in their cases and in why they should still be studied today. I don't believe that the princes in the Tower (above) survived or that they ever left its walls after 1483.

If Richard III had shown unexpected clemency by allowing one, or both, to leave in the months after he became king, then it’s hard to see why he wouldn’t have paraded them through the streets when his regime was slowly being eroded by claims that he had murdered them. Furthermore, why would their mother agree to a scheme that would place Henry Tudor on the throne if she knew that her sons were still alive? There is, above all, absolutely no evidence – none whatsoever – that points to them having lived beyond 1483. There is plenty of passionate speculation, but nothing else. Bodies that are almost certainly theirs were discovered within the Tower’s walls in exactly the place that Saint Thomas More had said they were in, in his excoriating biography of their uncle. It’s too big a coincidence to dismiss. And, finally, if they did leave the Tower then where did they go after 1483? Narnia? Louis XVII (above) died in horrible conditions, after months of physical and psychological abuse. He was ten years-old at the time and both his parents, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, had already gone to the guillotine.

He was autopsied in the prison but then he was almost certainly hurled into a mass grave. We have no idea where and probably never will. It is only because his heart was removed during the autopsy that tests were able to be performed in the twenty-first century that confirmed that Louis had indeed died in prison in 1795. And as for Anastasia: if eyewitness accounts of the Imperial Family’s murder are to be believed, she died towards the end of the massacre, after being repeatedly beaten and stabbed by Bolshevik soldiers. These are the awful, hideous, heartbreaking facts behind the three greatest mysteries in royal history and a million miles removed from the fairy tales they have spawned. All four of these young royals – Edward V, his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, Louis XVII and Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia – disappeared in times of turmoil and secrecy. Richard III could not reveal what he had done with the boys, or allowed to be done to them, without fears of toppling his own regime.

The French Republic felt that drawing attention to the appalling treatment the little boy had suffered in jail would only inflame royalist sympathies and the fledgling Bolshevik movement were concerned that Kaiser Wilhelm II would back-out of his recent truce with them if he discovered what had happened to his cousins. The myths about their survival are therefore perfectly explicable by a process of historical logic: initially, no one knew exactly what had happened to them which led to them speculating about possible explanations. I suspect, of course, that it’s more than that and that the reason why so many people believed, or believe, in these fantastic tales of imperial survival is because the allure of fairy stories never quite leaves us – however hard we try. We want to believe in royal glamour, excitement, danger and happily-ever-afters. We want to believe, I suppose, in some form of magic. What do we do with these stories, though, once we know they’ve been disproved? (In Anastasia’s case, and Louis XVII’s, definitively; in the case of Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury, by all laws of probability.) Well, as a writer, I see nothing wrong in continuing to dramatize them.

As long as you don’t get so caught up in your own fiction that you try to mislead people, I still think there’s a place for stories of lost princes and princesses. And why not? When I think of Edward, Richard, Louis and Anastasia, I often hear the words of poor Briony Tallis in Ian McEwan’s Atonement: ‘What sense of hope or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? So in the book I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I’d like to think this isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness.’ Robbed of a real life by their families' enemies, I suppose that there is a kind of kindness in giving these children a fictional afterlife. But the historian in me wants people to see that the real stories of these children are important in their own right. They are celebrity poster-children against what we are capable of, but shouldn’t be. They’re what happens when politics runs amok. Edward V and his little brother perished at the end of a brutalising century, in which political corruption and ruthless communal ambition had warped the moral fabric of an entire generation.

Louis XVII and Anastasia Romanov died because their very existence was inconvenient to a new form totalitarian form of politics. The children did not ‘fit’ into the revolutions’ grand new vision of the world. As a result, in a world without compromise, they were expendable. Leon Trotsky himself dismissed Anastasia’s murder with a shrug, boasting that the horror it had caused would help unite the Red Army in fear behind the Communist cause. What we should be doing now is not focusing too much on what might have happened, but on what did happen. These dead children matter because their fates illuminate the fates of so many others who we now know only by statistics; they give us warnings, not just about politics but about the nature of humanity. Reflecting on the death of Louis XVII, one French royalist lamented that the child had been cut down ‘on the threshold of life.’ These four children died horribly, they died unfairly and they died illegally. Their stories should remind us that we should never go too far in the name of politics, to never cheapen our respect for the sanctity of human life and to remind us that we should never turn our backs on protecting the weak and the vulnerable.

Posted by Massacre of the Russian royals: Horrific last hours of a dynasty | Daily Mail Online Massacre of the Russian royals: Horrific last hours of a dynasty Bayonetted and shot by drunken assassins, the slaughter of the Russian royal family shook the world. Now a new book reveals in compelling detail the horrifying final days of the Romanovs. As the light faded, a train halted in the siding near the remote railway station of Lyubinskaya on the Trans-Siberian railway line. Gunned down: The Tsar and Tsaritsa with their five children who were executed by the Bolsheviks It was the evening of April 29, 1918, and there was nothing outwardly remarkable about these first-class railway carriages, except the presence of a heavily armed guard outside their doors. Inside sat a family whose faces have been immortalised through history book pictures. Four pale girls, in white lace, their hair tied back with satin ribbons. A sickly little boy in a sailor suit. This was the moment of truth for the Romanovs, the Russian Imperial Family deposed by the Soviet revolution. Now, they were making their final journey.

