Transcription
Although there are many theories about the fateful day, it's unknown how exactly the Romanov children were executed. But after examining their remains, historians have suggested a chilling possibility.
Though the Romanovs held power for over 300 years, their dynasty ended in a single generation with the last Tsar Nicholas II. Deeply devoted to family and tradition, his misguided and short-sighted decisions not only ended the Russian monarchy, it doomed the entire family to a horrifying end. Tsar Nicholas II, the man who began the end of the Romanovs, was the son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Fedorovna. His father was a strict, imposing ruler who believed in autocracy, while his mother, a Danish princess, brought warmth and elegance to the court.
When Nicholas was just 14, he received the shock of a lifetime. He was at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg when his beloved grandfather, Tsar Alexander II, was brought in following a brutal bombing attack. The family gathered by their patriarch's side as he took his final breaths, and their lives changed forever. Now that Alexander III was Tsar, he not only had to deal with the pressures of ruling, but also of raising his son to one day become his replacement. But since he was only in his 40s, he spent a little too much time on the former and not enough on the latter, and he didn't see what a mistake he was making until it was too late. Though historians agree that he was smart and well educated, Nicholas lacked one essential quality. He had trouble expressing himself and even more trouble making decisions. He lacked the strength and resolve required to lead Russia. Not only was the time to learn quickly running out, he was also distracted.
In 1884, at his uncle's wedding, Nicholas met one of the bride's sisters, who also happened to be his distant cousin. Her name was Princess Alix, and he developed quite the crush. Nicholas had to wait five long years until she visited St. Petersburg again. And when they reunited, the feelings were mutual. Though he was only in his 40s, Tsar Alexander III began suffering health problems. As he grew more and more ill, it was clear that he needed to set things in motion for his son to rule. And that included giving his approval to Nicholas and Alix's marriage. Within a matter of months, Alexander succumbed to nephritis, leaving his son to step into the role of Tsar. Nicholas had little preparation or inclination to rule, but the weight of the world was now on his shoulders.
Growing up, Alexandra Feodorovna had been nicknamed Sunny, but her story was anything but. When she was just six, her mother and her beloved younger sister succumbed to diphtheria. Earlier, her brother Friedrich tragically fell from a palace window before his third birthday. Friedrich suffered from hemophilia, a disease in which the body doesn't produce the agents needed to clot blood, which leaves sufferers in danger of bleeding out from even seemingly trivial injuries. The disease is hereditary, meaning that as distant cousins, both Alexandra and her husband were potential carriers.
Nicholas went from losing his father to marriage to ruling an entire empire in a period of months. The coronation of Nicholas II and Alexandra in 1896 was a lavish display of imperial grandeur filled with ceremonies, parades, and celebrations. Moscow was transformed into a stage for the new emperor, with thousands of people gathering to witness the event. But an unexpected tragedy unfolded amidst the festivities.
During a feast at Khodynka Field meant to showcase the new emperor's generosity, crowding triggered a stampede where over 200 people died and thousands more were injured. When Nicholas was informed of the stampede, his response was twisted. He showed no emotion at all. Though advisers told him that it might be wise to put a stop to the festivities in order to show respect, he ignored their pleas. That night, he showed up to a ball in his honor, earning himself an insulting nickname, Nicholas the Bloody, and sparking frustration among his subjects.
Just months after the royal wedding, the Tsar and Alexandra announced they were expecting a child. Everyone in the palace eagerly awaited a boy, especially Alexandra herself. After all, the fate of the Romanov dynasty was resting on her shoulders. On November 15th, 1895, Empress Alexandra gave birth to a baby girl, Olga. Both Alexandra and her husband were thrilled, even if she was a girl. However, not every Romanov was happy. The Dowager Empress Maria, Nicholas's mother, was appalled that there was no direct male heir and worried about what it meant for the family. Less than 2 years later, Alexandra gave birth to another girl, the Grand Duchess Tatiana. By this time, Alexandra and Nicholas were getting anxious. In 1899, Alexandra was pregnant again and had another daughter, the Grand Duchess Maria. Two girls in a row might be bad luck, but three was beginning to look like a curse. Even Queen Victoria weighed in on the matter, writing, "I regret the third girl for the country." The Romanovs were in trouble.
