The Execution of the Romanovs: From Russia's Throne to Unthinkable Fate

[EPISODE 34.1] The Execution of the Romanovs: From Russia's Throne to Unthinkable Fate

Kyle Risi: And the awful thing is that the bullets that were fired at the girls just ricocheted off them because they had sewn all of their jewels into their clothing. So the guards just resorted to having to use the bayonets that were mounted on the end of their guns to stab all the kids to death.

Kyle Risi: That's 

Adam Cox: awful. I knew they're fate, but just, I didn't realise quite how gruesome it was. It 

Kyle Risi: was awful. 

Kyle Risi: Welcome to the Compendium and Assembly of Monarch Mysteries where history might have some unfinished business. 

Adam Cox: Ooh, so are we're talking about the royal family today? 

Kyle Risi: A royal family, not the royal family, but a royal family. Correct. 

Kyle Risi: In today's episode of the compendium, I'm going to be telling you about the infamous execution of the Romanov royal family. Ah, the Russians. Yeah, what do you know of this story? 

Adam Cox: I've watched various shows where they either do like a reenactment, like the, I think the Crown did it last year, where there was an episode about it.

Adam Cox: I have a vague idea, in terms of they were like cousins to King George, weren't they? 

Kyle Risi: Yes, they were. not King George. I think it was King... Oh, no. Yeah. It was King 

Adam Cox: George. King George V. It was Queen Elizabeth's dad, right? Or was it her grandfather? 

Kyle Risi: I think grandfather. Yeah. One of the two. Yeah.

Kyle Risi: it was round about the 1800s. So whoever was monarch around about then. Yeah. Was when this all took place. Yeah. And... 

Adam Cox: They were like identical, weren't they? the dad from each family. So King 

Kyle Risi: George and, yeah, like there was, there's so much inbreeding within the royal family, and in fact, like most of the royal families in Europe, all spawn from the same lineage, which is pretty much Queen Victoria's lineage.

Kyle Risi: So they're all to a degree related. But you are right in the situation with King George and Nicholas ii, the czar of Russia. Yeah, they look remarkably. It's really uncanny. 

Adam Cox: It's like when you find a long lost relative that looks like you, but actually these are relatives and they're not long and lost. No, I think, I guess it's did dad have an affair or something?

Adam Cox: It's that kind of thing where they look so identical. It's spooky.

Kyle Risi: It is weird. And also I think that it's a case of Nicholas the second is the second cousin once removed to Queen Victoria. So it's not like they're close cousins.

Kyle Risi: they're quite distant in that regard. And yet they look so alike. 

Adam Cox: Yeah. I guess people say like people look, or aunties and nieces and uncles and nephews can sometimes look similar, 

Kyle Risi: I think. yeah. I guess so. Yeah. It's everyone always says that Beatrice in the royal family looks very similar to her great grandmother, which is.

Kyle Risi: Queen Victoria. And when you see pictures of them side by side, you're like, ah, that's really uncanny. Yeah. Queen Victoria looks like no one in the Royal family that we know. Yes. Beatrice has that uncanny look. Resemblance. Yeah. Cool.

Kyle Risi: as a young boy just living in the South African wilderness in the mid 1990s, when I wasn't single handedly fending off crocodiles and leopards...

Kyle Risi: You. Yeah. You 

Adam Cox: were single handedly fending off crocodiles. Yeah, for 

Kyle Risi: sure. Yeah, I'm wild. I'm like Donnie from, Eliza Thornberry, a little mad one. But I, had my nose in books, really, and the Romanov family I found really captivating. Like this idea that one of the most powerful families in the world...

Kyle Risi: Could all just be executed in the middle of the night. That was like WTF to me. But in particular, what really fascinated me was the speculation that one of the Romanov daughters, Anastasia, had somehow managed to escape this execution on that night and was somehow still alive somewhere in the world.

Kyle Risi: And as a result, dozens of people started coming forward claiming to be This lost member of the Romanov family, which caused, this huge media frenzy. Documentaries, books, films, like the 1997 animated film Anastasia. Do you remember that one? I think so, yeah.

Kyle Risi: And that's pretty much part of the reason why I became fascinated by the story. Because of that animated show that got released in 1997. No way. And from that, my imagination got sparked . So that's what I wanted to tell you about today.

Kyle Risi: The story of the Romanov family. Okay. You up for it? Yeah. Sounds good. So before we do that, should we jump into introductions? Sure. 

Kyle Risi: If you are tuning in for the very first time, I'm your host, Kyle Risi. And I'm your co host, Adam Cox. You're listening to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating and intriguing things.

Kyle Risi: We're a variety podcast where each week I tell Adam all about a brand new fascinating and intriguing topic from absolutely bonkers events to some of the most incredible people. We do this all in a one hour ish episode because who wants to listen to a ten episode podcast series?

Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's a lot. That's commitment. That is commitment and I don't want to do 

Adam Cox: that. No, we give you just enough. On your way to work, on your going to 

Kyle Risi: the gym. All in one hour, baby. All in one hour.

