Romanov impostors


The members of the Russian imperial family, the House of Romanov, were executed by firing squad by the Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918, during both the Russian Civil War and near the end of the First World War.
Afterwards, a number of people came forward claiming to have survived the execution. All were impostors, as the skeletal remains of the Imperial family have since been recovered and identified through DNA testing. To this day, a number of people still falsely claim to be members of the Romanov family, often using false titles of nobility or royalty.

DNA testing

In 1991, nine sets of human remains were found in the forest outside Yekaterinburg. They have been identified through DNA testing as belonging to the Tsar and Tsarina, three of their daughters, the Tsarina's ladies' maid, and the family's doctor, cook and footman. In 1998, the Romanovs and their servants were buried in St. Petersburg and have been declared passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church. However, two sets of remains were missing from the mass grave. Scientists identified the missing family members as Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia, who was a few weeks short of his fourteenth birthday at the time of the killing, and either Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia or Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia, who were seventeen and nineteen respectively at the time of the killings. The report of two missing bodies continued until the late 2000s to fuel speculation that one or more members of the family could have survived.
On August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three years old. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber." The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes.
On January 22, 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that preliminary testing indicated a "high degree of probability" that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters. The Yekaterinburg region's chief forensic expert Nikolai Nevolin indicated the results will be compared against those obtained by foreign experts and a final report could be issued by April or May 2008. On April 30, 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that DNA testing proves that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters. With this result, all of the Tsar's family are accounted for, proving that none of them survived the execution. the Russian Orthodox Church has not yet recognized these remains as belonging to the imperial family; the House of Romanov has expressed openness to the possibility of having the remains exhumed for further analysis and confirmation of their identity.
Anastasia's survival stories have always been the most famous, inspiring dozens of books and films.

Anastasia impostors

Some of the women who claimed or were believed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia are:
Several men who claimed to be Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia.