Thread by @marinamaral2

Today is Anastasia's birthday, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

When she was born, her parents and extended family were disappointed that she was a girl. They hoped for a son who would be heir apparent to the throne. Tsar Nicholas II went for a long walk to compose himself before going to visit Alexandra and the newborn for the first time.

She was named for the 4th-century martyr St. Anastasia, known as "the breaker of chains" because, in honor of her birth, her father pardoned and reinstated students who had been imprisoned for participating in riots in St. Petersburg and Moscow the previous winter.

The Tsar's children were raised as simply as possible. They slept on hard camp cots without pillows, except when they were ill, took cold baths in the morning, and were expected to tidy their rooms and do needlework to be sold at various charity events.

Most in the household, including the servants, generally called the Grand Duchess by her first name and patronym, Anastasia Nikolaevna, and did not use her title or style. She was occasionally called by the French version of her name, "Anastasie".

Anastasia grew into a vivacious and energetic child, described as short and inclined to be chubby, with blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair.

Margaretta Eagar, a governess to the four grand duchesses, said one person commented that the toddler Anastasia had the greatest personal charm of any child she had ever seen.

While often described as gifted and bright, she was never interested in the restrictions of the school room, according to her tutors Pierre Gilliard and Sydney Gibbes.

Gibbes, Gilliard, and ladies-in-waiting Lili Dehn and Anna Vyrubova described Anastasia as lively, mischievous, and a gifted actress. Her sharp, witty remarks sometimes hit sensitive spots.

Anastasia's daring occasionally exceeded the limits of acceptable behavior. "She undoubtedly held the record for punishable deeds in her family, for in naughtiness she was a true genius", said Gleb Botkin.

Anastasia sometimes tripped the servants and played pranks on her tutors. As a child, she would climb trees and refuse to come down. Once, during a snowball fight, she rolled a rock into a snowball and threw it at her older sister Tatiana, knocking her to the ground.

A distant cousin, Princess Nina Georgievna, recalled that "Anastasia was nasty to the point of being evil", and would cheat, kick and scratch her playmates during games; she was affronted because the younger Nina was taller than she was.

She was less concerned about her appearance than her sisters. Hallie Erminie Rives, a best-selling American author, described how 10-year-old Anastasia ate chocolates without bothering to remove her long, white opera gloves at the St. Petersburg opera house.

Anastasia and her older sister Maria were known within the family as "The Little Pair". The two girls shared a room, often wore variations of the same dress, and spent much of their time together.

Their older sisters Olga and Tatiana also shared a room and were known as "The Big Pair". The four girls sometimes signed letters using the nickname OTMA, which was derived from the first letters of their first names.

Despite her energy, Anastasia's physical health was sometimes poor. The Grand Duchess suffered from painful bunions, which affected both of her big toes. She had a weak muscle in her back and was prescribed twice-weekly massage.

She hid under the bed or in a cupboard to put off the massage.

Anastasia's older sister, Maria, reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils, according to her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, who was interviewed later in her life.

The doctor performing the operation was so unnerved that he had to be ordered to continue by Maria's mother. Olga Alexandrovna said she believed all four of her nieces bled more than was normal and believed they were carriers of the hemophilia gene, like their mother.

Symptomatic carriers of the gene, while not hemophiliacs themselves, can have symptoms of hemophilia including a lower than normal blood clotting factor that can lead to heavy bleeding.

DNA testing on the remains of the royal family proved conclusively in 2009 that Alexei suffered from Hemophilia B, a rarer form of the disease. His mother and one sister, identified alternatively as Maria or Anastasia, were carriers.

Therefore, had Anastasia lived to have children of her own, they may have been afflicted by the disease as well. Alexei's hemophilia was chronic and incurable; his frequent attacks caused permanent disability.

Her mother relied on the counsel of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and wandering starets or "holy man," and credited his prayers with saving the ailing Tsarevich on numerous occasions. Anastasia and her siblings were taught to view Rasputin as "Our Friend".