The young and beautiful Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, sat beside their mother, the haughty Tsaritsa Alexandra, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. The young Tsarevich Alexey lent on his father, the former Tsar Of All The Russias, Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov. The engine started, and the train took a decisive turn. The lingering hope inside Special Train No. 8 evaporated. The train was lumbering not towards a trial in Moscow or foreign exile, as they had believed, but to the bleak Urals. The Romanovs were being taken to Ekaterinburg, the historic hub of Russia's old penal system. There they would face a firing squad just 78 days later - and exactly 90 years ago this week. To coincide with that anniversary, their last wretched days have been chronicled in an explosive new book. Using previously overlooked documents and witness accounts, it tells the story of the family's final moments in unprecedented detail. So just how did these most aristocratic of aristocrats fall so decisively from glory? A man of limited political vision and ability, Nicholas was an unlikely king.

Even in stature, at 5ft 7in, he was lacking. Fatally, he turned a blind eye to social unrest. He left his deeply unpopular wife, Alexandra, in effective political control. She was increasingly spellbound by Grigory Rasputin, the charismatic 'holy man' she believed could save her haemophiliac son Alexey from bleeding to death. Faced with escalating political turmoil, Nicholas believed he had no option but to abdicate 'for the good of Russia' in 1917. He did so also because he believed it would guarantee the safety of his beloved family. Again, in this he proved calamitously naive. The family were initially placed under house arrest and then transferred to a small rural town, Tobolsk, where they retained a substantial entourage of 39 courtiers and servants. They brought many of their Imperial Palace treasures with them, including leather-bound volumes of photographs and vintage wines from the court cellars. Eventually, the new revolutionary high command decreed that such privilege could not be allowed in the emerging communist state. Instead, a house in Ekaterinburg was secretly prepared.

It would be a far cry from the sumptuous winter and summer palaces, banqueting halls and glorious gardens the Imperial Family had previously enjoyed. Ominously, it would be referred to by a Bolshevik euphemism, dom osobogo znachenie - The House Of Special Purpose. Stepping off the train in Ekaterinburg after a bone-rattling five-day journey, an exhausted Nicholas and his wife were received into the hands of local soviets, along with their doctor, maid, valet and footman. As their car drew up to The House Of Special Purpose, they looked their last on the outside world. It was Passion Week, and the Easter bells of the Orthodox Church rang out across the city. As the gates to his new prison slammed shut, the Tsar was curtly told: 'Citizen Nicholas Romanov, you may enter.' From now on, there would be no more acknowledgement of Romanov status and titles, much to the Tsaritsa's disgust. Gradually, the Imperial Family settled in to their new lodgings, a private house which, though hardly a palace, was nonetheless regarded as one of the most modern in the city, as it possessed a flushing toilet.

Hidden behind a high wooden fence, its windows blacked out, it was now a gloomy prison. The Romanovs were confined to a suite of five rooms. Spirited and bored, the Romanov girls, aged between 17 and 22, ignored warnings not to peek out of an unsecured top-floor window, until a sentry fired a warning shot at Anastasia's head. The young princesses' clothes were becoming increasingly threadbare - there were no more white dresses and pretty hats like they used to wear every summer at their palace in the Crimea, a seaside paradise where the air was thick with the scent of roses and honeysuckle. Lively and vivacious, they still beguiled their guards, however, with one saying they could not have looked prettier 'even if they had been covered in gold and diamonds'. The family were allowed to keep their bed linen, bearing personalised monograms and the Imperial crest, as well as fine porcelain dinner plates bearing the name Nicholas II. Alexandra had also brought supplies of her favourite English eau de cologne by Brocard, as well as cold cream and lavender salts. These were not the only potions on which the Tsaritsa was reliant.

Plagued by migraines, heart palpitations, insomnia and sciatica, she was hopelessly addicted to a whole range of drugs. She had long ago admitted to being 'saturated' with Veronal, a barbiturate. She also took morphine and cocaine for menstrual pain. It has been speculated that the Tsar, too, was cushioned from reality by narcotics. It was said that his childlike indifference to losing the throne was the result of smoking a mixture of hashish and the psychoactive herb henbane, administered by a Tibetan doctor, recommended by Rasputin, to counter stress and insomnia. Life in The House Of Special Purpose was severely restrictive. They were not allowed visitors, nor to go outside except during a proscribed hour. And they were to talk no language other than Russian 54 - the Tsaritsa liked to speak to her children in English. However, she refused point blank to obey an edict to ring a bell every time she went to use the bathroom. Daily life had become a matter of endurance. The family had one consuming obsession, however: Alexey's fragile health.

Since April, the 13-year-old had been suffering from a recurring haemorrhage in his knee, causing him agonising pain. Doctors had already cautioned that Alexey would not reach 16 because of his debilitating illness, but he seemed now at death's door. The family was exhausted by a relentless round of all-night sessions at his beside. Eventually, the splint was taken off his leg, and he could be carried out to the garden, but he would never walk again. By early July, the daily ritual of life at the House had taken on a numbing predictability. The family rose at eight in the morning, and breakfasted on tea and black bread. The days were filled with endless games of cards, patience and the French game bezique, which was a family favourite, while Alexey played with his model ship and tin soldiers. The family dogs, Ortino, Joy and Jemmy, provided a much-needed diversion. During their hour in the small garden, the girls and their father would walk the 40 paces back and forth, eager to make the most of their exercise time.

