As I type this, I’m watching one of my all-time favorite movies; Anastasia. In my opinion, Anastasia is the best princess movie ever made, and it’s one that not a lot of people my age know about anymore. The soundtrack, the story, the animation – it’s all amazing! But I, and many others, have always loved this movie because it’s using a true moment in history and giving it a happy ending. But how many people that have watched this know what truly happened to Anastasia Romanov? Not me! So I’ve decided to write the true story of Anastasia Romanov: Russia’s Lost Princess.
The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, more accurately translated as the Grand Princess, was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, who was the last sovereign ruler of Imperial Russia. Although the movie makes it seem as though Anastasia was the favorite child, her parents were actually quite disappointed when they found out they had another daughter. Back then, the heir to the throne had to be a son, not a daughter, so she wasn’t quite what they were hoping for. Growing up, the Romanov children were actually raised quite normally. They slept on hard cots without pillows, unless they were sick, cleaned their own rooms, took cold baths, and the maids called them by their first names without the royal titles.
Anastasia was a chubbier child with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. According to her tutors, Pierre Gilliard and Sydney Gibbes, she was a smart young girl but had no interest in academics. She much preferred causing mischief and mayhem throughout the palace with a sharp tongue and a knack for pressing buttons. As a child, she would climb trees and refuse to come down, trip her maids, prank her tutors, eat chocolates without removing her white gloves, and she once even threw a snowball with a rock in it at her sister! Her cousin, Princess Nina Georgievna, once stated, “Anastasia was nasty to the point of being evil.”
In the movie, we see Grigori Rasputin as the villain and are led to believe he was the families’ confidant but had betrayed them and then set a curse on them to kill them all. The real Rasputin, however, was believed by Tsarina Alexandra to be a holy man that had helped her son, Alexei, through his prayers. Anastasia and her siblings were taught to refer to Rasputin as a friend and confidant. According to Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, Anastasia’s aunt, the children were completely at ease around him and told him everything.
However, Tsar Nicholas eventually had to send Rasputin away from St. Petersburg, much to Tsarina Alexandra’s despair, due to sexual assault allegations. After his murder on December 17, 1916, the children were all said to have been “cold and distant.” Anastasia and her family all went to Rasputin’s funeral on December 21, 1916, and had planned to build a church over his burial site. When the Romanov sisters were killed, it was discovered that they had all been wearing amulets with Rasputin’s picture and prayer on them.
During World War 1, Anastasia and her sister Maria visited wounded soldiers in the private hospital areas of Tsarskoye Selo. Because they were both too young to be Red Cross nurses, like their mother and 2 older sisters, the girls spent their time playing checkers with the soldiers. According to Felix Dassel, a soldier that played checkers with the young duchess during those times, Anastasia had “a laugh like a squirrel,” and walked very quickly “as though she tripped along.”
In February 1917, the Romanov family was placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo during the Russian Revolution. Her father, Nicholas the Second, abdicated his throne on March 15, 1917, and the Bolsheviks moved the family from their palace to Tobolsk, Siberia. Once the Bolsheviks acquired most of the control over Russia, they then moved the family to the Ipatiev House, otherwise known as “The House of Special Purpose,” in Yekaterinburg. All of this took a major toll on Anastasia and sent her into a depression. She sent a friend a letter saying, “Goodbye. Don’t forget us.”
At Tobolsk, Anastasia and her sisters sewed jewels into their clothing, in hope that they’d be able to hide them from their captors. Her mother, Alexandra, wrote to the girls saying that she and Nicholas had been searched upon arrival and had their jewels confiscated. Her letter contained predetermined codewords such as “medicines” and “Sednev’s belongings” to mean jewels.
Although she was being held captive Anastasia still found ways to have fun and entertain people. In the spring of 1918, Anastasia and some other household members would put on plays and performances for her family. According to Anastasia’s tutor, her performances would make everyone “howl with laughter.”
On May 7, 1718, Anastasia sent a letter from where she was in Tobolsk to her sister in Yekaterinburg, talking of her happiness and worry over her sick little brother Alexei. She wrote, “We played on the swing, that was when I roared with laughter, the fall was so wonderful! Indeed! I told the sisters about it so many times yesterday that they got quite fed up, but I could go on telling it masses of times … What weather we’ve had! One could simply shout with joy.”