Rasputin's friendship with the imperial children was evident in some of the messages he sent to them. In February 1909, he sent a telegram, advising them to "Love the whole of God's nature. The Mother of God was always occupied with flowers and needlework."

However, one of the girls' governesses, Sofia Ivanovna Tyutcheva, was horrified in 1910 that Rasputin was permitted access to the nursery when the four girls were in their nightgowns and wanted him barred. Nicholas asked Rasputin to avoid going to the nurseries in the future.

The children feared that their mother would be angered by Tyutcheva's actions. "I am so afr(aid) that S.I. can speak ... about our friend something bad," Anastasia's twelve-year-old sister Tatiana wrote to their mother on 8 March 1910.

Tyutcheva was eventually fired.

She took her story to other members of the family. While Rasputin's visits to the children were, by all accounts, completely innocent in nature, the family was scandalized.

Tyutcheva told Nicholas's sister that Rasputin visited the girls, talked with them while they were getting ready for bed, and hugged and patted them. She said the children had been taught not to discuss Rasputin with her and were careful to hide his visits from the nursery staff.

Xenia, Nicholas' sister, wrote on 15 March 1910 that she couldn't understand "...the attitude of Alix and the children to that sinister Grigory (whom they consider to be almost a saint, when in fact he's only a khlyst!)"

In the spring of 1910, Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, a royal governess, claimed that Rasputin had raped her. Vishnyakova said the empress refused to believe her account of the assault, and insisted that "everything Rasputin does is holy."

Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was told that Vishnyakova's claim had been immediately investigated, but instead "they caught the young woman in bed with a Cossack of the Imperial Guard."

Vishnyakova was kept from seeing Rasputin after she made her accusation and was eventually dismissed from her post in 1913.

Photo: Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov of Russia with Mariya Ivanovna Vishnyakova in 1905.

However, rumors persisted and it was later whispered in society that Rasputin had seduced not only the Tsarina but also the four grand duchesses. The gossip was fueled by ardent, yet by all accounts innocent, letters written to Rasputin by the Tsarina and the grand duchesses...

which were released by Rasputin and which circulated throughout society.

"My dear, precious, only friend," wrote Anastasia. "How much I should like to see you again. You appeared to me today in a dream. I am always asking Mama when you will come ... I think of you always, my dear, because you are so good to me.."

This was followed by circulation of pornographic cartoons, which depicted Rasputin having relations with the Empress, her four daughters and Anna Vyrubova.

After the scandal, Nicholas ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg for a time, much to Alexandra's displeasure. He then went on a pilgrimage to Palestine.

Despite the rumors, the imperial family's association with Rasputin continued until his murder on 17 December 1916.

In his memoirs, A. A. Mordvinov reported that the four grand duchesses appeared "cold and visibly terribly upset" by Rasputin's death, and sat "huddled up closely together" on a sofa in one of their bedrooms on the night they received the news.

Rasputin was buried with an icon signed on its reverse by Anastasia, her mother and her sisters.

During WWI, Anastasia and Maria visited wounded soldiers at a private hospital in Tsarskoye Selo. The two teenagers, too young to become Red Cross nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played games of checkers and billiards with the soldiers and tried to lift their spirits.

Felix Dassel, who was treated at the hospital and knew Anastasia, recalled that the grand duchess had a "laugh like a squirrel", and walked rapidly "as though she tripped along."

In February 1917, Anastasia and her family were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo during the Russian Revolution.

Nicholas II abdicated on 2/15 March 1917. As the Bolsheviks approached, Alexander Kerensky of the Provisional Government had them moved to Tobolsk, Siberia.

After the Bolsheviks seized majority control of Russia, Anastasia and her family were moved to the Ipatiev House, or House of Special Purpose, at Yekaterinburg.

The stress and uncertainty of captivity took their toll on Anastasia as well as her family.

"Goodby [sic]", she wrote to a friend in the winter of 1917. "Don't forget us."

At Tobolsk, she wrote a melancholy theme for her English tutor, filled with spelling mistakes, about "Evelyn Hope", a poem by Robert Browning about a girl:

"When she died she was only sixteen years old... Ther(e) was a man who loved her without having seen her but (k)new her very well. And she he(a)rd of him also. He never could tell her that he loved her, and now she was dead...