Kyle Risi: So Adam, it's that time of the week again, that can only mean one thing. It's time for all the latest things. Let's go.

Kyle Risi: So for my all the latest things this week, I found out that the first criminal in Boston to be sent to the stocks back in the 1600s was the man who actually built those same stocks and was found to be overcharging and the local community for the stocks, so they stuck him in the stocks themself. 

Adam Cox: that's, that really bit him in the butt.

Kyle Risi: I know, right? this fact dates back to the 17th century in Boston, where the city of Boston needed kind of stocks. And you know those, you know what the stocks are, right? Those old school kind of wooden devices used for shaming 

Adam Cox: people, yeah? Yeah, you stick your head in it, and in your hands, and you'd have rotten apples 

Kyle Risi: thrown at you.

Kyle Risi: Exactly. Edward Palmer, he was the carpenter. In the 17th century in Boston and he was hired to physically build them. And then so he just decided that he was going to try and make an extra buck by inflating the price of the stocks Which I guess was a bad move because the community wasn't having any of it And then they just found him guilty of price gouging and so as a form of poetic justice, they locked him up in the stocks himself.

Kyle Risi: Oh, that's 

Adam Cox: really, that's a poor 

Kyle Risi: guy. I know, but it's just so funny that he was the one who built them. So once 

Adam Cox: he came out of the stocks, I wonder... did he lower his prices? 

Kyle Risi: oh God knows. I have no idea, but I just thought that was brilliant. That's what they should start doing with people that like, stop price gouging when there's a pandemic. Like toilet paper and stuff like that. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, a little bit of public shaming. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess it's the same as being cancelled though, isn't it? I guess so, but there's no apples. Oh to chuck at them. Yeah. I have one other thing as well. So did you know that someone was nominated for an Oscar, but that person didn't actually exist at all? In fact, they received two nominations for two Oscars on two separate occasions, yet the person still physically does not exist. How is that even possible? the person in question is a guy called Roderick James, who is the supposed editor of the movies No Country for Old Men, which was released in 2007, and Fargo in 1996. But Roderick is a complete fabrication and does not actually exist. So No Country for Old Men and Fargo are films by the Coen brothers who not only directed the film but also edited them as well.

Kyle Risi: And they decided to credit their work under the pseudonym Roger Graines. And it got nominated for best editing of a film. 

Adam Cox: That's weird. So why did they, why do they do that? Just because they didn't want to show that they edited it? 

Kyle Risi: No, I think it's just, it's more like a tongue in cheek for them. Okay. And they, apparently they do it quite often, but they also have given interviews under that same name as well. but apparently the credits, Alan Smithy, you ever heard of that?

Kyle Risi: Cause you, you did film at university. Have you never heard of the name Alan Smithy? I've never heard of the name Alan Smithy. 

Kyle Risi: So this is commonly used as a name by directors who wish to disown. a project if the director feels that the final product didn't represent their overall vision. So what's mental is that there's actually hundreds and hundreds of movies and tv shows and even music that's credited to Smithy because the work has been released and they were just shit basically.

Kyle Risi: So some examples include the 1985 Dune tv series by David Lynch. Which was officially credited as being directed by Alan Smithy because he wasn't happy with the work. Yeah. But not only that, Meet Joe Black. Yeah. So that was directed by, I believe, Martin Brest. So they did another version, which is a two hour version and yeah, that was also accredited to Smithy as well. And when you go on the Wikipedia page, there are just hundreds and hundreds of different works by famous people that don't like the content that they've created, and then they just credit it under Alan Smithy

Adam Cox: that's weird. So they obviously, they're working on the product and or the film and before it goes out, they obviously go this is not good. I don't want to be attached to it. So they changed the name and everything like that 

Kyle Risi: on the film.

Kyle Risi: From my understanding, yes, I think whoever director decided that they didn't want to put their name to it for whatever reason 

Kyle Risi: oh yeah, 

Adam Cox: because obviously if sometimes films come out and direct obviously. they have to promote the movie, and the actors have to, and then it gets really badly reviewed, it doesn't do well, and then they discredit it, or then they say, oh, it's studio interference and 

Kyle Risi: stuff like that.

Kyle Risi: actually, in this, from what I could see, is that some people do initially release it under their own name, and then they later on withdraw that credit, and then on the IMDB or whatever it might be. would then be replaced with Smithy. So I guess it's that case of they release it but not knowing that it's gonna flop at the box office.

Adam Cox: Yeah, interesting. So what have you got for me today? mine's just a little cute story. Go on then. so you know in the UK, obviously we like to be, we like to have a good football team, but we, sometimes We don't always do as well as that, we didn't win the World Cup this year with the women's football.

Adam Cox: But what we can hang our hat on now is that the UK is home to a domestic cat with the loudest purr. 

Kyle Risi: Shut up. is this a Guinness Book World Record? 

Adam Cox: It is. Oh, it is? It's made the Guinness Book World of Records. and apparently, so it smashed the previous record of 50 decibels and it reached 54 decibels, which is the equivalent of a boiling kettle. Oh, wow. 

