How many romanovs

The church had canonized the family in , which meant that any physical remains were now holy relics. It was essential, the church maintained, that it have a role in making sure the bodies were correctly identified.

Yeltsin had resigned the presidency of the Russian Federation in and handed over power to a little-known ex-KGB colonel named Vladimir Putin. The young leader regarded the fall of the USSR as "the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century," and as soon as he took office he started centralizing power, reining in foreign influences and promoting a combination of nationalism, Orthodox faith, and aggressive foreign policy.

It was an effective approach that, ironically, could have been taken from any number of Romanov tsars' playbooks. Putin was no closet royalist, but he was an admirer of the autocracy perfected by the Romanovs. Though born under Soviet communism, he had a pragmatist's understanding of history, in particular the fact that the most forceful leaders of Russia, from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great to Joseph Stalin, had managed to personify the essence of not just the state but the Russian soul, and Russia's uniqueness in world history.

Like the first Romanov rulers, Putin came to power during a time of troubles, and like his forebears he set about restoring the power of the state and the persona of its ruler. Rejecting the findings of the international scientists was, of course, a power grab by the newly emboldened church, and it was supported by the growing anti-Western sentiment promoted by the Kremlin and shared by much of Russian society. By agreeing to the church's conditions, Putin was appeasing an important ally.

But the move also reflected conspiracy theories which often had anti-Semitic undercurrents spreading among ultranationalists about the remains. One was that Lenin and his henchmen, many of whom were Jewish, had demanded that the heads of the saintly Romanovs be brought to Moscow as a sort of diabolical Hebraic-Bolshevik tribute. Was this the reason for the shattered state of the bones? Were these bones really the Romanovs? Or had someone escaped? These questions might seem easy to dismiss, but there is long-established tradition in Russia of murdered royals suddenly reappearing.

During the Time of Troubles, in the 17th century, there were not one but three impostor, known as the False Dmitris, who claimed to be Prince Dmitri, last son of Ivan the Terrible.

And after more than imposters claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia. At first, during the spring of , the ex-imperial family was allowed to live in relative comfort at a favorite residence, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, not far from Petrograd. Nicholas's cousin, King George V of England, offered him sanctuary, but then changed his mind and withdrew the offer. It was not the finest moment for the House of Windsor, but it is unlikely that it made any difference.

The window of opportunity was short; demands for the ex-tsar to stand trial were growing. Alexander Kerensky, first justice minister and then prime minister of the provisional government, moved the royals to the governor's mansion in Tobolsk, in distant Siberia, to keep them safe. Their stay there was bearable but depressing.

Boredom turned to danger when Kerensky was overthrown by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October Lenin famously said that "revolutions are meaningless without firing squads," and he was soon considering, along with lieutenant Yakov Sverdlov, whether to place Nicholas on public trial—to be followed by his execution—or just kill the entire family. The Bolsheviks faced a desperate civil war against the Whites, counterrevolutionary armies backed by Western powers.

Lenin responded with unbridled terror. He decided to move the family from Tobolsk closer to Moscow, to which he had relocated the Russian capital.

A trusted Bolshevik factotum was dispatched to bring the Romanovs westward, and in April they endured a terrifying trip by train and carriage.

The teenage Alexei suffered an attack of bleeding and had to be left behind; he came to Ekaterinburg three weeks later with three of his sisters. The girls, meanwhile, were sexually molested on the train. But eventually the family was reunited in the gloomy, walled mansion of a merchant named Ipatiev in the center of the city, whose leaders were the most fanatical of Bolsheviks.

The mansion was ominously renamed the House of Special Purpose and converted into a prison fortress with painted-over windows, fortified walls and machine gun nests. The Romanovs received limited rations and were watched by hostile young guards. Yet the family adapted. Nicholas read books aloud in the evening and tried to exercise. The eldest daughter, Olga, became depressed, but the playful and spirited younger girls, especially the beautiful Maria and the mischievous Anastasia, began to interact with the guards.

Picture of Prince Rostislav Romanov not available. The Scene. Type keyword s to search. Getty Images. Hundreds of living relatives, famous and infamous, can claim a Romanov connection. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Prince Michael of Kent. Hugh Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster. Two more bodies, uncovered in and identified through DNA comparison with living Romanov relatives as two of the murdered children, Alexei and Maria, have not been buried , as some within the Russian Orthodox Church have refused to accept the identification.

Unusually among Romanov descendants, he has also lived and worked extensively in Russia. An accomplished artist , he also works with the Raketa Watch Factory in St. Petersburg, founded by his ancestor Peter the Great. In —the th anniversary of the Russian Revolution—he designed a special watch stained with a drop of his own blood to commemorate the bloodshed and sacrifice of the revolution and the violent end of Romanov rule in Russia. In , he fled from a military junta in Greece and lived in exile in London until , when he moved back to Greece with his Danish-born wife, Anne-Marie.

The duke is godfather to Prince George, who is currently third in line to the British throne. The great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Nicholas I is a TV and movie actress , and has collaborated with the jewelry company Damiani on a Romanov Collection line, showcasing the name and mystique of her famous family.

Deliberate misinformation from the new Bolshevik regime, combined with the fact that no bodies were found for decades, fueled persistent rumors of survivors among the royal family. Here are the most intriguing imposters to the Romanov name. Anna Anderson - , a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, Dozens of women claimed to be the youngest Romanov princess, Anastasia , but the most famous was Anna Anderson, who surfaced in in a German mental hospital after jumping off a Berlin bridge.

The Romanovs were high-ranking aristocrats in Russia during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He took the name Michael I. Through wars against the Ottoman Empire and the Empire of Sweden, Russia expanded its territory and became the dominant power in both the Baltic and Black Sea regions. Peter I declared himself emperor of the newly formed Russian Empire in , a position he held until his death in Catherine II was a sophisticated patron of the arts, and during her reign, Russia adopted Western European philosophies and culture.

Czar Nicholas II was the last Romanov emperor, ruling from until his forced abdication in March of The duration of his rule was plagued by periods of political and social unrest. He was widely seen as a politically weak and indecisive leader. Alix, who would later take the name Alexandra Feodorovna, was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

Alexandra—with a brusque demeanor and distaste for Russian culture—was unpopular with the Russian people. Her German ancestry and her devotion to Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin contributed to her unpopularity.

Alexei, the only son and heir to the throne, suffered from severe hemophilia, and was often confined to bed. Many saw him as a religious charlatan. By , most Russians had lost all faith in the leadership ability of the czar. Government corruption was rampant and the Russian economy was severely damaged by World War I. Moderates joined with radical Bolshevik revolutionaries in calling for an overthrow of the czar. Nicholas II abdicated the throne on March 15, , putting an end to more than years of Romanov rule.

Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra, their five children, and four attendants were executed in Yekaterinburg, a city on the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains, in the late night or early morning hours of July ,