Will the Real Anastasia Romanov Please Stand Up?

to talk first about Russian history. To lay a bit of groundwork here, the Romanov family ruled Russia for more than three hundred years, beginning in sixteen with Mikhail Romanov. The dynasty gave us Peter the Great, Alexander the Great, and the very famous Catherine the Great and Nicholas the Second, who took the throne in four was ultimately not destined to be Nicholas the Great. It was widely said that he was really a lot more interested in his very

tight knit family than in matters of state. Is quite shy and gentlemanly, and he was known to be chronically indecisive, never a good quality for a leader, not at all. And he was also married to an unpopular German born empress named Alexandra the Romanovs have five children. Their fourth child, Anastasia, was born on June eighth. She was the youngest daughter of zar Nicholas the second and Zarina Alexandra. But Nicholas

wasn't bombarded with congratulations when she was born. He was bombarded with headlines though about the couple not yet having a male air. This is one example from the New York Times, which read star has another daughter. Russian people again disappointed in their hope that an heir to the

throne would be born. So that's not the most auspicious start to life, isn't no. And it's very telling that that's something that was being reported worldwide, not just in the Russian press, but New York Times over here in the States. Of the sisters in the family, Olga was the bookish one, Tatiana was a poised beauty, Maria was sweet and kind hearted, and Anastasia was well, my most account, she was reportedly a little bit of a hell raiser,

just kind of that kid that's a free spirit. Yeah, But considering that she was a royal, there's really not a whole lot of information about Anastasia's life, and historians believe that that's because there wasn't really anything remarkable about it. It probably wasn't much different, for example, than that of her sisters. And remember as well, she had been a disappointment in terms of the country's desires, so meticulously documenting

her early life was probably not really a priority. Anastasia, along with her older sisters, as well as her younger brother Alexei, were known for their family name, of course, but they weren't really known for their health. Alexei lived with hemophilia. Anastasia suffered from a weak muscle in her back as well as painful bunyans on her feet, which both sometimes affected her mobility. Their mother often called upon

Gregory Resputin, who was believed to have healing powers. Over time, though rescuted and became a close confidant to Alexandra, and it's said he had quite a bit of influence in her life. So this story is not about Rescpute and though so we're not going to get into the scandal of his relationship over the Romanoff children, and if we did, we could be here for days, so we'll move on.

There's so much information in the world about Respute, and if you're just eager for a trip down the rabbit hole, yes, but in terms of the romanofs the children were formally educated, but they were educated at home, and we know Anastasia loved singing and dancing, and that she frequently painted with watercolors. Some reports about her hint that although she was quite smart, she also was not really what you would categorize as

an attentive student. A lady in waiting to her mother called Anastasia quote a sharp and clever child who liked to play practical jokes on her siblings, not surprising for the hell raiser at all. While we don't really have an immense amount of information about her early life, and fortunately we do know about Anastasia's death. So her father, Nicholas the Second, abdicated the throne on March fifteenth, nine seventeen. That was in an attempt to prevent a civil war

from breaking out. That attempt did not work. The civil war happened just the same, and he and his family

were taken captive and placed under house arrest. It was early in the morning of July seventeenth, nineteen eighteen, that the entire royal family, including a teenaged Anastasia, were taken to the basement assured that they were being protected from their rebellious violence, but instead the family along with four members of their staff, which included Dr. Eugene Bodkin, the family physician, Alexei trump valet To, Nicholas Anna Demidova, may

To Alexandra and Ivan Karatonov, the family cook, as well as the family's dog, whose name we do not know, but they were all executed in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The Romanov's extended family were either killed as well or they were exiled, and according to an initial statement from the firing squad, they had killed only Nicholas the second, but they later reported they had killed the entire family, but the anaesthesia

was one of the last to be executed. The accounts of the men from that firing squad, however, were mostly confusing and mostly unhelpful, and they proved themselves only good for spreading rumors and gossip. The assassination was carried out by Communist revolutionaries led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin. A quick and very high level history note on this time in Russia. So there was more than one more

going on, including World War One. When Lenin and his party launched a coup against the Russian government that was Nicholas's government, and within two day July sixteen, outside of those executions of the royal family, there was no bloodshed and Lenin rose to power as the country's new ruler.

The Bolshevik Party renamed themselves the Russian Communist Party, and Lennon served as the founding head of the government of Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union until with Nicholas off the throne, the assassination was a permanent end to the royal family. The line of succession was over, and so was the Romanov reign. So right now we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back, we're going to talk about royal impostors.

Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's get back to the story and talk about someone who was called Miss Unknown. Although Anaesthetia died in nine eighteen, for years following the assassination of her family, gossip and specy relations seemed to actually keep her alive in the mind of Russians. Conspiracy theories as well as impostors of the members of the royal family began to emerge, and there are impostors claiming to be pretty much everyone, including Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Alexei.

But in total there were more than thirty women who impersonated Anastasia and one guy who claimed that he was her son. Those who have made the claim include a Leonora Krueger between nineteen o one and nineteen fifty four, who posed as the Grand Duchess in a Bulgarian village just kind of lived out her life telling everyone that was the scoop. It seems like they believed it. In the mid twentieth century, there is a tragic story about a mentally ill woman who spent years in hospitals and

prisons in the USSR. She actually died in a psychiatric hospital in nine and the list really continues. There are a lot of people we could talk about, but here is an interesting one that is a little less tragic. One impostor actually wrote Anastasia's memoirs as though she were Anastasia, in which she described exactly how she escaped. That was all false, And I have a new book from my book class right. Perhaps the best known impostor of Anastasia

was a woman who called herself Anna Anderson. So we're going to pause for just a minute, because this is an important thing to tell you. The next part of our conversation will include brief talk about a failed suicide attempt, which may be triggering for some of our listeners. So stay safe, mutis for just a minute, and we'll be

right back with that. Okay, So here we go. In Berlin, in a woman was rescued from a canal after a failed attempted suicide, and after she was rescued, she spent several months in a psychiatric hospital which at the time was called Daldorf Asylum. And upon her arrival and intake at the asylum, though she was a total unknown. She had no sort of identification on her at all, right, which makes it really difficult when you're trying to do intake.

So she became known at the hospital as Freuleine und Vicans, which translates into English as miss Unknown. So it said that Miss Unknown would lie in her bed with a blanket pulled over her face all day long, which to me sounds like a woman who was really scared, right and needs a little help. It took her nearly six months before she felt comfortable enough to get out of

her bed and even to talk to other patients. Her name was actually not Miss Unknown, to surprise no one, it was Anna Anderson, and around this time at the psychiatric hospital she was at, a magazine article about Anastasia crossed Anna's path. A woman named Anna Kemnets, who worked at the asylum, gave an account of what happened. After Anna saw this article and we quote, she asked me if I didn't notice something about it, and I answered that I didn't. She then said, can't you see the

similarity between us two. Anna's accent and her quote Romanov Blue Eyes had some patients wondering if the former Miss Unknown was actually Grand Duchess Anastasia, who of course had

been executed in nineteen eighteen. And Anna didn't deny that she was, although at this point she didn't confirm it either, and because she was a bit coy about it, others in the hospital speculated that she was really royalty, and as a consequence, Anna became quite a curiosity, and she was a curiosity not just to the other patients in the hospital. Journalists and Russian aristocrats learned about this unusual woman and they kind of got hooked and a little

invested in her story as well. Some thought she could be the genuine Anastasia, but others dismissed her as yet another royal fraud because remember, there had been a lot already by this time, yes, very many, And it didn't help that there were also very many rumors swirling around about this. For example, and this is one of my favorite rumors that popped up, it was suggested that the Romano daughters survived because there were jewels sewn into their

corsets and those jewels protected them from bullets. It's a fancy, fancy bulletproof vest. I wish jewels could help them out in the bullets situation, but sadly, probably not right. Some versions of that story that I have seen suggests like they were not intended to be clear to stop bullets. That was a way to hide the family wealth while

they were imprisoned, exactly. And it was noted in Anna's file that she exhibited some antisocial behavior and that she had some unusual scars on her body, and she also spoke with a strange accent. While she had initially been noncommittal on the matter, or you know, perhaps she was waiting for the right time, Anna eventually claimed that she was actually Anastasia and the only surviving member of the

Romanov family. Her story went like this. She had been wounded, but she survived the attack, and a guard who was sympathetic to the royal family smuggled her out of Russia. She did know some little known facts about the royal family, but that alone wasn't really enough to convince anyone that she was the real thing. The immediate relatives of the Romanov family did not believe Anna's story at all, said Prince Nicholas Romanov, a cousin of Nicholas the second quote.

The murder of the Czar and his family was such a horrible thing. There was that wish among the people that it couldn't be so horribly true. After her stay in the hospital, Anna was actually still a hot topic. Books were written about her before and against whether or

not she was a fraud. Lawsuits were filed, although nothing ever came from them, and she continued to make her claim from all the way until and after many tries, she actually was never able to get her claimed royal name and lineage recognized by the European courts, which repeatedly found that Anna couldn't provide concrete evidence that she was Anastasia.

