History Main / DidAnastasiaSurvive

[[caption-width-right:350:Translation: ''Anastasia, the False Czar's Daughter'']]

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated UsefulNotes/{{Tsar|Tsar Autocrats}} UsefulNotes/NicholasII of UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, UsefulNotes/{{Anastasia|Nikolaevna Romanova}} and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (Spoiler alert: Yes, they were killed. Yes, that included Anastasia - whose body is either one of the three women buried with the former Tsar, or the woman found buried with Alexei, much later.)

Why the focus on Anastasia and not another of the Tsar's five children? In the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], in fact, the daughter believed to have survived was generally either Tatiana or Maria rather than Anastasia; there were also some lesser-known rumors that Tsarevich Alexei might have also survived - after all, his body had never been found at this point - but these never gained much traction due to the fact that Alexei had a severe form of hemophilia that made it exceptionally unlikely that he could have survived being wounded[[note]]You're probably thinking "I bet he was related to UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria" after seeing the word hemophilia and you'd be right, Alexei was her great-grandson[[/note]], on top of which Alexei was unable to walk at the time of the shooting and therefore would have had no way to even try to take cover.

Then came the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and the Romanov burial site was revealed to the world. At first, it seemed there was hope for the legend, since the bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters were missing from the grave. Meanwhile, however, [[ScienceMarchesOn science marched on]] with advent of DNA testing, which finally proved that Anna Anderson not only had absolutely no relation to the Imperial family, but also was, in fact, ''not even Russian''. It is widely believed that Anderson was actually a Polish woman named Franziska Schanzkowska, a missing factory worker with a history of mental illness. She eventually married an American man and spent most of the rest of her life in and out of facilities, suggesting the impersonation could have been a NapoleonDelusion of some kind. In 1998, a team of scientists were able to extract some mitochondrial DNA from intestinal tissue she’d had removed to test it against both the Romanov’s closest living maternal relative, the Duke of Edinburgh and Schanzkowska‘s great-nephew, with the latter being a match. Later testing would more closely match her DNA to the great nephew’s.

* Literature/BadNewsBallet #5, ''Blubberina'', has the gang introduced to--and later obsessed with--Miss Delacorte's "magical" Amber Stone of Anastasia, which Miss Delacorte says saved Anastasia from dying because [[ArtisticLicenseHistory when the Bolsheviks broke into the royal palace]] and murdered the Romanovs, the bullet meant for her heart glanced off the amber stone and she was the only one who lived.

* ''Literature/TheRoyalDiaries'': The epilogue of ''Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess'' mentions the legend and leaves it as an open-ended question, as the book was released before the last two bodies were found.

* ''{{Theatre/Anastasia}}'', a 2016 Broadway musical, this one based on the Creator/DonBluth film (so just to be clear, this is [[RecursiveAdaptation a play based on a movie which was a remake of another movie which was itself based on a play]]). It removes the supernatural elements, with a [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre Chekist officer]] taking Rasputin's place as the antagonist.

* ''VideoGame/TheNewOrderLastDaysOfEurope'' offers an interesting variation with Tsarevich Alexei (Anastasia's brother). Sergey Taboritsky, possible leader of the Komi Republic, fervently believes that Alexei survived, but will only return when Russia is sufficiently purified. If Taboritsky unifies West Russia, he initiates a reign of terror that rivals or even exceeds what the [[AlternateHistoryNaziVictory victorious Nazis]] have done in Europe. In reality, Alexei is very dead, making this an aversion. [[spoiler:Eventually, if he is not defeated by another unifier, Taboritsky eventually realizes that Alexei is never coming back and all his killing was for nothing. This epiphany kills him, and his Holy Russian Empire collapses.]]

Why the focus on Anastasia and not another of the Tsar's five children? In the [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn Soviet Union]], in fact, the daughter believed to have survived was generally either Tatiana or Maria rather than Anastasia; there were also some lesser-known rumors that Tsarevich Alexei might have also survived - after all, his body had never been found at this point - but these never gained much traction due to the fact that Alexei had a severe form of hemophilia that made it exceptionally unlikely that he could have survived being wounded, on top of which Alexei was unable to walk at the time of the shooting and therefore would have had no way to even try to take cover.

Why the focus on Anastasia and not another of the Tsar's five children? In the Soviet Union, in fact, the daughter believed to have survived was generally either Tatiana or Maria rather than Anastasia; there were also some lesser-known rumors that Tsarevich Alexei might have also survived - after all, his body had never been found at this point - but these never gained much traction due to the fact that Alexei had a severe form of hemophilia that made it exceptionally unlikely that he could have survived being wounded, on top of which Alexei was unable to walk at the time of the shooting and therefore would have had no way to even try to take cover.