It was a sorry picture: the man who had once ruled 8.5 million square miles of empire, now master of a single room of his own and a small, scrappy garden. The evenings were filled with a meagre supper, prayers and Bible readings, more games, and embroidery and sewing 55 - the women spent long, furtive hours concealing gemstones and pearls into the linings of their dresses, to fund the life in exile of which they dreamed. On July 4, there was an abrupt change in the House. The authorities were concerned that a rescue attempt was being plotted by royalists, and the guards were changed. There was another reason for this, and for the Tsar and Tsaritsa, it was a shocking one. On June 27, Maria, the most flirtatious and attractive of the Grand Duchesses, had been discovered, during an inspection by commanders, in a compromising situation with guard Ivan Skorokhodov. He had smuggled in a cake for her 19th birthday, and their friendship had developed quickly in the boredom of the house.

Skorokhodov was sent to the city's prison, while Maria, an elegant young woman with light brown hair and mischievous blue eyes - was reprimanded by her family. Tragically, in their final weeks together, her eldest sister, Olga, and her mother froze her out, refusing to speak to her as punishment for disgracing them. Outside, civil war raged. The ranks of the White Army, which opposed the Bolsheviks, had been swelled by Czech deserters from the Austro-Hungarian army. They were rapidly gaining ground on Ekaterinburg. Food in the city was rationed, and typhus and cholera had taken grip. The mood grew increasingly ugly - 45 members of the local Orthodox diocese were murdered, their eyes gouged out, tongues and ears hacked off and their mangled bodies thrown in the river. But inside the House Of Special Purpose, an air of unreality reigned. It was getting hotter and hotter, and the inhabitants of the building had now settled into a state of restless boredom. The atmosphere was increasingly claustrophobic.

The Tsar and Tsaritsa continued to write their diaries every evening, although there were no grand banquets, affairs of state, or court gossip to relate. Only their joy when the frail Alexey had been well enough to take a bath. 'Very hot, went early to bed as awfully tired and heart ached more,' wrote Alexandra on Thursday, July 4, 1918. A guard described the Tsar's 'melancholy' aspect, of outward calm and dignity, that crumpled when he though he was unobserved. He would watch his children play, his soft blue eyes full of tears. For her part, the Tsaritsa was a broken woman. Gone were her delicate features and lovely golden hair. The family had learnt to be stoical, but their awful fate loomed. In America, the Washington Post published rumours that they had already been executed. In Britain, George V had withdrawn his earlier offer of asylum for the family, and three days' before the execution was blithely attending a cricket match at Lord's In fact, the Romanovs' fate at this point hung in the balance.

Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was aware that their demise would anger the Kaiser, because of the Romanov's links with the German royal family. But his advisers were telling him that Ekaterinburg could soon fall to the Czechs, and the Imperial Family could prove a rallying point against communism. The deeply religious Tsaritsa wrote to a friend that she and her family were: 'Readying ourselves in our thoughts for admission to the Kingdom of Heaven.' At the House Of Special Purpose, the guard book recorded as it had for many days: 'Vse obychno' - ' Everything is the same'. But ominous preparations were in hand to ' liquidate' the Romanovs and to keep the matter a state secret. A nearby mineshaft had been identified as a suitable burial place, and a doctor had been ordered to procure 400lb of sulphuric acid to destroy the bodies. Tuesday, July 16 began uneventfully for the Romanovs, but their guards were putting into place the last plans for their execution, assembling an armoury of guns in order to carry out their task, and ordering 50 eggs from local nuns to help give them strength for the task ahead.

On one occasion, a laundrywoman witnessed 17-year-old Ansastasia sticking out her tongue at the head of the hit squad, Yakov Yurovsky. And while there is no indication that the children were aware of their impending fate, two of the guards got cold feet and said they would not shoot the girls. They were sent away. At 3pm, the family walked around the strip of unkempt garden for the last time. After evening prayers, they went to bed. In the early hours of the following day, they were wakened and told that the White Army was approaching and might launch an artillery attack on the house. They were to go downstairs for their own safety. The Tsar got up immediately, the women put on their camisoles sewn full of jewels and pearls, as they had rehearsed for a rescue attempt or sudden flight. Soon they emerged, 'all neat and tidy' as one guard observed. At 2.15am on July 17, they were led down to the basement.

The Tsar was heard to turn and say to his daughters reassuringly: 'Well, we're going to get out of this place' - proof, some say, that he was a true martyr who was fully aware of the horror ahead. Anastasia carried her sister Tatiana's little Pekinese, Jemmy, down the stairs. They were ushered into a storeroom, lit by a single naked bulb. The windows had been nailed shut. True to form, Alexandra complained that there were no chairs. Next, the family and their servants were lined up as for a last, sinister official photograph. Then they were left alone for half an hour, as their assassins downed shots of vodka. Re-entering the room, a guard read out a statement sentencing the family to death. The faces before him registered blank incomprehension. The family crossed themselves, and a man walked towards the Tsar and shot him at point-blank range in the chest. Other guards fired, as his body crumpled to the floor. Half drunk, the guards shot clumsily, hitting the Tsaritsa in the left side of her skull.