Kyle Risi: Oh, Keith's boiling again. 

Adam Cox: And that's what I mean, like that is pretty loud because there was a video, but I don't think it really showed off the cats.

Kyle Risi: No. And is that the official video or is that like just a TikTok video? Because I guess if they're going to be wanting to get publicity from this, they're going to need to make a proper decent video. 

Adam Cox: they've got the Guinness Book of World Records around this woman's house and she's got the cat on a bed and she's like stroking it, making it feel at ease.

Kyle Risi: That's one way to get him, going. And 

Adam Cox: then they've got like a device that's measuring the cat's, sound. And, then they go, yeah, that's a, it's a world record. It hit 54. Wow. yeah, she's really pleased about that. apparently they sometimes do have to turn up the TV, her and her partner, when the cat's purring because it's too loud.

Adam Cox: What's the cat's name? oh, I should know that. Hang on. 

Kyle Risi: Bella. Oh, Bella. Bella. It's always Bella. 

Adam Cox: yeah, but apparently this isn't the loudest cat, on record. supposedly there was a cat back in 2011, which reached a staggering 67. 7 decibels on the per scale. 

Kyle Risi: That's, that is loud. And also the UK as well. 

Adam Cox: It was actually. Oh, Pittsburgh, Northamptonshire. So I think that's the UK.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, that sounds UK. 

Adam Cox: and then there was another one back in Devon, which was 67 decibels as well. are cats in the UK? 

Kyle Risi: They purr loud. Yeah, they're loud screechy cats. Keith doesn't really purr hugely loud, does he? He's just a moderate purrer.

Kyle Risi: he does 

Adam Cox: snore though. Does he? 

Kyle Risi: Which is really cute. Oh no, but it's cause he's got like stuffed breathing, right? So he's like Sssssssssss Ssssssss It's like sucking from a straw, right? Yeah, I mean you're not selling it. I don't intend to sell it. It's annoying when you're trying to get to sleep at night.

Kyle Risi: I think it's cute. You would do. I guess that's all the latest things for this week. Okay.

Kyle Risi: So should we get on with the show? 

Adam Cox: Let's hear all about this Russian family.

Kyle Risi: the execution of the Romanov royal family. So this mystery has been fueling imaginations since that fateful night in 1918. So in today's episode, we're going to be unravelling the complex tapestry of the rise and fall of the Russian revolution.

Kyle Risi: and of course the family's unfortunate end. And the swirling theories and suggestions around. Anastasia and maybe her brother Alexei and their apparent escape of their grim fate. Okay.

Kyle Risi: So the year is 1894 and Russia has been under the rule of Tsar Alexander III for quite a while.

Kyle Risi: Now his son Nicholas is next in line but he's not really worried about taking the throne anytime soon because like his dad's 49 years old. So Nicholas thinks that he's got like a good 20 more years just to enjoy life being a prince, right? So Alexander III doesn't bother teaching Nicholas about how to rule because he thinks that he's got plenty of time to just get his ducks in a row, focus on what he needs to focus on and then towards the end of his life he might then start grooming Nicholas.

Kyle Risi: But then suddenly Alexander falls ill and dies due to a kidney disease on the 1st of November, 1894. Now Nicholas, he's only 26 at the time and now he has to step up and become Tsar. Now immediately he is thrown off balance because he genuinely thought that he had a couple more decades of fun planned out for himself.

Kyle Risi: At the time he's already engaged to his cousin which is the German princess 

Adam Cox: Alex. That's weird. Just being engaged to your cousin, but I know this is the whole family thing. It's 

Kyle Risi: that's the thing though. It that's commonplace back then. So Alex's grandmother is Queen Victoria. And they were planning on kind of a relaxed, drawn out engagement, but now that he's Saar, they need to speed things up a bit and make it seem a bit more legitimate.

Kyle Risi: So they start the process of getting married. And so they can kickstart the process of Bearing heirs, if you will. 

Adam Cox: I see, getting, to future proof their, their reign. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, you've got to solidify it, right? As we saw, with, Marianne Tournette, she took ages before she fell pregnant, and the kind of the pressure that was on her, because people were like, Can she produce us an heir?

Kyle Risi: Can she produce us an heir? And until that happens, the un, there's uncertainty about the lineage of the royal family. And remember, the Romanovs have been ruling for 300 years at this point. If they don't produce an heir, 

Adam Cox: There's no more of them. Yeah, exactly. And just to check, Azhar, is that the equivalent of a king?

Kyle Risi: Exactly. Okay. Yeah, So it's worth noting that Alexander and Alex's relationship was unique for this time, because royal marriages back then were just mostly about political alliances, as we've already covered like in stories about Mary Antoinette. And love was often an afterthought, but Nicholas and Alex, they were different.

Kyle Risi: They were genuinely in love. losing his father left Nicholas feeling Unkind of moored, he was like, what the hell am I going to do? So the fact that he had Alex to turn to for support just drew them closer together. So she became like this major player in his decision making. And it was a situation that ended up ruffling a lot of feathers amongst the old guard who worked under his father.