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated UsefulNotes/{{Tsar|Tsar Autocrats}} UsefulNotes/NicholasII of UsefulNotes/{{Russia}} and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (Spoiler alert: Yes, they were killed. Yes, that included Anastasia - whose body is either one of the three women buried with the former Tsar, or the woman found buried with Alexei, much later.)

However, in 1920, two years after the execution of the Romanovs, a mysterious Slavic-accented woman turned up in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}. Suicidal and apparently amnesiac, she was admitted to a local mental hospital. History generally refers to this woman by the adopted name of Anna Anderson. Within a couple years, she would claim to be the [[UsefulNotes/AnastasiaNikolaevnaRomanova Grand Duchess Anastasia.]] Anderson gained much publicity through a lengthy legal battle in which she sought to establish her identity as Anastasia in order to claim a share of the remaining Romanov fortune. Public opinion sided overwhelmingly with Anderson due to the inherent romance of a RagsToRoyalty story. The case was finally ended in 1970, with the inconclusive ruling that there was no proof either way, but nevertheless denying Anderson the Romanov riches. When Anderson died in 1984, still claiming that she was the lost Grand Duchess, there was still no way to be certain what the truth was. After all, DNA testing wasn't a thing at the time, so the argument for both sides ultimately rested on hearsay. And besides, the site of the Romanovs' murder was located deep behind the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain, hidden from the world by the Soviet Union's secretive government, so who could say for sure what had happened there?

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated UsefulNotes/{{Tsar|Tsar Autocrats}} UsefulNotes/NicholasII and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (Spoiler alert: Yes, they were killed. Yes, that included Anastasia - whose body is either one of the three women buried with the former Tsar, or the woman found buried with Alexei, much later.)

* ''{{Theatre/Anastasia}}'', a 2016 Broadway musical, this one based on the Creator/DonBluth film (so just to be clear, this is [[RecursiveAdaptation a play based on a movie which was a remake of another movie which was itself based on a play]]). It removes the supernatural elements, with a [[UsefulNotes/MoscowCentre Chekist officer]] taking Rasputin's place as the villain.

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (Spoiler alert: Yes, they were killed. Yes, that included Anastasia - whose body is either one of the three women buried with the former Tsar, or the woman found buried with Alexei, much later.)

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (Spoiler alert: [[spoiler: Yes, they were killed. Yes, that included Anastasia - whose body is either one of the three women buried with the former Tsar, or the woman found buried with Alexei, much later.]])

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (Spoiler alert: [[spoiler: Yes, they were killed. Yes, that included Anastasia, whose body was eventually found with her brother Alexei's in 2007.]])

One of the StockUnsolvedMysteries of the twentieth century, until it was solved in 2009 [[DownerEnding with a definite "no"]].

Following the events of UsefulNotes/RedOctober, the abdicated Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family were exiled to the Siberian city of Yekaterinburg. On July 17, 1918, with the anti-communist White Army closing in on the city, the former Tsar, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children -- Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei -- were all executed by Bolshevik soldiers. Or were they? (Yes they were.) For many years, some people insisted that the Tsar's youngest daughter, then-seventeen-year-old Anastasia, survived and escaped. (She didn't.)

Why the focus on Anastasia and not another of the Tsar's five children?[[note]]In the Soviet Union, in fact, the daughter believed to have survived was generally either Tatiana or Maria; there were also some lesser-known rumors that Tsarevich Alexei might have also survived, but these never gained much traction due to the fact that Alexei had a severe form of hemophilia that made it exceptionally unlikely that he could have survived being wounded, on top of which Alexei was unable to walk at the time of the shooting and therefore would have had no way to even try to take cover.[[/note]] Well, it all began in 1920, two years after the execution of the Romanovs, when a mysterious Slavic-accented woman turned up in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}. Suicidal and apparently amnesiac, she was admitted to a local mental hospital. History generally refers to this woman by the adopted name of Anna Anderson. Within a couple years, she would claim to be the [[UsefulNotes/AnastasiaNikolaevnaRomanova Grand Duchess Anastasia.]] Anderson gained much publicity through a lengthy legal battle in which she sought to establish her identity as Anastasia in order to claim a share of the remaining Romanov fortune. Public opinion sided overwhelmingly with Anderson due to the inherent romance of a RagsToRoyalty story. The case was finally ended in 1970, with the inconclusive ruling that there was no proof either way, but nevertheless denying Anderson the Romanov riches. When Anderson died in 1984, still claiming that she was the lost Grand Duchess, there was still no way to be certain what the truth was. After all, DNA testing wasn't a thing at the time, so the argument for both sides ultimately rested on hearsay. And besides, the site of the Romanovs' murder was located deep behind the UsefulNotes/IronCurtain, hidden from the world by the Soviet Union's secretive government, so who could say for sure what had happened there?

