Royal Pretender

A ROMANOV FANTASY

Life at the Court of Anna Anderson

By Frances Welch

Norton. 357 pp. $24.95

The story of the last days of the Romanovs -- and especially that of the Grand Duchess Anastasia -- seems to have no end. But its tragic beginning is well-known. In July 1918, in the cellar of the "House of Special Purpose" in Ekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains, Bolshevik gunmen executed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, along with the tsarina, their four daughters and only son.

For almost a century since that terrible event, rumors have circulated that one or more of the royal children survived and pretenders have surfaced claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the most tenacious one being a certain Anna Anderson. Countless books, articles and movies have explored and romanticized Anderson's persistent claim that she was the youngest daughter of the tsar and the sole survivor of the massacre.

A Romanov Fantasy, by British author Frances Welch, who has written extensively about the Romanovs, is the latest attempt to unravel the mystery of Anna Anderson's identity. And there are recent developments to warrant a further look. After the collapse of communism, the Russians discovered the burial site of the murdered royals, along with almost all their remains. DNA testing appeared to confirm the Romanovs' identities, but missing were any traces of Anastasia and Alexis, the tsarevitch. (There has been some dispute over whether the missing grand duchess was Anastasia or her sister Maria.) However, last summer, newspapers reported that the bones of these two may have been recovered at another location. DNA testing now being performed could mean the definitive end to the powerfully resilient Anastasia myth.

Welch, in exploring every twist and turn of this tale, has produced what must be all the available facts, both tragic and comic, but her presentation of so many claims and counterclaims can be very confusing, especially the murky conflicting stories surrounding Anna's early life.

The woman who eventually called herself Anna Anderson first entered the sad Romanov tale in 1920, when she was rescued from a Berlin canal after a suicide attempt. She was taken to a hospital, where for six weeks she was questioned but would say nothing. Finally she confessed that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia and had been so desperate she had hurled herself into the canal.

Anna claimed she survived the executions because the two guards ordered to dispose of the bodies could not bring themselves to bury the wounded duchess alive. Instead, they bundled her into a farm cart that took her west among thousands of refugees. She ended up in Bucharest, where she claimed to have survived on the proceeds of jewelry she had sewn into her clothing. She also claimed to have given birth to a son who was immediately put up for adoption and that she later married one of the guards who rescued her. No record exists to verify these claims.

Coincidentally, German records show that a Polish woman, identified as Franziska Schanzkowska, was in fact rescued from that same canal in 1920, and the identity of this woman somehow morphed into Anna Anderson, thus giving rise to another version of the legend.

Yet people believed Anna/Anastasia -- some of them ardently. Chief among her champions was Gleb Botkin, son of Dr. Eugene Botkin, the imperial family's loyal physician, who shared their fate in the 1918 massacre. Gleb had been a childhood friend of young Anastasia and became convinced that Anna was not an impostor. He managed to bring her to the United States where he lived and worked as an artist and writer. More important, he found wealthy patrons who were willing to act as her hosts.