Kyle Risi: And these men just weren't happy with the influence that she was gaining. Because remember, she was a German princess. She wasn't of kind of Russian stock. So they were a bit weary of it. And this kind of creates this tense atmosphere where it's almost like it's them against us. 

Kyle Risi: But it's this that actually sets the stage for a lot of the challenges that the couple will face later on down the line. So they get married and officially they become the Tsar and the Tsarina of Russia. And they're like the wealthiest royal family in the world. To give you a sense of their wealth, at the time they were ruling over one sixth of the Earth's land mass.

Kyle Risi: Because Russia's of course massive. Oh okay. Which meant that they had a lot of resources available to them. Even though they were untapped, like the world viewed them as real serious contenders on the world stage. Just because of the amount of resource that they had access to. So one of the most prestigious palaces was the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. 

Kyle Risi: And this palace had a thousand rooms, right? And they were like filled with gold and jewels. They had artwork from all the different masters from the Renaissance and kind of the 17th century, etc. Like Rembrandt, Raphael, and even Monet. So they also had a huge collection of Fabergé eggs. Are you familiar with what a Fabergé egg is?

Adam Cox: Yeah, it's a decorative egg that sometimes they open up. Am I 

Kyle Risi: right in thinking that? A lot of them do. They would open up and there'll be like weird trinkets inside. There might be some kind of mechanical thing inside. Sometimes they might have a tiny gold carriage.

Kyle Risi: It's A really expensive and really awesome kinder egg. yeah. Encrusted with jewels. But no chocolate. No chocolate. They can probably get a side of chocolate with it if they wanted to.

Adam Cox: A side of chocolate. A side of chocolate. I'll have a side of chocolate with 

Kyle Risi: my Faberge egg. And basically these eggs would be custom made specifically for them.

Kyle Risi: And each one would have obviously been made with gold and crusted with diamonds and other precious stones. Now, the Romanovs, they were known for their lavish parties and balls. Where many European aristocrats would gather and come along. And one of the most famous. of these balls was the winter palace ball of 1903 where the entire palace was transformed into a 17th century court where everyone was dressed in like real authentic period kind of costumes all sewn with real gold and silver threads and they brought in kind of the best chefs from around the world to prepare just the best food and there was the best music the best musicians 

Kyle Risi: And it was just like one of the most glamorous parties that probably anyone would ever attend in their lifetime. Like these parties at the time, for 1900s money, were like upwards of three million kind of pounds equivalent. So this was serious stuff. That is a 

Adam Cox: party. That is I'm trying to think who, who threw a big party like that? That's Posh and Becks where they got married. 

Kyle Risi: Probably even bigger than that.

Kyle Risi: Even 

Adam Cox: bigger than that. Even bigger than that. And what I found quite interesting about that was, I don't know, I thought that, people throwing a party based in a period piece would be like a modern thing. But the fact that it's 1900s and they're throwing a 17th century party... 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so. we do have loads of examples of how...

Kyle Risi: For example, going back to Marie Antoinette, where they were really captivated with kind of like British aristocracy kind of history and dressing up as peasants from like a few hundred years previous to that. So it's not a new thing. And even when you go back to, let's say the Roman period, right? They were really fascinated with all things kind of Greek.

Kyle Risi: Cause obviously the Greek kind of mythology stuff, they came like a thousand, 2000 years before the Roman empire. So even they were really fascinated with it. And I think one of the most famous, I can't remember who the emperor was, but when he went and conquered parts of Athens, he was trying to recreate a genuine kind of What's the word like an Olympus kind of style old fashioned kind of Greek whatever you know what I'm trying to say yeah so you're trying to create that so like people always are typically fascinated with their past yeah as well fair enough so it's not uncommon

Kyle Risi: so while the Romanovs lived in unimaginable luxury. The average Russian at the time was living in severe poverty. They were often struggling to feed themselves. And the divide between the Romanovs and ordinary Russians was just enormously disgusting. And it was this staggering equality.

Kyle Risi: that ended up setting in motion the starts of what we now know as the Russian Revolution. So tensions were high between Tsar Nicholas and his people and they were constantly protesting at the gates of the palace demanding access to more food and just basic human rights. 

Kyle Risi: Like just even just having the right to vote because other Countries around the world in the UK, for example, the suffragettes, the suffragette movements, they were all in full swing. So they were getting the right to vote, but Russia was still living this old timely kind of in the past. Yeah. And it's this time in history that we also start to see people becoming more savvy about monarchies and their place in society. They start to really question why someone should just be able to rule just because they were born into the royal family.

Kyle Risi: And in the past, royals were seen as ordained by God and nobody ever really questioned it, ever. And this is actually the reason why Britain switched to a constitutional monarchy where the royal family kind of acts as more of a head of state rather than... An outright dictator because they were one of the first to recognize that this is a problem, right?

Kyle Risi: People are going to start revolting. They didn't want to happen in the UK, what was happening all around the world. When did the UK change then? So this would have been like, Oh, I don't know. I don't know, actually. Okay. Sorry. This is the compendium. Surface deep. if I had researched a bit more, then I'd be able to tell you, but I don't.