Then came the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and the Romanov burial site was revealed to the world. At first, it seemed there was hope for the legend, since the bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters were missing from the grave. Meanwhile, however, [[ScienceMarchesOn science marched on]] with advent of DNA testing, which finally proved that Anna Anderson not only had absolutely no relation to the Imperial family, but also was, in fact, ''not even Russian''. It is almost for certain that Anderson was actually a Polish woman named Franziska Schanzkowska, a missing factory worker with a history of mental illness. She eventually married an American man and spent most of the rest of her life in and out of facilities, suggesting the impersonation could have been a NapoleonDelusion of some kind. In 1998, a team of scientists were able to extract some mitochondrial DNA from intestinal tissue she’d had removed to test it against both the Romanov’s closest living maternal relative, the Duke of Edinburgh and Schanzkowska‘s great-nephew, with the latter being a match. Later testing would more closely match her DNA to the great nephew’s.

* One of Hap Shaugnessy's many outrageous claims on ''Series/TheRedGreenShow'' was that Anastasia was his grandmother. He even spun a survival story out of whole cloth shortly after proclaiming it.

* ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder''[='s=] depiction of Anastasia averts the trope. She was gunned down with the rest of her family, and only mention of the survival theories is almost a footnote in the story, where Sherlock Holmes mentions the rumours about her survival but DNA testing has made those theories disappear. However, she was recorded in the Throne of Heroes as a Heroic Spirit, meaning that she can be summoned as a Caster-class Servant due of the Romanov family being mages in Nasuverse and the last thing she did before dying was make a contract with an elemental called Viy.

Then came the end of the UsefulNotes/ColdWar, and the Romanov burial site was revealed to the world. At first, it seemed there was hope for the legend, since the bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters were missing from the grave. Meanwhile, however, [[ScienceMarchesOn science marched on]] with advent of DNA testing, which finally proved that Anna Anderson not only had absolutely no relation to the Imperial family, but also was, in fact, ''not even Russian''. In all likelihood, Anderson was actually a woman named Franziska Schanzkowska, a missing Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness, perhaps suggesting that her impersonation was a NapoleonDelusion to some extent. In 2007, another grave was discovered in Yekaterinburg, this one containing the remains of Alexei and his remaining sister, so at long last, all the Romanov children were accounted for. The last Romanov bodies were confirmed through DNA testing in 2009, establishing once and for all that the entire Romanov family, including Grand Duchess Anastasia, was killed in Yekaterinburg by Bolshevik guns on July 17, 1918. Case closed.

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' adventure ''Rasputin Must Die'' (part of the Reign of Winter adventure path) Anastasia is the daughter of Rasputin, and thus the granddaughter of the ancient witch Baba Yage. She was indeed shot dead, but was resurrected by Rasputin's magic. She can potentially leave Earth for Golarion in the company of the [[PlayerCharacter PCs]], and at the end of the adventure path she can claim the throne of Irrisen. Second Edition makes this option canon.

* Anastasia is a playable party member in ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts Covenant'', which takes place in a ''very'' fictionalized alternate UsefulNotes/WorldWarOne. After the main cast defeat the demon-possessed Rasputin, Anastasia joins them to help protect Russia and the rest of the world. The mystery isn't directly referenced, but in the good ending [[spoiler:the playable characters scatter to different parts of the timeline, unable to return back to the time that they left, meaning that from the perspective of her contemporaries Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov disappeared mysteriously and would be unaccounted for in whatever happened to the rest of her family]].

* Creator/NatalieWood was set to play the role of famous impostor Anna Anderson in ''Anastasia'', a play that was to open in Los Angeles in February 1982. Alas, Wood was found dead at sea in November 1981.

* Suzanne Weyn's young adult novel ''The Diamond Secret'' from the ''Once Upon a Time'' collection (a series of YA retellings of popular fairy tales and legends, no relation to [[Series/OnceUponATime the TV series]] retells the standard Marcelle Maurette-inspired plotline of two conmen trying to pass off an amnesiac girl as Anastasia, only to find that she just might be a GenuineImposter.