.. But still he thought that when he and she will live [their] next life whenever it will be that ...", she wrote.

At Tobolsk, she and her sisters sewed jewels into their clothing in hopes of hiding them from their captors, since Alexandra had written to warn them that she, Nicholas and Maria had been searched upon arriving in Yekaterinburg, and had items confiscated.

Their mother used predetermined code words "medicines" and "Sednev's belongings" for the jewels. Letters from Demidova to Tegleva gave the instructions.

Pierre Gilliard recalled his last sight of the children at Yekaterinburg:

"The sailor Nagorny, who attended to Alexei Nikolaevitch, passed my window carrying the sick boy in his arms. Behind him came the Grand Duchesses loaded with valises and small personal belongings. I tried to get out, but was roughly pushed back into the carriage by the sentry...

...I came back to the window. Tatiana came last carrying her little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown valise. It was raining and I saw her feet sink into the mud at every step. Nagorny tried to come to her assistance; he was roughly pushed back by one of the commissars."

Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden told of her sad last glimpse of Anastasia: "Standing on some steps at the door of a house close by, I saw a hand and a pink-sleeved arm opening the topmost pane. According to the blouse the hand must have belonged either to the Maria or Anastasia...

... They could not see me through their windows, and this was to be the last glimpse that I was to have of any of them."

However, even in the last months of her life, she found ways to enjoy herself. She and other members of the household performed plays for the enjoyment of their parents and others in the spring of 1918. Anastasia's performance made everyone howl with laughter.

In the summer, the privations of the captivity, including their closer confinement at the Ipatiev House negatively affected the family. At one point Anastasia became so upset about the locked, painted windows that she opened one to look outside and get fresh air.

A sentry reportedly saw her and fired, narrowly missing her.

She did not try again.

On 14 July 1918, local priests at Yekaterinburg conducted a private church service for the family. They reported that Anastasia and her family, contrary to custom, fell on their knees during the prayer for the dead...

.... and that the girls had become despondent and hopeless, and no longer sang the replies in the service. Noticing this dramatic change in their demeanor since his last visit, one priest told the other, "Something has happened to them in there."

Around midnight 17 July 1918, Yakov Yurovsky, the commandant of The House of Special Purpose, ordered the Romanovs' physician to awaken the sleeping family and ask them to put on their clothes, under the pretext that the family would be moved to a safe location.

The Romanovs were then ordered into a 6 m × 5 m (20 ft × 16 ft) semi-basement room. Nicholas asked if Yurovsky could bring two chairs, on which Tsarevich Alexei and Alexandra sat.

Photo: Film || Nicholas and Alexandra.

The prisoners were told to wait in the cellar room while the truck that would transport them was being brought to the House.

A few minutes later, an execution squad of secret police was brought in and Yurovsky read aloud the order given to him by the Ural Executive Committee:

"Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you."

Nicholas, facing his family, turned and said "What? What?" Yurovsky quickly repeated the order and the weapons were raised. The Empress and Grand Duchess Olga, according to a guard's reminiscence, had tried to bless themselves but failed amid the shooting.

Yurovsky reportedly raised his Colt gun at Nicholas's torso and fired; Nicholas was the target of all of the assembled shooters, and he quickly fell dead, pierced by many bullets.

The intoxicated Peter Ermakov, the military commissar for Verkh-Isetsk, shot and killed Alexandra with a bullet wound to the head.

He then shot at Maria, who ran for the double doors, hitting her in the thigh. The remaining executioners shot chaotically and over each other's shoulders until the room was so filled with smoke and dust that no one could see anything nor hear any commands amid the noise.

Within minutes, Yurovsky was forced to stop the shooting because of the caustic smoke of burned gunpowder, dust from the plaster ceiling caused by the reverberation of bullets, and the deafening gunshots.

When they stopped, the doors were then opened to scatter the smoke. While waiting for the smoke to abate, the killers could hear moans and whimpers inside the room.