Kyle Risi: Do better, Kyle. Do better, Kyle.

Kyle Risi: However, the son Nicholas was just a complete traditionalist. He literally believed that he was ordained by God and that he was meant to rule alone. And this mindset was passed down from his father and his father's father, right back to Mikhail Romanov, right back to like under 1600s. 

Kyle Risi: So in Nicholas's world, there was no government, there was no voting, there was just absolute dictatorship. Now Nicholas wasn't the most intelligent of rulers. Though he was well intentioned, he was really ineffective as a king, as a tsar. And his understanding of government and politics was generally lacking, especially given kind of the complex challenges that Russia at this point was facing.

Kyle Risi: Kind of like people were hungry, they were always warring, they didn't have enough resources, and he just was completely blind. to the fact that his people were struggling. And his father's lack of preparing Nicholas to rule also meant that he wasn't equipped to deal with kind of practical matters of ruling.

Kyle Risi: So most of the time he seemed really indecisive as well as a ruler and this really influenced those around him including his wife Alexandra. Now Nicholas II didn't get off to the best start when he became king. 

Kyle Risi: In 1904 he wakes up one morning with the idea of conquering Japan. So he's starts a war with them and despite Russia not being well prepared for it at all, many of the soldiers end up being killed in battle and along with that there are shortages of food, jobs are just like really scarce and Things are just not going very well at all.

Kyle Risi: So the people start protesting and they create this petition demanding that Nicholas withdraw from the Japanese war immediately. So the people march on the palace with a petition, but the guards just start shooting in the crowd and they kill literally hundreds and hundreds of these Russian protesters outside the palace.

Kyle Risi: Jeez. Exactly. Which is a stupid move because this really starts to dismantle the reputation of the royal family. And it's placed in Russia. People start realising that they don't even need them. They're not helping them in any way. 

Adam Cox: What are they doing for our 

Kyle Risi: country, Exactly. And from this point on, Nicholas becomes known as Nicholas the Bloody.

Adam Cox: That's not a good name to, be known as. 

Kyle Risi: No, especially not your legacy, right? No. No. you build your own bed, right? You make your own bed, you got to lie in it. But also at home, Nicholas and Alexander, they're also under a lot of stress, right?

Kyle Risi: They've got four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. And this of course is a problem for them because Alexander's main duty as Zarina. Is to produce a male heir to inherit the throne. for her, the pressure is on. I'm not likening it to, the stresses that the ordinary people are having. But they're pretty occupied with their 

Adam Cox: own issues. Hang on, if I had some advice to them, I'd say Do you know what? Maybe don't start a war with Japan. Maybe just focus on your 

Kyle Risi: own shit. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, so yeah, the pressure is on for them, especially since they've only produced four daughters and no sons.

Kyle Risi: A house full of women. A house full of vaginas. So eventually they do have a son and this is a young boy called Alexi. And they of course have joined, but quickly they realize that something is terribly wrong.

Kyle Risi: Alexi is seriously ill. When his umbilical cord falls off, it just won't stop bleeding at all. And they have a team of doctors look into it and they discover that he actually has haemophilia, which is a disorder that prevents kind of blood from clotting. Oh yeah. So at the time haemophilia was known as the royal disease because it showed up in several European royal families and it all is traced back to Queen Victoria.

Kyle Risi: So it's all hereditary. It's all hereditary. Yeah. And she ended up passing it on to her children. And from there it spread to pretty much every single major Royal family through these marriage alliances that were taking place. That's what happens when you marry your cousin. That's exactly it. 

Kyle Risi: And Romanovs.

Kyle Risi: Serena Alexander was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, so she inherited the gene. And the thing is though, the disease doesn't really affect females in the same way that it affects males. Females will typically be kind of carriers and not really show any symptoms, but when a son is born to a carrier, Of course, they're at risk of then showing symptoms of this disease if it gets passed on to them.

Kyle Risi: Are you saying it's the woman's fault? It's not. It's just this quirk of this particular gene that it's carried by the women. So it's just weird. I'm not blaming it on the women. I know, I was just getting a reaction out of you. 

Kyle Risi: So haemophilia essentially made Alexi... Essentially a walking time bomb, like even a minor fall could lead to internal bleeding, which could potentially lead to his death, so it's pretty bad.

Kyle Risi: Given the medical understanding of the time, the life expectancy for someone like Alexei would have been around about 15 or 16 years old, and even under the best care. his chances were slim. So the Tsarina becomes fixated on protecting him, and not just, obviously, because he's the heir, but also because of his delicate health condition, right?

Kyle Risi: And that's his son, so she wants to make sure that he's going to be okay. to make sure Alexei's condition doesn't present any cracks in the legitimacy of, the family's rule, They decide that they're going to keep this condition completely secret because if they find out about it and they realize, actually he's only going to live to 15, 16, and they don't have another heir, again, it puts it back in square one, right?

