Anna Anderson’s claim is the most famous. She went to her grave claiming to be the last grand-duchess Anastasia ... DNA testing after her death revealed her true identity. She was not a Royal, but a former factory worker from Poland. ibid.
Finally, there is compelling forensic evidence that thirteen-year-old Crown Prince Alexei was executed along with the rest of his family, although not buried with them. ibid.
December 17th 1916 St Petersburg, Russia: Gregory Rasputin, self-styled mystic and confident to Tsar Nicholas II, is fatally shot. His assassins fear Rasputin’s control over their ruling family had gone too far. Mystery Files: Rasputin, National Geographic 2010
But to a sceptical aristocracy Rasputin appears to hold the Royal Family in a strange hypnotic grip. His influence over the Romanovs is even openly debated in parliament. ibid.
By the end of October 1915 the war had taken a terrible toll on Russia. Approximately one and a half million soldiers are dead or wounded. Rasputin, a man committed to peace, allegedly urges Tsar Nicholas to withdraw Russian troops and consider making peace with Germany. It’s now that Rasputin’s leverage with the Romanovs attracts the attention of the British Secret Service. Based at their headquarters at the Astoria Hotel in central St Petersburg, British agents are increasingly anxious to gauge the stability of their Russian allies. ibid.
On December 16th 1916 [Felix] Yusupov lures Rasputin to a party here at his palace ... Yusupov is never charged. ibid.
On July 17th 1918, Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children are reported to have been executed. But their bodies could not be found. Then in 1991 a grave is uncovered: two of the children are missing. Mystery Files: The Romanovs
In October 1917 the Bolshevik Party led by Vladimir Lenin seized power. The Czar and his family are taken to the Bolshevik stronghold of Yekaterinburg in the Urals, over one 1,700 kilometres from their home. ibid.
One by one each of the children are gunned down at point blank range. In total 103 shots are fired. ibid.
Yurovsky’s written accounts describe the terrible events that followed: to dispose of the remains and leave no trace the bloodied corpses are taken to remote woods ... Yurovsky and his men are afraid they will be spotted. Unceremoniously, the Romanovs are thrown into a pit, covered with acid and set alight ... For eighty years the two sites where the Romanovs are supposed to be buried are lost. ibid.
But when the five bodies are identified in 1991 two of the children are still unaccounted for. Speculation that they somehow escaped persists. The mystery of their disappearance remains unsolved. Then in June 2007 a second burial site is found just sixty meters from the first grave ... In February 2009 after two years of forensic investigations scientists confirmed the remains of the two missing Romanov children had been identified. ibid.
Citizen Romanov. Eighteen months of exile and house arrest. Days that Shook the World s1e5: Romanov Dynasty & Berlin Wall, BBC 2003
The Tsar had fallen. ibid.
His cousin George refuses to help. ibid.
The Russian revolution, by eliminating the Czar, protector of the Orthodox Church, had it not decapitated the great rival and helped the penetration of the Roman Church? ... One century after their expulsion by Czar Alexander the First, the Jesuits will again undertake the conquest of the Slav world. Edmund Paris, The Secret History of the Jesuits
Within weeks he married a strong-willed Alexandra ... The couple have four daughters. Infamous Assassinations: Tsar Nicholas II
Nicholas is weak and indecisive. ibid.
The Russian Orthodox Church regards him as divinely appointed. ibid.
July 18 1918, Moscow: The assassination of the Tsar is confirmed by a communique from the Official Soviet News Agency. ibid.
The bullets seem to be bouncing off the bodies of the princesses. They are finished off with bayonets. ibid.
The Tsar ordered the protests crushed ... Over fifty civilians were shot dead. The massacre forced Petrograd soldiers to choose whom to defend – the people or the Tsar. They shot their duty officer dead and poured on to the streets. The First World War: Revolution, Channel 4 2003
The Russians have risen up and shot all their nobs. Blackadder Goes Forth: Plan C – Major Star, BBC 1989
And they’ve overthrown Nicholas II who used to be bizarre. ibid.
If you’re fascinated by stories of royalty and royal power there’s nowhere better than this. Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley I: Reinventing Russia, BBC 2017
In Russia for more than 300 years … the Romanov dynasty … the most powerful monarchs in modern European history. ibid.
When their end came it was astonishingly brutal. ibid.
The age of the Romanovs began in a power vacuum … Back in 1613 Russia was leaderless … The coronation conferred absolutele power on the Tsar. ibid.
A vast sparsely populated backward country. ibid.
Peter the Great … he was six and a half feet all. ibid.
It needed to be powerful at sea. ibid.
The era was dominated by Catherine the Great possibly the most powerful woman in history. Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley II: Age of Extremes
Alexander would save the continent from the mightiest military leader of the age – Napoleon. And he’d even lead Russian forces on to the streets of Paris. ibid.
Catherine had sacrificed the rights of the serfs to keep the nobility on her side. ibid.
In the 1820s the Romanov dynasty appeared invincible. They’d ruled Russia for more than two centuries, they’d built an empire and beaten Napoleon. But now there was a new threat, more deadly than an invading army: the Russian people themselves. Empire of the Tsars: Romanov Russia with Lucy Worsley III: The Road to Revolution
Peter had wanted Russia to accelerate into the future; Nicholas would spend the next thirty years trying to put on the breaks. ibid.
In 1853 when Nicholas blundered into the Crimean war. ibid.
Alexander introduced a new ‘era of reaction’. He gave the authorities extensive powers to jail people and close down newspapers. ibid.
The Russian empire was still a medieval one. ibid.
In 1914 Nicholas led his people into the First World War. ibid.
In October came ‘the ten days that shook the world’ when Lenin’s Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government. ibid.
In October 1917 the world changed for ever. Three men led the takeover of the largest country on Earth. Russia became the world’s first communist state. It took everyone by surprise including its own leaders. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin had to struggle, plot and force their way into power through the most unlikely series of events. Russia 1917: Countdown to Revolution, BBC 2017
February 1917: Russia is ready to explode; its royalty, the Tsars, have ruled with an iron fist for four centuries … On February 23rd Russia erupts … Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin miss the February revolution. ibid.
Amidst the devastation of the First World War bled dry by battles and tortured by hunger the Russia of the Tsars that had once seemed eternal was gripped by revolution. For the people hope was reborn. But the dream would not last. As chaos spread, a handful of men seized power and changed the destiny of their nation. Posterity remembers the October revolution, but has largely forgotten what took place in February that could have led Russia to a different destiny. 1917: One Year, Two Revolutions, National Geographic 2017
He used violence to suppress popular uprisings. His will was law. ibid.
Members of the Duma rose up against the Tsar. ibid.
It’s been a century since the Russian revolution and formation of the world’s first communist state … But at the heart of the Russian revolution lay … the Royal family who were determined to retain autocratic rule. The Russian Revolution, Netflix 2017
The errors made by the Tsar would bring an empire to its knees. ibid.
From the day of his coronation he [Nicholas] was off to a dreadful start … Nicholas was struggling in his role of Tsar. ibid.
Crucially, the Russian armed forces remained loyal to the Crown. ibid.
Civil unrest was about to break out in Russia. ibid.
Lenin’s belief in the profound weakness of the provisional government would prove justified. Russia’s October revolution had begun. ibid.