As it cleared, it became evident that although several of the family's retainers had been killed, all of the Imperial children were alive and furthermore, only Maria was even injured.

The executioners were ordered to proceed with their bayonets, a technique which proved ineffective and meant that the children had to be dispatched by still more gunshots, this time aimed more precisely at their heads.

The Tsarevich was the first of the children to be executed. Yurovsky watched in disbelief as Nikulin spent an entire magazine from his Browning gun on Alexei, who was still seated transfixed in his chair. He had jewels sewn into his undergarment and forage cap.

Ermakov shot and stabbed him, and when he failed, Yurovsky shoved him aside and killed the boy with a gunshot to the head.

The last to die were Tatiana, Anastasia, and Maria, who were carrying a few pounds (over 1.3 kilograms) of diamonds sewn into their clothing, which had given them a degree of protection from the firing.

However, they were speared with bayonets as well.

Olga sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Maria and Anastasia were said to have crouched up against a wall covering their heads in terror until they were shot down. Yurovsky himself killed Tatiana and Alexei.

Tatiana died from a single bullet through the back of her head. Alexei received two bullets to the head, right behind the ear.

Anna Demidova, Alexandra's maid, survived the initial onslaught but was quickly stabbed to death against the back wall while trying to defend herself with a small pillow which she had carried that was filled with precious gems and jewels.

While the bodies were being placed on stretchers, one of the girls cried out and covered her face with her arm. Ermakov bayoneted her in the chest, but when it failed to penetrate he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head.

While Yurovsky was checking the victims for pulses, Ermakov went back and forth in the room, flailing the bodies with his bayonet. The execution lasted about 20 minutes, Yurovsky later admitting to Nikulin's "poor mastery of his weapon and inevitable nerves".

Future investigations calculated that a possible 70 bullets were fired, roughly seven bullets per shooter, of which 57 were found in the basement and at all three subsequent gravesites.

Spoiler: I colorized this photo for The Colour of Time.

Only Alexei's spaniel, Joy, survived to be rescued by a British officer of the Allied Intervention Force, living out his final days in Windsor, Berkshire.

Alexandre Beloborodov sent a coded telegram to Lenin's secretary, Nikolai Gorbunov. It was found by White investigator Nikolai Sokolov and reads:

Inform Sverdlov the whole family have shared the same fate as the head. Officially the family will die at the evacuation.

Beloborodov and Nikulin oversaw the ransacking of the Romanov quarters, seizing all the family's personal items, the most valuable piled up in Yurovsky's office whilst things considered inconsequential and of no value were stuffed into the stoves and burned.

Everything was packed into the Romanovs' own trunks for dispatch to Moscow under escort by commissars. On 19 July, the Bolsheviks nationalized all confiscated Romanov properties, the same day Sverdlov announced the tsar's execution to the Council of People's Commissars.

The bodies of the Romanovs and their servants were loaded onto a Fiat truck equipped with a 60 HP engine, with a cargo area 6 × 10 feet in size. Heavily laden, the vehicle struggled for nine miles on boggy road to reach the Koptyaki forest.

About half a mile further on, 25 men working for Ermakov were waiting with horses and light carts. They were outraged that the prisoners were not brought to them alive. They expected to be part of the lynch mob and were hoping to abuse the women before killing them.

A few of Ermakov's men pawed the female bodies for diamonds hidden in their undergarments, two of whom lifted up Alexandra's skirt and fingered her genitals. Yurovsky ordered them at gunpoint to back off...

... , dismissing the two who had groped the tsarina's corpse and any others he had caught looting. One of the men sniggered that he could "die in peace", having touched the "royal cunt".

The truck was bogged down in an area of marshy ground near the Gorno-Uralsk railway line, during which all the bodies were unloaded onto carts and taken to the disposal site.

Yurovsky and five other men laid out the bodies on the grass and undressed them, the clothes piled up and burned while Yurovsky took inventory of their jewelry.

Once the bodies were "completely naked" they were dumped into a mineshaft and sprinkled with sulphuric acid to disfigure them beyond recognition. Only then did Yurovsky discover that the pit was less than 3 meters deep and the muddy water below did not fully submerge the corpses.