Next to her, poor lame Alexey, too crippled to move, sat transfixed with terror, his ashen face splattered with his father's blood. The moans and whimpers from the floor testified to a botched job. But it was the children who suffered most. None of the Romanov girls died a quick or painless death. Maria was felled by a bullet in the thigh, and lay bleeding until repeated stabbing in the torso snuffed out her life. Her sisters were eventually finished off with an 8in bayonet, Olga having been shot in the jaw, and Tatiana in the back of the head as she tried to escape. What should have been a quick, clean execution had turned into an orgy of killing, with only the thick clouds of gunpowder smoke obscuring the full horror of it. Last of the women to die was Anastasia. A drunken guard lunged at her like an animal, attempting to pierce her chest with his bayonet. Eventually, the head of the hit squad, Yakov Yurovsky, took his gun to her head. Alexey alone was still alive, the young heir to the throne.

He was wearing an undergarment sewn with jewels, which acted as a flak jacket. Yurovsky fired his Colt into the boy's head, and he slumped against his father. It had taken a frenzied 20 minutes to kill the Romanovs and their servants. In the panicked moments that followed, Yurovsky's men staggered from the room, choking and coughing. Shaking and disoriented, one of them vomited as he emerged into the cool night air. Meanwhile, upstairs, in the House Of Special Purpose, Alexey's King Charles spaniel, Joy, barked, his ears pricked, waiting for his young master to return. • EKATERINBURG: The Last Days Of The Romanovs, by Helen Rappaport, is published by Hutchinson at £18.99. To order a copy at £17.10 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720. 7 People Who Pretended to be Royals Introduction History is filled with examples of ambitious swindlers who took on the identities of kings, queens and other royals.

Find out more about seven royal impostors who managed to con their way into the history books. Anna Anderson as Anastasia Romanov Anna Anderson and Grand Duchess Anastasia (Credit: Getty Images) In 1918, Bolshevik revolutionaries murdered the Russian princess Anastasia, along with the rest of her family. However, rumors persisted of her alleged survival for decades and, over the years, several different impostors claimed to be Anastasia Romanova. None gained as much fame as Anna Anderson. The would-be royal first surfaced in the early 1920s in a Berlin mental asylum, where she announced that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the deceased Czar Nicholas II. Although most of the surviving Romanovs dismissed her as a fraud, the girl bore a striking resemblance to the princess and even knew many personal details of her life. She soon won the support of a coterie of wealthy Russian emigrants, many of whom believed she was the legitimate heir to the throne. The supposed princess eventually moved to America in 1968 and took the name Anna Anderson. But while her story inspired several books and even a Hollywood movie, she failed to win recognition in court due to a lack of evidence.

Her story remained the source of much debate until 1994, when a posthumous DNA test finally proved she was not related to the Romanov family. Anderson likely a Polish factory worker who disappeared in 1920, but her true identity has never been confirmed. Gregor MacGregor as the “Cazique of Poyais” Dollar Bill from "Bank of Poyais" In the early 1820s, a dashing Scotsman named Gregor MacGregor rose to the top of London’s high society on the basis of a most unusual claim. A former soldier and mercenary who had fought in South America, MacGregor presented himself as the “cazique,” or prince, of a small Central American country he called Poyais. As evidence, the faux royal produced several maps, drawings and even a book, all of which described the mysterious country as a fertile paradise with a working government and friendly native population. MacGregor’s tiny principality seemed the perfect destination for European settlers, except for one small detail: It didn’t exist.

Far from being a “cazique,” MacGregor was actually a con man who had cooked up a fairy tale country as a way of bilking investors out of huge sums of money. He eventually sold thousands of pounds worth of land rights for his phantom nation, and in 1822 the first would-be “Poyers” set sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Arriving in Central America and finding only unsettled jungle, the pioneers—many of whom had converted their life savings into phony Poyais currency—soon realized they had been swindled. The stranded colonists were eventually rescued, but not before some 180 people perished from disease. Not surprisingly, MacGregor fled the country soon after the news reached England. He later resurfaced in France, but was arrested after he tried to set up a second Poyais-related scheme. False Dmitry I Capture of False Dmitry The man known as False Dmitry I not only successfully posed as a prince, he managed to con his way onto the royal throne of Russia. The pretender first became known to history in the early 1600s, when he appeared in Poland declaring himself to be Dmitry, the youngest son of the deceased Ivan the Terrible.

The real Dmitry had supposedly been assassinated as a boy, but the imposter claimed he had escaped his would-be murderers and fled the country. The alleged royal went on to charm the Russian people, eventually riding a wave of public support all the way to Moscow. False Dmitry was crowned czar in July 1605, but his rule was ultimately short-lived. The pretender’s policies proved too radical for Russia’s elites, and he was overthrown and assassinated less than a year later. Many have since speculated that his real name may have been Grigory Otrepyev, but this has never been proved. Amusingly, he was not the only impostor who claimed to be the real Dmitry. Two more pretenders emerged over the next decade, though neither succeeded in winning the throne. Perkin Warbeck as Richard of York Hanging of Perkin Warbeck (Credit: Getty Images) Not only did young Perkin Warbeck masquerade as a prince, he nearly succeeded in overthrowing King Henry VII of England. In 1491, Warbeck appeared in Ireland claiming he was Richard of York, the youngest son of the former King Edward IV.

