Nicholas II of Russia

Nicholas II of Russia ( 18 May 1868 – 17 July 1918){{fn|1}} was the last crowned Emperor of Russia. He ruled from 1894 until his forced abdication in 1917. It is said that Nicholas proved unequal to the combined tasks of managing a country in political turmoil and commanding its army in the largest international war to date. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution, during which he and his family were murdered by Bolsheviks, in 1918.

Rumours of Imperial Family survivors

The concealment of the executions and the bodies led to rumours that the Emperor or some members of his family were still alive. Several people claimed to have seen the Emperor in labour camps in Siberia in the 1930s. These claims were never taken seriously, but a number of people in the 1920s and 1930s claimed more credibly to be Romanov children. The best known was Anna Anderson, who maintained that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and succeeded in so persuading some members of the exiled Romanov family. It is likely that she believed her claim herself (she was in a mental institution at the time a connection was first hypothesised), but posthumous DNA analysis has shown it to be false.

Related Topics:
Labour camp - Siberia - 1930s - 1920s - Anna Anderson - Grand Duchess Anastasia - DNA

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In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the bodies of the Romanovs were located, exhumed, and formally identified. A secret report by Yurovsky, which came to light in the late 1970s, but did not become public knowledge until the 1990s, had helped the authorities to locate the bodies. DNA analysis was a key means of identifying them. A blood sample from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whose maternal grandmother was Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine, Alexandra's sister, was used to identify the Empress and her daughters through their mitochondrial genes. Another method for identification was the new forensic technique of the superimposition of photos over the skulls.

Related Topics:
1990s - Soviet Union - 1970s - Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine - Mitochondrial

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Two bodies were still missing, those of Alexei and one of the daughters—Tatiana, Maria or Anastasia. According to Yurovsky's account, the bodies of Alexei and one of the daughters, mistaken by Yurovsky's detachment for Alexandra, were burned near the burial site and their ashes scattered and concealed. Some elements in Russia, particularly in the Orthodox Church, maintained that the bodies were not those of the Royal Family, but following a long series of bureaucratic and political delays, the remains of the family were reinterred in the Romanov family crypt in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998, with much ceremony, on the 80th anniversary of the execution.

Related Topics:
Peter and Paul Cathedral - 1998

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Nicholas' life was dramatised in the 1971 film Nicholas and Alexandra.

Related Topics:
1971 - Nicholas and Alexandra

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