Adam Cox: what does Prince Charles or King Charles call 

Kyle Risi: Harry? What was it? The spare? The spare. They need a spare. An heir and a spare. Exactly. So as a way to protect him from any potential injury. Alexei is literally carried everywhere and he was never allowed to participate in any physical activities and doctors do try various treatments like blood transfusions and medications but all of these have very limited success and a lot of the time Alexei is just confined to his bedroom or a wheelchair.

Kyle Risi: Like during these bleeding sessions, which would often last like days, sometimes even weeks as well. Can you imagine that? You're just bleeding constantly. It's horrible. Poor guy. Yeah. So the Romanovs are becoming increasingly more and more desperate for a solution to their son's haemophilia. 

Kyle Risi: And this is where we have a Rasputin.

Kyle Risi: Oh, okay. Him. What do you know of him? 

Adam Cox: the song by Boney M. 

Kyle Risi: Rah, Rasputin. Oh no, is that it? Yeah. Lover of the Russian queen. That's exactly it. That is it. So Rasputin was this Russian mystic who claimed to have these healing powers and he was super famous throughout Russia.

Kyle Risi: So in 1908 he was called in by this arena to help after, on one occasion, Alexei was suffering from a real bad internal bleed. And the situation looked really critical at this point. And... There was a fear that Alexi would probably die at this point. So Rasputin comes in, he prays for Alexi and supposedly his condition improves.

Kyle Risi: The Tsarina becomes convinced of Rasputin's healing abilities from this point on and Rasputin gains significant influence over the Romnoff family, particularly the Tsarina, so rumours start circulating that he and the Tsarina Might be lovers. Hence why the song by Boney M. Oh 

Adam Cox: that, oh okay I didn't realise that's how the song came 

Kyle Risi: about. I don't know if that's how the song came about, but that's what they're singing about, right? yeah. So they were rumoured to be lovers. Ah, okay. those close to the Romanovs, including ministers and confidants, they start to become really uneasy about his influence.

Kyle Risi: Again, they don't like anyone too close to, the Romanovs, just because of the amount of influence they can potentially have. And they're thinking that he's impacting more than just Alexei's health. So a lot of cartoons start popping up about the rumored affair which all show. him and the Tsarina in all sorts of compromising kind of positions or like he's like whispering inside Nicholas's ear insinuating that kind of like he's influencing government and things like that.

Kyle Risi: A scandalo. A scandalo. Gotta gasp. So these cartoons were like the tabloid magazines of their day so people began to wonder like who is This strange man in the palace and There's like a growing dislike for Rasputin all across Russia and also within the royal family as well and within the governments, especially those who are deeply concerned about the influence over the Romanov family.

Kyle Risi: So the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, I believe? Pavlovich. Pavlovich. No, Pavlovich. Strawberry Pavlova. Yeah, that's it. So along with several others closely connected to the Romanovs, they decide they're going to eliminate. So they lure him to the palace under the pretense that the Grand Duke's wife needs healing.

Kyle Risi: So during the visit, they give Rasputin cyanide laced cakes and wine, but strangely the poison has no effect on him whatsoever. Wow. So frustrated, they decide that they're going to shoot him, which takes multiple people.

Kyle Risi: Why is that funny? 

Adam Cox: Just the thought that like, what, we've got this great plan. We're going to bake some cakes. We're going to put some cyanide in it. No one will ever know it's us. And they're like sitting there watching for him to like keel over and go Get 

Kyle Risi: your gun. Yes, so they get the gun and it takes multiple bullets just to barely bring him down.

Kyle Risi: So according to some accounts, Rasputin apparently manages to escape, only to then be caught again and then shot even more. Wow, he is resistant. He is. He's a mystic, right? He's a healer. He's powerful. Yeah. He's in bed with the devil. So they throw his body into the river. So he's dead now. In the middle of winter.

Kyle Risi: Okay. With temperatures well below zero. huh. But strangely, his autopsy shows that he didn't die from the poison, or from the gunshot wounds, or from drowning. He died from hypothermia. Wow. regardless of what happened, it took him a while to die, because hypothermia will take some time to settle in and then finally claim your life, but...

Kyle Risi: A couple of days, maybe? Oh, I think less than that, but remember he's like in a frozen lake or a river. 

Adam Cox: Yeah, he is hardy. was hardy. 

Kyle Risi: A Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen. Yeah. So the news of his death breaks and the Sarina Alexander, she is devastated because he was the only person that had successfully managed to help Alexei in any way.

Kyle Risi: So she was like, what am I going to do now? I've got nothing. But also maybe there were lovers and she was really like, God, just Oh, my evil, sexy monk. It's no longer here to satisfy me. 

Adam Cox: an evil, sexy monk. That is a choice. 

Kyle Risi: The thing is, though, he wasn't actually a monk at all. He gets known as a monk.

Kyle Risi: He gets coined as a monk because one of his, I think one of his followers or someone that he's well connected to after the Russian Revolution. He escapes to New York, he writes a book and it's called like something my connection with kind of the mad monk of Russia and then that's how he becomes known as the mad monk, but he wasn't actually a monk at all.