The real Richard was most likely murdered in the Tower of London as a boy, but at the time there was still much speculation about his fate. Capitalizing on this mystery, Warbeck presented himself as the missing prince, and eventually won support among Henry VII’s political enemies, who included such powerful figures as James IV of Scotland and Maximilian I of Austria. Warbeck landed in Cornwall in 1497, and he soon galvanized his supporters into a rebel army of several thousand men. But when faced with the possibility of a battle with the king’s forces, the pretender lost his nerve and fled to the coast. He was eventually captured, and later admitted he was an impostor before being executed by hanging in 1499. Warbeck is widely regarded as a famous fraud, but some historians have noted that Henry VII could have fabricated the pretender’s backstory in an attempt to discredit him. With this in mind, there remains at least a small possibility that Warbeck may have actually been Richard of York. Mary Baker as “Princess Caraboo” Getty Images For several months in 1817, the village of Almondsbury, England fell under the spell of a phony island princess.

The young woman had first appeared in the town clad in a black turban and speaking a mysterious language. Through a Portuguese translator, she identified herself as Princess Caraboo, a member of the royal family of Javasu, a small Indian Ocean atoll. Even more astonishing, she claimed she had been kidnapped from her homeland by pirates, and had only escaped by plunging into the freezing Bristol Channel and swimming ashore. The story of Princess Caraboo quickly took the town by storm. People flocked to get a look at the visiting royal, who slept on the floor, swam naked in a nearby lake and climbed trees to pray to a god called “Allah Tallah.” The fascination continued until a woman from a neighboring town noticed that her highness Princess Caraboo was in fact Mary Baker, an English girl who had previously been employed in her house as a servant. Baker later admitted that she had invented the princess and her bizarre language as part of an elaborate con, and the story of the hoax went on to become a minor sensation in the British press. Yemelyan Pugachev as Peter III Getty Images In 1773, a royal impostor sparked one of the largest revolts in Russian history.

Capitalizing on his striking resemblance to the murdered Peter III, a former soldier named Yemelyan Pugachev took on the identity of the late emperor and incited a massive peasant uprising against Catherine the Great. As Peter III, Pugachev promised populist reforms including autonomy for Russia’s Cossack population an end to the feudal system, and soon thousands of serfs had rallied to his standard. Initially catching the empress by surprise, Pugachev’s army laid siege to the city of Orenburg in late 1773, and then proceeded to raze Kazan the following year. But despite these early successes, by late 1774 Catherine’s generals had started to turn the tide of the conflict. Following a decisive defeat at Tsaritsyn, a group of Pugachev’s lieutenants betrayed him and turned him over to the empress. The impostor was executed in early 1775, and his revolt crumbled soon thereafter. Karl Wilhelm Naundorff as Prince Louis-Charles Getty Images Although he spent his life as a watchmaker and clock salesman, German swindler Karl Wilhelm Naundorff went to his grave insisting he was the rightful king of France.

Naundorff arrived in Paris in the 1830s claiming to be Prince Louis-Charles, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, both of whom were beheaded during the French Revolution. Naundorff was only one of several men who professed to be the long-dead dauphin, but he soon succeeded in winning the confidence of many high profile figures including the prince’s former governess. Despite having several physical characteristics in common with the Prince Louis-Charles, Naundorff never provided sufficient evidence for his assertion, and he was eventually branded a fraud. Even Princess Marie Therese—his supposed sister—refused to meet with him. After being expelled from France, Naundorff lived out his later years in the Netherlands, where he was recognized as Louis-Charles until his death in 1845. The mystery of his true identity would endure for another 150 years, but Naundorff was finally exposed as an impostor in the early 21st century, when DNA evidence proved he was not related to Marie Antoinette.

Article Details: 7 People Who Pretended to be Royals Author 7 People Who Pretended to be Royals URL The Lost Princess The Lost Princess Compiled by Father Nektarios Serfes Boise, Idaho 20 May 2000 Introduction by Father Nektarios Serfes: A student from Boise State University (located in Boise , Idaho), named Sammee Klevmoen, wanted to have an interview with myself, at my parish office, as she was doing a research project for her English class at the University, on Grand Duchess Anastasia, who was the daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. During Sammee's research project, she found the life of Grand Duchess Anastasia very impressive, and had began her interest six years ago. She also found and agreed that Grand Duchess Anastasia was martyred along with the rest of her family members, and friends. Sammee's interest continued to grow after she saw the carton film produced by Twenty-Century Fox on Anastasia, as she found the film to be inconsistent with the life of the Grand Duchess Anastasia. After Sammee presented her research project to her English class at the University, she got a 'A'.

This indeed was well written and with good remarks and new thoughts to consider that indeed the young Princess, Grand Duchess Anastasia was indeed martyred, along with all her august Royal Family members, and friends, on July 17, 1918, at the Ipatieve house in Ykaterinburg, Russia. I would now like to humbly present to you: The Lost Princess. Fr. Demetrios Serfes Sammee Klevmoen 02 May 2000 On the fateful night of July 17, 1918 the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas Romanov II, and his wife, children and servants were all brutally slaughtered in the basement of the house in which they had been confined for two months. Their only crime: Loving their homeland and God. After the horrendous murder, rumors started surfacing around Europe that the tsar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, had somehow survived and made it out of Russia alive. There were many attempts to clutch at the royal fortune by people claiming to be the missing grand duchess, but so far none have proved to be real.