In 1901, they had their fourth and most famous daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia. If the first three girls had successfully dampened their morale, Anastasia shattered it. Reportedly, when Nicholas heard the news, he had to take a long walk to collect himself.
It wasn't until 1904 that the Romanovs finally got what they wanted. Alexandra gave birth to a boy, Alexei. When the Empress finally emerged from her haze, she looked out across the room and saw a sea of joyous faces. She knew exactly what it meant. She cried out, "It cannot be true. Is it really a boy?" It really was. But it took just moments for the joy to become horror. When they cut the umbilical cord, they realized something was seriously wrong. The wound wouldn't stop bleeding. It was the first sign that the worst had happened. Alexandra was a carrier of hemophilia and she'd passed it on to her only son. The Romanovs were devastated, and they decided to keep their son's condition a state secret known only to their loyal inner circle in order to support stability and peace in their country.
By now, nervous exhaustion and her many disappointing pregnancies had turned Alexandra into a shadow of her former self. She ate and slept very little, had swollen feet, and took herbal medicine to strengthen her pulse. She was also addicted to veronal, a kind of sedative. Cuts that won't stop bleeding aren't the only problems that come with hemophilia. Alexei had other symptoms, but the worst was when internal lesions caused blood to seep into his joints. As his doctor put it, blood destroyed bones and tendons. He couldn't bend or unbend his arms or legs. In those moments, Alexei could barely move without feeling excruciating pain. The family grew desperate, and they found help in a sinister place.
Running out of options, Alexandra called for a strange mystic from Siberia who claimed to be able to heal the boy. His name was Grigori Rasputin, and the Empress invited him straight into the royal palace. He prayed over Alexei's withering body. And then, a miracle. By the next morning, Alexei was better. While he'd lay in agony before, he now sat up in bed, his fever and swelling gone. From that day, the Tsar and Empress trusted Rasputin above all else when it came to Alexei's health. But inviting this mystic into their lives had terrible consequences.
With this miracle, Rasputin had fully enchanted Empress Alexandra. She made all her children call him "our friend" and further forced them to share their deepest secrets with the holy man, performing makeshift confessionals with him. Soon enough, people started to notice. Not everyone in the palace was under Rasputin's spell. One day, the girls' governess entered the royal nursery and made a concerning discovery. The young girls were spending time with Rasputin, all while dressed only in their nightgowns. Nicholas quite sensibly requested that any nighttime visits to his female children stop. However, that reaction caused his wife to fly into a rage, and she fired the governess who'd brought the matter up. Rumors flew that Rasputin had not only seduced Empress Alexandra, but also the four Romanov girls. One aunt reported seeing Rasputin caressing the girls, and the mad monk certainly had a retinue of other highborn women keeping him company. Whatever the case, the cracks started to show. Alexandra's German heritage made Russians suspicious of her, and her obsession with Rasputin didn't help. As anti-German sentiment rose in the leadup to World War I, Russian hatred became even more focused on Alexandra and Rasputin. It was about to reach a breaking point.
The Tsar wasn't prepared for war, and his troops were already exhausted from earlier conflict. Besides that, Germany was now a machine built for warfare, and Russia was fighting back with sticks. Although Rasputin opposed the war, the mystic claimed to have had a vision where the Russian army would only succeed if the Tsar personally took over command. Nicholas listened and took the charge, but it was a huge mistake. It caused massive losses and unrest, kickstarting the downfall of the Romanovs and nearly everyone they loved.
Russia had managed to stick with Nicholas through scandal after scandal. But World War I broke even the trust of his aristocrats. They knew something had to change. On December 30th, 1916, powerful courtiers infamously captured and killed Rasputin. When the Romanov children found out the news, a witness said they huddled up closely together on their sofa, crying for Father Gregory.
By the end of World War I, the Romanovs' realm was in shambles. Responding to rumblings of revolution, Tsar Nicholas tried to bring his country back under his control. In March 1917, he tried to use his guards to quell unrest in St. Petersburg. But when he ordered them to fire upon the gathering citizenry, they refused, firing into the air instead. With this, the revolution had begun.
