Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna was born on June 18, 1901. Her parents were Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, and his wife Alexandra. Anastasia was the youngest, most intelligent and most mischievous of the Tsar's daughters. When Anastasia was sixteen her father was forced out of power and her family was captured. They were taken to Siberia and lived in the most brutal of circumstances. One night the family was asked out of their beds and taken down to the cellar. Her parents were shot first, in front of her eyes, dieing instantly. Her sisters and her had sewed diamonds into their underclothes and the bullets ricocheted off them. Her siblings were then shot in the head, but rumors spread the Anastasia somehow survived.
Years passed and people wondered, but the truth was still unknown. Then on February 17, 1920 a woman was rescued after jumping off a bridge in Berlin. She had no ID and refused to give her identity. She was sent to a mental asylum, and there someone recognized her as Grand Duchess. Then called Anna Anderson, the woman resembled Anastasia remarkably well and soon made the claim that she was the long lost Duchess. When asked how she escaped assassin, she recounted that she had in fact been beaten, like the others, but survived because the soldiers' weapons were blunt. After the murders a kind soldier saw that she was still moving and later that night he rescued her and took her to Romania.
Friends and the public eye had mixed feelings about her authenticity. A childhood friend of Anastasias sent the woman a list of questions, and her answers convinced him that she was indeed Anastasia. Anastasia's tutor, Pierre Gilliard, also met Anderson and thought she might be Anastasia. Later he changed his mind and called her "a first rate actress." Other staunch supporters included Anastasia's cousin Princess Xenia, and Gleb Botkin, whose father was murdered with the imperial family. Anastasia loved Gleb's childhood drawings of animals in court dresses. When he first met Anderson she asked about his "funny animals," convincing Gleb that she was Anastasia. Many more stories and people seamed to prove Andersons authenticity.
When Anna Anderson died in 1984 the truth was still veiled. Recent DNA analysis of hair and tissue samples from Anderson seemed to prove that she was not Anastasia, but instead a missing factory worker and mother Franziska Schanzkowska. But some of Anderson's friends still cling to hope, saying that the tissue tested was not really Anderson's. They believe Anna Anderson (or Anastasia) was cheated out of her family name and inheritance.
Was Anna really Anastasia? If not where did she get such accurate information? This may be a question we never answer, and another mystery for the history books.