On June 18, 1901 Tsarina Alexandra gave birth to a bright-eyed baby girl. All of Russia was hoping for a baby boy, an heir to the throne; they were met with another royal daughter. Tsar Nicholas and his wife had three other daughters: Olga (born in 1895), Tatiana (born in 1897), and Marie (born in 1899). In Greg Kingï¿½s book, "The Last Empress", it states that a law in Russia, enacted after the reign of Catherine the Great, prevented women from ruling Russia unless "all legitimate male descendants were dead" (152). This meant that if Alexandra did not produce a male heir, the crown of Russia would be handed down to male relatives on Nicholasï¿½ side of the family (152). Consequently, Nicholas needed a male heir to carry on the 300-year reign of his family. In the autumn of 1904, Alexandra gave birth to the long awaited heir to the throne of the largest country in the world; Alexei Nicholaevich Romanov.

But after only six weeks, they realized the tsarevich suffered from hemophilia. Every little bump caused Alexei grave pain. He was not allowed to lead a normal, active life. Therefore, he was closest to the sibling nearest him in age: Anastasia. The brother and sister got along marvelously. In fact, all the sisters looked after their little brother - whom they affectionately nicknamed Baby (Atchison) - to make sure he didn't hurt himself or get into too much mischief. Anastasia and her family were very close to each other. They were constantly writing letters and little notes to each other. Out of them all, I have found that Anastasiaï¿½s had the most personality. She was very happy and animated. Here is a copy of a letter she wrote to her father: My darling sweet dear Papa!!! I want to see you so much. I have just finished my arithmetic lesson, I think I did quite well. We are going to nursesï¿½ school. I am very glad. Today it is rainy and very damp. I am in Tatianaï¿½s room, Tatiana and Olga are here.

When you see Boba, tell him Iï¿½m going to beat him again and that my hands are itching. Iï¿½m trying very hard to breed worms, but Olga says I stink, which isnï¿½t true. When you come I am going to bathe in your bath. I hope you havenï¿½t forgotten the story I told you during our walk. I am sitting picking my nose with my left hand. Olga wanted to biff me one, but I escaped her swinish hand. When you come I will meet you at the station. Be happy and healthy. A big squeeze to your hand and face. Thinking of you. Love you always, everywhere Anastasia (Maylunas and Mironenko 377) In this letter to her father, dated 8 May 1913, Anastasiaï¿½s comic personality shines through. All the girls loved their parents dearly. They always addressed them as "My dear, darling Mama," or "My darling Papa". Nicholas and Alexandra were extremely affectionate towards one another as well. Alexandraï¿½s beginnings of letters to "Nicky" were very eloquent and filled with love.

One letter starts off "My love of loves, my very own One,". She usually signed her letters "Wify" or "Sunny" (Maylunas and Mironenko 404-405) I recently had an interview with a local priest, Father Nektarios Serfes, who is very learned about and devoted to the subject of the Imperial Family. He has told me many great stories about the grand duchess and her family life. One comment he made I particularly remember. It was in regards to the girls sewing jewels into their corsets. Alexandra had told them to "take care of their friends" in case they were forced to move from one imprisonment to another. This turned out to be the case in the early morning of July 17. Father Serfes also told me of the deep love the family had for one another and for God. He, as well as many other Orthodox Christians, believes the Romanovs were martyred the night they were slaughtered in Ekaterinburg at the Ipatiev House, or "House of Special Purpose" (Brewster 56).

After the murders, rumors started surfacing all through Europe that the tsarevich and his sister Anastasia had escaped alive. Many people claimed to be the lost royal children to try to get a part of some fortune that was stashed away by Nicholas before he abdicated. One of the most famous Anastasia claimants was Anna Anderson. Interestingly, though, there was never any proof that such a bank account existed. In 1920 a young woman was pulled out of the Landwehr Canal in Berlin, the obvious result of a failed suicide attempt. When they took her to a local hospital she refused to give her identity. About a year and a half later, after she had been institutionalized in a mental hospital in Berlin, she declared herself the missing Russian princess. Many people rallied behind her because the myth of a princess found after all the turmoil from years past was just too irresistible. One of Andersonï¿½s biggest supporters was the son of Dr. Eugene Botkin - family doctor to the Romanovs who was also murdered with them at the Ipatiev House. Gleb Botkin, Dr.

Botkinï¿½s son, helped to feed Anderson little tidbits about the royal court so as to make people think she was the rightful heir to the Romanov fortune (Godl). After Father Serfes and I sat down and talked about some different possibilities for whether Anderson was Anastasia, I finally came to the conclusion I do not believe that Anderson was the grand duchess. There are many reasons why the father, and many other people, feels that Anderson was not of Romanov blood. First of all, after the Bolsheviks (the party taking over the government) murdered the family, they loaded the bodies on trucks and drove them to a unused mine to be buried. Along the way, they took the body of Alexandraï¿½s lady-in-waiting and Alexei and burned them on the side of the road. After that, they buried the rest of the family in a mass grave in the mine and drove over it a couple of times to cover up any signs of the grave. The next day they had to go back and dig up the family and re-bury them because it had rained all night. Father Serfes told me something interesting about the rain that night.