But what did happen was that this woman who called herself Anna Anderson but pretended to be Anastasia Romanoff unintentionally kind of became an important and interesting part of Russian history. So let's take another break for a word from our sponsor, and when we come back, we'll figure out if Anna really was who she claimed she was. Welcome back to Criminalia. Okay, let's talk about one of my favorite subjects, skeletons. Yes, okay.

So around the time the USSR fell in a mass grave of what was believed to be the royal family was discovered. The remains were sent to a forensics lab and all were eventually confirmed to be the Romanoff family, but two victims were unaccounted for, anastasia sister Maria and her brother Alexei. The remains that both children were eventually discovered as well, but that didn't happen until two thousand

and seven. And there's an interesting thing here because his earliest ninety seven, a Berlin newspaper ran an investigative report on Anna and they actually got it all right, even without DNA testing in today's forensic techniques. I totally want to meet this journalist, I did right, like somebody was

super on the ball. So this report revealed that her name was Franzisca Shingoska and that she was a Polish factory worker and she had been reported missing after she had been injured in a factory explosion, and this Berlin paper noted that the timeline of her disappearance coincided with when Anna relocated and appeared in Berlin. Annado continued to refuse all claims suggesting that she was not missing Royal She said that she was, and she would quietly remind

everyone that she was Grand Duchess Alexandra Romanov. Also problematic for Anna right at this time was that she had an actual brother, Felix, and Felix identified her as his sister. In ninety one, after Anna's death, a DNA sample confirmed what that newspaper had reported decades earlier, right she was

definitely not related to the Romanov family. Skeletal remains were found in a forest near a Katerinburg and with DNA testing it had been confirmed that they matched Nicholas the second and his family, and then the bodies of the two youngest children were still at this time, As Maria mentioned, a moment ago missing. In two thousand and seven, there were two sets of remains found nearby the original burial sites,

again because of DNA testing and confirmed by multiple identification laboratories. Today, it is believed that these skeletons that were found in two thousand and seven are the remains of the two missing Romanov children, Maria and Alexei. In the Russian government confirmed that Anastasia's bones were among the remains of the royal family that had been identified conclusively in After two years of research, scientists concluded that Anastasia's body was definitely

accounted for. This is kind of a bit of a modern day side note rabbit hole to go on, but it'll be fast. So Queenlizabeth the Second, her husband Prince Philip, and all of their descendants are actually related to the Romanos. It's all through Queen Victoria, who was Alexandra's grandmother. So Queen Victoria and her husband Albert had nine children, and they had dozens of grandchildren who married throughout the royal houses of Europe, and for that reason, Victoria is sometimes

called the Grandmother of Europe. And done done, Yeah, Almost every royal family has some quick connection back to Victoria and Albert. More than one hundred years, give or take a year, had passed when the Russian Orthodox Church actually

reopened the case of the Romano family. Today, all members of the immediate family have been identified through DNA evidence, But despite the findings, which were based on thirty seven different evaluations by forensic, molecular, genetic, and handwriting experts, the Church claimed that the scientific investigation had been mishandled and they continue to believe that the remains that were found are not those of the Romanov family, so then, of

course we have Anna. With genetic testing, it was determined that Anastasia was assassinated along with her family. Annas fraud was confirmed solidly when her DNA did not match that of the Romanov remains, nor did it match any living descendants of the Romanov family. Scientists also compared Anna's DNA with that the man named Carl Malcher. She did match with Carl, who happened to be a great nephew of Francisca Shanoska. It was confirmed that Anna was, in fact

that missing Polish factory worker named you got It Franzisco. Today, historians and scientists agree that Anna and princessca were the same person, Nicholas Romanov, Prince of Russia, and I'm going to quote him here. I am certain at the end of her life she believed in her own story, and in a confused way, she forgot her own life, and there are those who wished to share her story. People look for exceptional events to change the past, but history

is brutally effective in its solutions and brutally simple. I have to say, based on the two quotes we have of him here, I think he's an insightful person who gets right to the point. He definitely gets right to the point. Yes, of course, everyone wants to believe the better and more hopeful story, and I understand that, but you gotta live in reality, people. He has a point. He's like, everybody wants to believe in something that's a

fairy tale. Yeah, that's less horrific in reality. Yeah, understandable. In nineteen sixty eight, Anna emigrated to the United States, and she continued her story about being the Grand Duchess her niece while Trashing reportedly said, we quote my Auntie was the cleverest of the four children. She wanted to come out into the world, wanted to become an actress. Something special. Well, Anna was something special, but just not

something that I would have imagined for. When she was in the United States, she married history professor Jack Manahan, and Jack was also a firm believer that his wife was Grand Duchess Anastasia. He would later describe her as, and I'm going to quote him here, probably Charlottesville's best love. Eccentric in Anna dite of complications of pneumonia in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she was known as Annie Apple, a mad local.