He unsuccessfully tried to collapse the mine with hand grenades and left three men to guard the site while he returned to Ekaterinburg with a bag filled with 18lb of looted diamonds, to report back to Beloborodov and Goloshchyokin. It was decided that the pit was too shallow.

Yurovsky and Goloshchyokin, along with several Cheka agents, returned to the mineshaft at about 4:00am on the morning of 18 July. The sodden corpses were hauled out one by one using ropes tied to their limbs and laid under a tarpaulin.

During transportation to deeper copper mines on the early morning of 19 July, the Fiat truck carrying the bodies got stuck again in mud near Porosenkov Log. With the men exhausted, Yurovsky decided to bury them under the road where the truck had stalled.

Alexei Trupp's body was tossed in first, followed by the Tsar's and then the rest. Sulphuric acid was again used to dissolve the bodies, their faces smashed with rifle butts and covered with quicklime.

Railroad ties were placed over the grave to disguise it, with the Fiat truck being driven back and forth over the ties to press them into the earth. The burial was completed at 6:00am on 19 July.

Yurovsky separated the Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters to be buried about 15 metres away, in an attempt to confuse anyone who might discover the mass grave with only nine bodies.

Since the female body was badly disfigured, Yurovsky mistook her for Anna Demidova; in his report he wrote that he actually wanted to destroy Alexandra's corpse.

Alexei and his sister were burned, their remaining charred bones thoroughly smashed with spades and then tossed into a smaller pit. Only 44 partial bone fragments from both corpses remained, which were not found until August 2007.

After Ekaterinburg fell to the anti-communist White Army on 25 July, Admiral Alexander Kolchak established the Sokolov Commission at the end of that month to investigate the murders.

Nikolai Sokolov discovered a large number of the Romanovs' belongings and valuables that were overlooked by Yurovsky and his men, in and around the mineshaft where the bodies were initially disposed of.

Among them were dismembered and burned bone fragments, congealed fat, Dr Botkin's upper dentures and glasses, corset stays, insignias and belt buckles, shoes, keys, pearls and diamonds, a few spent bullets and part of a severed female finger.

The impending return of Bolshevik forces in July 1919 forced him to evacuate, bringing with him the box containing the relics he recovered. Sokolov died in France in 1924 of a heart attack before he could complete his investigation.

Local amateur sleuth Alexander Avdonin and filmmaker Geli Ryabov located the shallow grave on 30-31 May 1979 after years of covert evidence-gathering and a study of the primary evidence. Three skulls were removed from the grave.

After failing to find any scientist and laboratory to help examine them, and worried about the consequences of finding the grave, Avdonin and Ryabov reburied them in the summer of 1980.

The presidency of Mikhail Gorbachev brought with it the era of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform), which prompted Ryabov to reveal the Romanov's gravesite to The Moscow News on 10 April 1989, much to Avdonin's horror.

The remains were disinterred in 1991 by Soviet officials in a hasty 'official exhumation' that wrecked the site, destroying precious evidence.

Since there were no clothes on the bodies and the damage inflicted was extensive, controversy persisted as to whether the skeletal remains identified and interred in St Petersburg as Anastasia's were really hers or in fact Maria's.

On 29 July 2007, another amateur group of local enthusiasts found the small pit containing the remains of Alexei and his sister, located in two small bonfire sites not far from the main grave on the Koptyaki Road.

DNA testing by multiple international laboratories confirmed that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters (Anastasia), proving conclusively that all family members, including Anastasia, died in 1918.

In 2000, Anastasia and her family were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church. The bodies of Nicholas, Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred in the St. Catherine Chapel at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, St Petersburg on 17 July 1998.

Done. Sorry for the gigantic thread, but I couldn't summarize this one. The (awful) details are too important to be ignored.

Books on the Romanov family: Any by @HelenRappaport and @simonmontefiore.

Anastasia's photo was a courtesy of @Romanovs100. Thank you!

I feel exhausted and disgusted whenever I finish reading this story.

But I hope you learned something new today.