He said as soon as the murder of the Imperial Family began, the skies opened up and started weeping. As a result of the downpour there were arms, legs and other parts visible above the grass (King 367). Father Serfes posed this question to me: donï¿½t you think If they had to re-bury the family that was so important to kill, they would know exactly how many bodies were there? I donï¿½t know about anybody else, but if I was in charge of killing the most powerful family in Russia and the success of my political party depended on it, I would make very sure that none of the family would be alive to threaten that position. Also, it has been suggested by Father Serfes that Marie, and not Anastasia, was missing from the grave. If that is so, then Anna Andersonï¿½s whole claim to the Romanov fortune is blown right out of the water. When the Imperial Family was laid to rest in the Cathedral of Ss. Peter and Paul in Saint Petersburg on July 17, 1998, it was televised on CNN.

Father Serfes was watching the broadcast and one of the coffins clearly had the name "Anastasia" written on the side. There are still two places reserved in the tomb as a final resting place for Marie and Alexei. The film by 20th Century Fox released in 1997, Anastasia, is a childrenï¿½s cartoon based loosely on the myth of Anastasiaï¿½s escape from Russia. After studying up on the Romanovï¿½s, I found the story presented by Fox to very inaccurate. The Dowager Empress was never with the family when the palace was taken over after Nicholas abdicated his thrown in March of 1917. Even after Anna Anderson turned up and claimed to be the lost Grand Duchess, her own "grandmother" would not go meet her. Father Serfes wrote to Don Bluth, the producer of the movie, and asked him many questions concerning the film and the family. The reply given by another producer, Gary Gold, was quite frank and honest with him. The reply states that the movie company was not out to create a documentary on the life of Anastasia Romanov and was merely meant to give a little bit of hope.

The animated movie was based largely on various myths and legends surrounding the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Even though the movie was gravely inaccurate, except for names and such, I believe there was no real harm done by making the movie, despite the misrepresentations. I believe the intended audience was young children and Fox tailored the story of the young duchess to help children get a feel for the stories surrounding Anastasia. I also believe the producers had in mind that if children were really interested in learning more about the Romanov family and Anastasia, this movie might provide somewhere to start on an intriguing and engaging story. At earlier points in this essay, I have mentioned the Romanovï¿½s great love of God. They were brought up as Orthodox Christians and were very steadfast in their faith. When I was talking with Father Serfes, he mentioned the fact that Anna Anderson did not believe in God and was not religious at the end of her life. I asked him if he thought, through the whole turmoil surrounding their captivity and execution, that it was possible Anderson could have renounced her faith. He simply replied "No".

He went on to say that the Romanovï¿½s had such great love for God that he couldnï¿½t see how Anastasia would do such a thing. Even when they were imprisoned in their own palace and finally in the Ipatiev House, they sang hymns, read the Bible and prayed together (Atchison). They were a very devout family, and they were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981. Father Serfes makes another very valid point: why would someone so devoted to their religion, turn their back on it in a mere whim? That just does not balance the equation. As I have been studying more and more on the life of Anastasia and her family, I find myself being pulled into this seemingly never ending saga. I envy the love the family shared with one another that is so evident in the letters they were constantly writing to each other. I have also discovered a want to know the Romanovs. They seemed like the kind of people you wouldnï¿½t know were royalty if they walked up to you on the street and started talking to you.

Alexandra and her two eldest daughters had devoted themselves unselfishly as nurses in the middle of the First World War. The younger children did all they could to help people in need. This shows their love for humanity and their fellow man in general. Father Serfes has even heard stories of the girls sending their weekly allowance to some poor children they met while waiting for their train at a depot. They were an unselfish and affectionate family who dearly loved each other and their homeland. Works Cited GOOLE SILENT MOVIE PROJECT: THE LOST PRINCESS | YFA Download description pdf The Lost Princess is a fictional film based on the Russian Princess Anastasia and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance and death. In the film she has escaped from Russia to Goole where she is subsequently murdered. Co-ordinated by Goole Town Council, the project involved a group of young people between the ages of 13 and 20 who researched, wrote, directed, filmed, animated, acted in and edited and performed an original score for the film. The film uses animation, intertitles, and visual techniques from the Silent Era of moviemaking in its modern production.

The original footage was shot on super 8mm film, and the final film was edited using contemporary post production techniques. Title: 'The Lost Princess' '1918 the Russian Empire' Viewed through an Iris (an image shown in only one small round area of the screen), a young woman, the Princess, makes her way to a carriage. She exclaims: Intertitle: 'Take me to the docks' The driver doffs his cap and sets off. Intertitle: 'The journey to the sea' There is a map, on which, the journey to England can be traced. Intertitle: 'After a long crossing the ship arrives in Goole' An animation sequence shows a ship crossing the sea. A family arrives with luggage and is greeted by others. The ship is in dock. A man with an upturned collar knocks on a door, shouting out: Intertitle: 'Butler' Download context pdf This is one of two films on YFA Online made as part of the Goole Silent Movie Project. The project started in October 2006, with local young people between the ages of 13 and 20, co-ordinated by Goole Town Council.