Anna story continues to be very popular. She has been the plot of Broadway shows, Hollywood movies, The Royal Ballet, Fox Animation Studios made a film about her, and there have been books ranging in nature from very scholarly to quite romantic. I like that she ended up with someone who loved her so much that he thought that she was on stage. Yeah, she she kind of got to

live out her her belief the way she wished. I also love that her community when she was there in the eighties referred to her as Annie Apple, a mad local. It's sort of sweet. It's as if they knew her history, but it really didn't bother them, you know, So before

we get into the drink. I was reading that in nineteen there were mocktail bars popping up in New York City and probably other cities around the country only mock tails, and and just two years later they're like more than a dozen in one city, and they're really just popping up. So your recipes could be more and more popular. So what do you have for us today? Yeah, I mean it's interesting for a few reasons, right one, I mean, there is a bigger interest in the idea of having

like yummy librations that are are not alcohol laden. For a variety reasons, there are some people who were just less interested in drinking. I also wonder how much of that is in terms of its growth as an industry, is tied at least in some small part to the fact that you don't need as many licenses to open a mock tail bar. We don't need a liquor license to sell juice. So my mock tail this time is called the Other Romanov and this comes with its own

kookie story, so get ready. So, first of all, because of the name similarities, I immediately thought of strawberries Romanov when I began brainstorming about a drink that might suit and a story. Yes, do you know the story of Strawberries Romanoff? Though you have told this to me before. There's a reason this particular dessert is so deeply appropriate to link to this tale because it is normally credited in its invention to a restaurateur who went by the

name Michael Romanov. His real name was Harry F. Gergison. That was an anglicized version of his birth name, Herschel giggs In, and he claimed to be a member of the House of Romanov. But he ran a restaurant in California that was very popular for a while, and that's where he created, allegedly, strawberries Romanoff. Would you normally see with two f's on the end instead of the V, but they're sometimes interchangeable. So I thought it would be fun if we came up with a drinkable version of

strawberries Romanoff. If you haven't ever had it, it's basically like fresh cut strawberries in a beautiful crystal dish, often with like a cream sauce that's sweet and has kind of some nice layering of flavors to it. So this is a little bit of a build your own adventure drink because you want to alter some things to suit. Probably, so it starts with two pints of strawberries, though, and you want to, of course, you know, cut off the stems. If you have a good blender, you don't really have

to do much more than that. You don't need to chop them up or anything, just toss him in. And then you need something to create that creamy element. I have seen many different a piece for just literally making strawberries roman off when you're not blending it into a drink. But so you can use something like vanilla ice cream or heavy cream here. But here's the thing, I actually

prefer sour cream for this. Like a half cup of sour cream is perfect because it gives this this richness and like it's a little cheesecakey when you sip it, which is very nice. And then you're going to use two to three table spoons of the sweetener of your choice. Some people like confection or sugar, some people like regular granulated sugar. I like brown sugar because again it adds a nice layer of flavor. I also add a teaspoon of fresh orange zest. Just zest the skin of your

orange with your your fine greater over that blender. Throw this all in a blender, blended, blended, blended, and then take a peek at it, see what its consistency is like. And add a milk I like oat milk for this one, until it's liquid e and smooth enough that you're pretty confident you can sip it through a straw without it being an effort that is uncomfortable. It is so stink and delicious, and it is quite filling and heavy. It's basically like a really rich smoothie and it's little Now

is the strawberries rumman off of I'm remembering correctly. About the alcohol that usually is involved in it, is that a brandy that goes into the sauce sometimes? Yeah, some people also use Grand Marnier, which is why I put that orange zest in because that has an orange flavor to it. Yeah, totally, But yeah, I love this with a little bit of brandy in it. It seems like it would be a good summer drink because it is sort of sweet and cold. However, I think it is

too heavy for that. Like, I would not go outside and sip this casually because you'll just feel like I felt very much like I would just like to sit quietly in a corner and burt for a while, like it's a heavy, heavy beverage, but so yummy. It's a dessert for sure. Sitting on the porch, just sip and so straw. It's not a summer drink, no, but oh delicious. I bet that is delicious. It's like the yummiest way

to make a smoothie ever. And I just I love taking advantage of fresh fruit anyway, and it makes it fun for mocas. So you would like a very dessert e mocktail, this is the one for you. UH want to once again thank you for spending this time with us while we talk about the many romanofs, both impostors real and the ones that just wanted to make up recipes and kind of claim they were near the Romanov family. We'll be right back here again next week with another

impostor and another beverage. Criminalia is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.