Kyle Risi: He was just like a snake oil kind of healer, if you will. But interestingly though, like he does, he did have a family who he just completely abandoned so he 

Adam Cox: just left them whilst he went around 

Kyle Risi: heeding people? Pretty much, yeah. And his daughter then ended up, I think, getting herself to America in some way.

Kyle Risi: And she becomes involved in the circus. And she becomes like a lion tamer or something like that. But she was always like, I am the son of the kind of Russia's mad monk. So she even knew him as the mad monk of Russia. But he wasn't a monk. She's the son of the mad Oh, sorry, the son. Maybe? I was just like, did I miss something?

Kyle Risi: No, the daughter of the mad monk, but she actually died because she got mauled by a bear. Oh, which I think is ironic. Poetic. I mean you're a, you work in a circus. So what are you expecting? It's risk. Yeah, safety form. Actually, no, she didn't get killed working in a circus by a bear She got mauled by a bear while I think she was working on a construction bridge In California somewhere.

Adam Cox: Oh, okay, fine. I was like, why is there a bear on the job, building a bridge? 

Kyle Risi: But anyway, we digress. Sorry, yeah. Really interesting story. He deserves a whole episode on his own. Because he also looks creepy as fuck

Kyle Risi: have you ever seen a picture of Rasputin?

Kyle Risi: I

Adam Cox: have, but I can't, remember exactly what he looks like. 

Kyle Risi: Okay, you're in for a treat. 

Adam Cox: Oh, I get the monk vibes. Yeah, he's got a giant beard. Look at his face though. Yeah, he definitely looks like he belongs, I don't know, maybe on In hell?

Adam Cox: Like in Harry Potter or something like that. 

Kyle Risi: yeah, yeah. creepy guy. Creepy, yeah. Anyway.

Kyle Risi: So then Russia enters World War One. And things are getting way worse for the Ramunovs. The country is completely ill prepared for war under Nicholas's rule, and there is no infrastructure back home to support the war effort whatsoever. Food production is a mess, hospitals are closing, people are dying, and it's just chaotic.

Kyle Risi: And Nicholas is so disconnected from reality, that he doesn't understand the gravity of the situation that's forming. in Russia at this moment in time. And even when his advisors warn him about the unrest, he just shrugs it off. He's just completely delusional or preoccupied with other crap.

Adam Cox: And probably a little bit arrogant to go, what's going to happen? we've been in charge all this while, not actually thinking they're going to get overturned. 

Kyle Risi: Exactly. He believes that he is ordained by God and that is his, his right to rule regardless of what happens. So he doesn't care about it at all. things start arriving at boiling point. What is interesting is that the movement against Romanovs is mainly sparked by women. Because most of the men are away fighting, so it's the women that are stuck doing all the work back at home, and they're not getting paid fairly. they're really frustrated, and they're also really hungry, and they've just had enough.

Kyle Risi: So they start to protest, and Nicholas sends his guards to just break it all up. But instead... The guards are like, screw this shit, things are really crap, they turn on the monarch and they join the protest. Oh really? Yeah, and then there's just a big massive uprising. So meanwhile, Nicholas, Alexander and the kids are living the high life in their palace, completely detached from reality.

Kyle Risi: They have, they've been in like this bubble for 20 years, enjoying all these parties, fine dining, through all the sunrest. And Nicholas is just clueless about the turmoil outside. 

Adam Cox: He sounds so disconnected from all. yeah, from all the poverty that's happening. And so with Russia, were they, what side were they on for World War 

Kyle Risi: I?

Kyle Risi: I think they were on our side, I think. I know they were for World War II, but 

Adam Cox: I can't remember 

Kyle Risi: World War I. I don't know. Again, this is the compendium. So yeah, no, not quite sure. I'm pretty sure they were on our side because they were so connected to the other royal families on our side. 

Adam Cox: I guess so.

Adam Cox: But then. you'll probably come up to it, but I've got a question that I will flag later. 

Kyle Risi: Okay, fine. 

Adam Cox: I'm saving that for later.

Kyle Risi: yeah, Nicholas is just clueless about the turmoil outside. And even as people start rising up against him, he's just in complete disbelief thinking, how could anyone hate us? Like we were ordained by God, if you will. So that's when the Bolsheviks come in. So this is the party led by Lenin. Yeah. Do you know who Lenin is? Yeah. 

Kyle Risi: So the Bolsheviks were a revolutionary party in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, and they were known for their commitment to seizing power and establishing a socialist state. So Lenin, of course, was the driving force behind the ideology and the tactics. Now, ultimately the Bolsheviks believed that the working class needed to overthrow the capitalist state and establish a dictatorship. For the working class, so they storm the palace and Nicholas almost instantly just abdicates Immediately without a fight that quick just yeah, even though 

Adam Cox: he's I am by god I'm supposed to be on the throne and then goes as you 

Kyle Risi: have it at the end of the day He's hedonistic.

