The Suspicious Deaths of the Romanovs

Profile: Anastasia Romanov

Date of birth: 18 June 1901

Date of death: 17th July 1918 (aged 17)

Location of death: Yekaterinburg, Russia

Cause of death: Murder, by the Bolsheviks

Titles: Grand Duchess

Father: Tsar Nicholas II

Mother: Empress Alexandra

Siblings: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Alexei

Personality traits: vivacious, energetic, bright, lively, mischievous, witty, sharp-tongued, occasionally nasty, provocative, comedic,

During the revolution: She recognised from early on that the revolution was going to have a disastrous impact on her family. After the family friend Rasputin was murdered, Anastasia and her siblings struggled to bounce back and overcome their grief. In the winter of 1917, Anastasia wrote to a close friend of hers, filled with a sense of dread:

Goodbye. Don't forget about us.

Depression took hold, and she began turning to literature for solace – reading and writing her own pieces. A favourite piece of hers was Evelyn Hope, by Robert Browning; his work inspired her to write her own, fraught with spelling mistakes and incomplete, but still reflective of her emotional state at the time:

When she died she was only sixteen years old...

Ther(e) was a man who loved her without having seen her but (k)new her very well.

And she he(a)rd of him also.

He never could tell her that he loved her, and now she was dead.

But still he thought that when he and she will live [their] next life whenever it will be ..."

How she intended it to end, we do not know.

Despite the overwhelming sadness she was beginning to sink into, Anastasia fought hard to stay happy, and sought enjoyment wherever she could. She and her sisters would hold plays during their time in captivity, and Anastasia was known for being the best comic of them all. She brought laughter to a household that had known too many tears. Her mischievous nature earned her a spot in her guards' memories, with some calling her "a charming devil" while others viewed her more as "offensive and a terrorist." Clearly not everyone shared in her humour...If anything, she was a lot like a modern day comedian!

It is unsurprising that such strict living conditions would have been stifling to such a chaotic, lively soul. In the summer of 1918, on one particularly overwhelming, frustrating day, Anastasia could bear it no more and opened a window – one meant to be locked – and stuck her head outside for a breath of glorious fresh air.

The bricks of the wall next to her shattered in a sudden crash, and she fell backwards.

The sentry had fired a warning shot. He'd barely missed her head. Unsurprisingly, she didn't try again.

On the 14th July 1918, priests from the local monastery came to say prayers with the family. It was not the first time, and so they could see the change in behaviour in all of the girls. Anastasia's was the most marked. She was despondent. Hopeless. The priests knew that something must have happened to them, but dared not ask what. Nor could they attempt to help the captives. So the holy men left the Romanovs, for the very last time.

The next day the family seemed to be in better spirits, and Anastasia even dared sticking her tongue out at Commissar Yakov Yurovsky's back when he wasn't looking. She didn't realise it at the time, but that would be one of her final acts of defiance against the man who would murder her family.

On the night of the 16th-17th, the Romanovs were dragged out of their beds and into the basement. Yurovsky gave their death sentence, and his men stood before the family, guns at the ready.

The rest is history. The Tsar, Tsarina, the servants and the elder sisters were killed first, the gunshots filling the room with smoke. When the soldiers left the room, Anastasia crouched against the back wall. Her last moments were spent clinging to her older sister, Maria, praying, but prayers rarely stop soldiers.

The men returned. According to Ermakov, he attempted to stab the girls first, but their corsets were laced with diamonds – the clothes were, in a sense, shields. In the end his frustration took control, and he ended the screaming girls' lives with a bullet to each head.

The forensics, however, do not support this.

Yurovsky stated in his report that after the shootings in the basement, the bodies were moved out of the house, when a couple of the girls started screaming. The soldiers bludgeoned the backs of their heads, bringing on an eerie silence.

The problem is that the accounts do not line up. There are too many disagreements over who died and how, and what details have been provided are actually too vague. They are too skewed, too muddled. And for this reason, many women across the world have claimed to be Anastasia, and many more have believed them.

Honestly, who can blame them for believing? When even the soldiers can't agree on what actually happened to the Romanov girls, it seemed incredibly suspect and not completely implausible that one or more may have survived.

A blow to the head may have silenced them.

But it might not have killed them.