With the help of outside professionals, all the writing, acting, directing, filming, animation, editing, and research for the films, was undertaken by this committed group of young people. For more on the origins and work of the project see the Context for the first film, Dr A. D. Holmes. Whilst the other film is based on a real person from Goole, Dr Home, "The Lost Princess" is a fictional story that nevertheless has its roots in Goole’s heritage as an international port – one where many refugees have arrived. The film is based on the life of a real person, Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov, the youngest daughter of the Tsar Nicholas II and Russian Royal Romanov family. The Romanov family were arrested and detained at the Alenser Palace after the February Revolution, in 1917, that brought in a Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky. For safe keeping they were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia, and then again to Ipatiev House at Ekaterinburg (or Yekaterinburg), in the Ural Mountains, when the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917.

It was here that the Russian Emperor and Empress and their five children, and four servants, were executed on the night of July 16-17, 1918. A similar fate befell more members of the Royal family the following day. An account of the execution is given by the head of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, Yurovskii, who carried out the execution, in Daly and Trofimov (References, pp 130-136), who claim that the account is considered by leading scholars to be accurate. This makes it clear that there were no survivors, and describes how the three daughters wore bodices studded with diamonds and other precious stones, which acted as protection against the bullets. Two of the corpses were burned; the rest had sulphuric acid poured over them to foil identification. Anastasia was seventeen. Very soon though rumours spread that Anastasia had escaped, and imposters came forward claiming to be her; the most famous being Anna Anderson. England would have been a favoured place to flee to, as so many émigrés over the years have; especially as Anastasia spoke fluent English.

The rumours persisted until final proof of her death came after the remains of Anastasia were unearthed in 1991. Later the charred remains of a young boy and a young woman were found near Ekaterinburg in August 2007. Forensic tests, and later DNA identification, confirmed that no member of the family escaped. The Romanov family have come to symbolise the injustices of terror for many, and it is not hard to see why a story of a young Princess escaping, just when silent film was reaching its apogee, was chosen to base a fictional film on. A much more glossy film of the Princess, called Anastasia, was made in 1997. Certainly a great deal has been written about the Romanov family and their fate. Even more has been written about the Russian Revolution. Treading a path through all of the many different accounts, often having widely differing sympathies, is not easy. In 1918 a civil war was raging in Russia, which was to continue for another three years. Those who opposed the Revolution formed the White Army, aided by thirteen outside countries.

At the time of the execution the Czechoslovakian army, on the side of the White Army, were approaching. Fearful that Tsar Nicholas II would be freed, and become a symbol for resistance, the Bolsheviks issued the order to have his family killed. Mass terror was openly being carried out on both sides, with each side justifying this on the grounds that there was no alternative if their vision for the future for Russia was to prevail. Huge numbers of innocent people were killed as a result. Some of it, such as the White anti-Semitic pogroms, was a carry over of what had gone before. With Stalin’s assumption of power after the death of Lenin in 1924, this was to continue, resulting in millions of deaths. All of this may seem a long way from a story made up by young people in Goole. But today asylum seekers still come to Goole as they do to many other places, often escaping violence not unlike that of Russia in civil war. However, unless they are especially famous, their stories seldom receive much attention, let alone sympathy.

In fact, ironically, most of those fleeing Russia – and other Easter European countries – up until that time, would have been Jews escaping the persecution that took place under her father and grandfather. But Goole has strong historical associations with people from other countries. It has owed much to trade with Denmark, and had important ties with other countries, such as Poland: seamen from off the Russian ships bringing timber would play football with local dockers. So it is to be hoped that Goole remains a place where people from all over can come and seek refuge from persecution. References Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov (editors), Russia in War and Revolution, 1914-1922: A Documentary History, Hackett, Indianapolis, 2009. Rex Wade, The Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, Greenwood Press, London, 2001. Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: the story of immigration to Britain, Little, Brown, 2004.

Anastasia Romanov Body Found | History of Russia Anastasia Romanov Body Found Russian Empire | 9 | Anastasia Romanov (technically Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova), youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, was executed by Soviet soldiers on 17 July 1918 and buried in a hidden mass grave. Her body wasn’t found for many years, leading many to question what happened to Anastasia Romanov. There was persistent speculation that she had somehow escaped, and this led many people to claim to be her over the coming years. There have been at least five impostors who have claimed to be Anastasia – Anna Anderson, Eugenia Smith, Eleonora Kruger, Natalya Bilikhodze and Nadezhda Vasilyeva. The most famous of these is Anna Anderson, whose claim to be Anastasia captured the public imagination in Europe and America. Several books, films, musicals and even a ballet were created to tell her story. At various times, other impostors also claimed to be her sisters, Maria, Olga and Tatiana, as well as her brother Alexei, but again, none captured the imagination as well as Anna Anderson in her claim to be Anastasia Romanov.

The Romanovs grave was finally discovered in 1979, by an amateur Soviet archeologist, but even then, her death and whether it contained Anastasia’s body, could not be confirmed. Anastasia had been executed with her family and servants, and it was thought that there should be eleven bodies in the grave – however, there were only nine. One of the bodies identified as Anastasia was re-buried in 1998, but it wasn’t until the discovery of two additional bodies in 2007 and later DNA testing that it was conclusively proved that Anastasia had died in 1918. Russian History - Books we Recommend 1.

Question: What Russian princess, murdered in 1918, did many imposters claim to be?
Answer: Anastasia