While in captivity at the Ipatiev House, Anastasia and her sisters would help their maids sew, help the cooks, and do other kitchen chores. One of the guards stated in one of his memoirs, “Anastasia was friendly and full of fun.” Another wrote, “[She was] a very charming devil! She was mischievous and, I think, rarely tired. She was lively, and was fond of performing comic mimes with the dogs, as though they were performing in a circus.” However, another guard called Anastasia, “offensive and a terrorist” and wrote that she made annoying comments that would “cause tension in the ranks.”
During the summer, many reports claim that Anastasia had grown so upset about the locked and painted windows and not being outside, that she opened one and stuck her arm out. A sentry then saw her, fired at her, and narrowly missed. After realizing how trapped they truly were, she didn’t try it again.
On July 14, 1918, a church came in and performed a private church service for the family. During the prayers for the dead, the family reportedly fell on their knees, which was against custom, and the girls became non-respondent and no longer called out the replies. The priests noticed the change, but by the next day, the girls were back to their usual cheery selves and helped the maids clean the floors. As they did this, Anastasia whispered in the maids’ ears and made faces at the guards when they weren’t looking.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917, a civil war began. The Bolshevik captors (AKA and from here on out referred to as the Red captors) and the extended family members of the Romanovs and European royal families began fighting over negotiations for the release of the Romanovs, which was actually their way of stalling so the White Army (An anti-Bolshevik group) could make their way towards Yekaterinburg.
The Reds soon discovered what was happening, and became cognizant of the precarious situation they were in. They knew Yekaterinburg would be easily taken over by the White Army, so they began to secretly plan the execution of the Romanovs. By the time the White Army reached Yekaterinburg, the royal family had disappeared. The most accepted reason for this is that the family had been killed and the bodies had been disposed of.
“The Yurovsky Note” was written by Yakov Yurovsky, the chief executor of Tsar Nicholas, telling details of the family’s last night. It was found in 1989 and was then written about and described in Edvard Radzinsky’s book “The Last Tsar” in 1992. According to the note, the members of the royal family were all awoken and told to get dressed because they needed to be moved to a new location to protect them from the violence that was sure to happen when the Whites showed up.
Once they had all dressed, the family and their servants were lead to a small room in the house’s basement and told to wait. Alexandra and Alexei sat in chairs provided by the guards after the Tsarina requested them. When Yurovsky and some guards entered the room, he told the family they were about to be executed. According to the note, the Tsar had only enough time to say “What?” and turn to his family just as the guns went off, hitting him several times in the chest and killing him. Although many reports say he was killed by a shot to the head, Tsar Nicholas’s skull was recovered in 1991 and showed no bullet wounds.
The Tsarina and her daughter the Grand Duchess Olga tried to make the sign of the cross but were immediately killed due to bullets volleying off of the walls. The rest of the family and maids were killed in order, except for Anna Demidova, Anastasia’s maid. Demidova survived the execution of her housemates but was stabbed to death when she tried to defend herself using a small pillow she had brought down with her stuffed with jewels.
The note continues on, saying that when the smoke from the guns evaporated, they discovered that the bullets had ricocheted off of the corsets of three of the grand duchesses due to the jewels they had sewn in. It’s said that Anastasia and Maria were curled up against the wall crying and were then shot down, but one of the guards, Peter Ermakov, told his wife that the girls had cried out as the bodies, including themselves, were being carried out, and were then clubbed to death.
The most famous part of the execution of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov is the rumors that started during the Romanovs’ captivity that continued after the Romanovs were killed because the Reds kept the execution secret, to keep from upseting the Germans with whom they had just signed a peace treaty with. The rumor was that the princess had somehow escaped, and is still believed by some to this day!
This rumor was the inspiration for the 1997 animated film Anastasia, along with the broadway musical Anastasia and other movies and books. The most famous Anastasia imposter was Anna Anderson. Anna was found near a sewer, unresponsive, and was taken to a mental hospital. People began saying she looked a lot like the grand duchess, and Anna did nothing to dispute this.
Anderson eventually told people that she was indeed the Grand Duchess Anastasia and that she had faked her death. She claimed that one of the guards noticed that she was breathing and took sympathy on her, setting her free. She battled the legal system for decades in an attempt to be recognized as royalty but eventually lost.
So there you have it. The sad but true real story of The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. A 16-year-old princess shot down, or perhaps clubbed, by an anti-communist group. No happy ending. No escape. While I still love the movie where she gets a happy ending, I think it’s important to know what really happened to Russia’s lost princess.