Within days of this mutiny, the government pushed Nicholas to resign. He agreed to abdicate and formally ended his rule on March 15th, 1917. In doing so, he brought over three centuries of uninterrupted Romanov rule to an end. But his troubles were far from over.
At first, life wasn't so bad for the disgraced Romanovs. While still staying at their luxurious Alexander Palace, albeit under guard, Nicholas and his family could pretend that things were completely normal. Besides, they had an escape plan all lined up. Nicholas's cousin, King George V of England, had already assured the family that they could seek asylum with him. King George V looked nearly identical to Nicholas II, and they were very close. Yet when revolution ousted Nicholas, George dealt his cousin a cold-hearted betrayal. He rescinded his offer of safe haven in England. Historians believe that George was worried that Nicholas's presence would damage his own monarchy.
The Bolsheviks shuffled the Romanovs around, moving them to Tobolsk, a great distance from St. Petersburg. The girls ended up catching measles and having to shave their heads. Next, they made the long and miserable journey to Yekaterinburg. After 5 days of camping in the cold, they were happy to be warm and dry again at the Ipatiev house. But this would be where they'd meet their dark fate.
The Romanovs weren't completely clueless about their prospects. At one point during their captivity, Nicholas and Alexandra urged their children to sew jewels into their clothing in order to conceal them from the Bolsheviks who were confiscating priceless heirlooms. That way, they'd have valuables on hand if they ever escaped. A good idea in theory, but these precious bobbles would come back to haunt them.
The family had been at the Ipatiev house for about 6 weeks and had fallen into something of a routine. But one night in July was different. Sometime after midnight, the Imperial Romanovs and their five children were forced into a basement to face a firing squad. Bullets and gunpowder filled the tiny room, but it was only when the smoke cleared that the soldiers realized the execution had gone horribly wrong. On the night of the execution, the Romanov siblings were wearing their jewel-encrusted clothing. As a result, the diamonds and stones had somewhat protected them from the bullets. When the Bolsheviks discovered that the children were still alive, they had to painstakingly finish the job. Then they set about disposing of the bodies. When they did, they made an eerie discovery. Each of the Romanov girls was wearing an amulet with Grigori Rasputin's image inside. Even years after his death, the mad monk still had a hold on them.
The Bolsheviks threw the bodies of the Romanovs down a mineshaft, and the government didn't acknowledge their deaths for 8 years. This led to speculation that some of them might possibly still be alive.
In 1922, a patient in an asylum in Berlin claimed that she was the youngest Romanov girl, Anastasia. For decades, a woman named Anna Anderson was able to fool the extended family into believing she was in fact Anastasia and that the princess had somehow escaped execution. While not everyone bought the claims, many did comment on how much she looked and acted like the Grand Duchess. In 1994, experts compared Anna Anderson's DNA to a sample from Anastasia's relative, Prince Philip. The findings confirmed the truth. There was no match, disproving her claim once and for all. Historians now widely believe that Anderson was actually Franziska Schanzkowska, a mentally ill Polish factory worker.
There was a disturbing reason why it was so hard to tell what happened to the Romanovs. Hoping to cover up what they'd done, the Bolsheviks stripped the family of all their clothes, burned them, then doused them in sulfuric acid before tossing them into the darkness below. That was the final resting place of the Romanov family, except for Alexei and one of his sisters. The guards had a plan for them that they hoped would throw anyone searching for the lost royals off their scent. They took the remains of Alexei and one of his sisters and burned them in a bonfire. Next, they smashed the bones with a spade, then tossed them into a smaller pit about 50 ft away from the mass grave. They figured anyone who found the remains at the bottom of the mineshaft wouldn't guess it was the royal family, as the Tsarevich and one of the girls wouldn't be there.
Amateur archaeologists discovered the site of the Romanovs' grave in 1979, but they soon realized something was wrong. Two bodies were missing, one of the girls and Alexei. Rumors persisted for decades that perhaps the boy had somehow escaped until 2007, nearly a century after his death. Researchers found the remains of a pre-teen boy and a young woman in a fire pit nearby. DNA testing confirmed that the bones had belonged to Alexei and either Maria or Anastasia. Finally, after nearly a century, the mystery of the end of the Romanovs was settled once and for all.
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