This was the title of a programme on Channel 5 this evening which I have just finished watching. I am currently reading Helen Rappaport's heartbreaking story about the final days of this family and their dreadful end. Their deaths have been surrounded by conjecture and theories for 90 years, there must be very few people around who have not heard of Anna Anderson, claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia. She insisted she was the surviving daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, an astonishing fiction which she steadfastly maintained to her dying day. She persuaded people who actually knew the Russian royal family that she was who she claimed to be, she knew secrets, family secrets that nobody else could have known which gave credence to her claim. I well remember reading all about her as a teenager and finding it all so romantic and interesting and have to confess I was bitterly disappointed to find that her DNA revealed after her death that she was the daughter of a factory worker without a drop of royal blood in her 
veins.
I have always found the Romanovs fascinating since I first read Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, originally published in the 1960s and have read various biographies about them, read some of the wilder theories about their death and/or escape and also a wonderful selection of letters between Nicholas and his wife which reveal that they loved each other till they died. I am one third of the way through Helen Rappaport's book and it is clear that, despite all the trappings of royalty and the etiquette and court life surrounding them, they were essentially a family unit happy with ordinary every day family life.
This programme dealt with the recent findings of remains some little way away from the graves uncovered in the 1990's containing the bones of the Tsar and Tsarina and three of their children. But where were the other two? Did they escape and what happened to them?
Well, we had a DNA specialist and a forensic scientist looking at the discovered remnants. This was programme making of the most portentious kind. The usual blurred, black and white fake action shots of the Romanovs being shot, close ups of Russian peasant faces distorted with hate, endless questions: Did they shoot them all? Did some of them escape? What happened to them? Will the team be able to put and end to the mystery? blah blah blah repeated ad nauseam. The fact that the DNA was so small that it might not be possible to identify the bodies was presented as a tragedy of huge proportions and meant to keep the viewer in suspense (it didn't). We actually had a farcical test of using a replica of the gun which killed the Tsar to shoot at a bodice with precious stones sewn onto it, to see if a bullet would ricochet off thus proving certain of the reports of the murderers that some of the children could have survived as they had sewn jewels into their underclothes. I thought this was totally unnecessary as I have never come across anybody that seriously denied this was an option.
Endless questions about the possibility of a Romanov heir and then we learn that the Kremlin had given the scientists top level clearance to view the reports of the killers sealed in Lenin's Secret Archive (cue film of descent into a bunker sealed with doors which would withstand a nuclear attack), close ups of the documents and gasps of awe from the scientist. If I hadn't wanted to find out what was happening I would have switched off as I was becoming increasingly irritated by the presentation and the droning voice of the commentator. It was padding pure and simple as really the heart of the programme and the result would have taken up five minutes on a news bulletin but this was an hour long, so we had to wait.....
Then at the end the solution was given and yes, it was proved beyond doubt that these bones were the bones of the missing two children, one a girl and one a boy, so that we knew that here were the last remains of Alexis and one of his sisters. It was deeply sad and made the way the programme was presented even more tawdry and commercial, but at least we now know that these bones will be interred with their parents and siblings and the family will be together again. Film of the children playing together and on board the imperial yacht and laughing and looking so happy was very moving, here were these innocent children totally unaware of the awful fate awaiting them.
A pretty poor programme but the subject matter transcended the trite presentation. Nobody could fail to be moved when contemplating this tragedy and, once more, I wondered how George V who decided not to give sanctuary to his cousin and his family, lived with his conscience the rest of his life.