Kyle Risi: I guess he just thinks that He's gonna just keep living the life of luxury just somewhere else, right? Because he's so connected to the other royal families that he was just gonna live with them but The Bolsheviks are not having it and they decide to arrest him and his entire family who are all placed under house arrest.

Kyle Risi: So the Bolsheviks are not sure what they're going to do with the family. Do they keep them as prisoners or do they execute them? Because on one hand, the family could pose a threat to a new government because there were like still rich and powerful people who wants to reinstate the monarchy. But on the other hand. They weren't sure if executing them, especially the children, was the right kind of course of action.

Kyle Risi: Because now that they're taking control, they wanted the rest of the world to recognise them as the official, legitimate ruling party. So killing kids probably wouldn't help their cause at all. Yeah, that's not going to win you friends. No, it's not you don't kill kids.

Kyle Risi: So while they're deciding what to do with the Romanovs, they eventually held them in a remote palace known as the House of Special Purposes.

Kyle Risi: The Special Purposes. Special Purposes. what's that? I'm going to tell you. So this is in a place called Yekaterinburg, which is like in Siberia, just above Kazakhstan. So it's quite far away from kind of St. Petersburg and Moscow and things like that. And while they're there, they're under 24 7 surveillance.

Kyle Risi: Everything they do is controlled by the Bolsheviks. Even looking out the window is forbidden to them. So they were just completely cut off from the rest of the world altogether. So the family were there for 90 days and they tried really hard to maintain a sense of normality as best they could.

Kyle Risi: They read books, they wrote in their diaries and they became really friendly with some of the guards as well, teaching some of them how to speak English and French. And the daughter's Olga, Tatiana. Maria and Anastasia, they took to sewing their jewels into their clothing as a way to hide their valuables in case of an emergency, they had to flee if they were going to be moved in the night and they didn't have time to grab their stuff.

Kyle Risi: So Alexei, he was still extremely unwell while he was staying at the house special purposes and the family really banded together to try and look after him. They had a very simple life where they just were in these close quarters. horrible, especially when you're used to all this life luxury. 

Kyle Risi: A notable moment during their stay included a few attempts from outsiders to try and rescue them, but none of those things came to fruition. Remember the Romanovs were related to the British royal family as we discussed at the beginning of this podcast, all through Queen Victoria.

Kyle Risi: So when the Romanovs were imprisoned, they did manage to get word out to the British royal family, asking if they could offer them asylum and provide them safe passage to the UK. 

Adam Cox: So this is the bit that I remember in The Crown happening, but I appreciate The Crown is a fictionalised version of history, but it was, if I remember rightly, The government had offered them asylum or said, yes, you can come.

Adam Cox: But Queen Mary declined it because of the war that was going on with Germany. And because of their German roots and connections, they basically said no. And that's what then spurred, changing their names to Windsor. Because they didn't want to be, after the First World War, they didn't want to be associated with Germany.

Kyle Risi: I think, to a degree, there's some truth in that. In terms of the name changes. I think it was more after World War Two. But I don't know. Okay. But you're almost there. Because there's a few misconceptions here. So initially it was King George who was like, yeah, of course, we'll take you in, but he was later forced to withdraw.

Kyle Risi: And there is that misconception that it was Mary Tech, the King's wife. Who was the one who persuaded the king not to grant the family refuge, but in reality, it was more likely the UK government and several advisors that argued the potential impact of kind of instability within the British monarchy, if the Romanovs were granted asylum.

Kyle Risi: So because of this meant that the Romanovs were just stranded back in Russia. That's quite 

Adam Cox: sad really, they couldn't have relied, I mean I understand it, they couldn't have relied on their family or wider family for help. It's quite sad really.

Kyle Risi: It is sad, but also at the same time, they put their people first as well, right? 

Adam Cox: Yeah, they weren't good rulers at all, but then do they deserve to die? to go through this, probably not. 

Kyle Risi: Absolutely not. No, they don't. 

Adam Cox: But to be cut out of being like rulers, I completely agree with. 

Kyle Risi: Human beings are all just pawns in like a political game, right?

Kyle Risi: And it's so easy to forget that you're dealing with human beings a lot of the time. They are a family at the day. Yeah, it is sad and a young family as well.

Kyle Risi: And then so came a day when the Bolsheviks heard of an approaching rebel group aiming to rescue the family. So in a panic. They decided that the time had come. The family was then woken up in the early hours of July 17, 1918 and told that they would be moved to a safer location.

Kyle Risi: They were led down to the basement where the Sarina and Alexi were then provided with chairs because of course of and the rest of the family, along with the doctor and three servants, just waited for their convoy to arrive to take them to their new location. So soon after this, while they were all gathered in the basement, a Bolshevik officer named Yavov entered the room. He read out a death sentence which addressed Nicholas. In view of the fact that your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Russia, Ural Executives Committee has decided to execute you.

Kyle Risi: And Nicholas, who is just completely stunned, officer to repeat himself and then without any other word, of gunmen file into the basement and then begin firing at the family.

Kyle Risi: Although The guards had specific assignments on who they had to shoot, when it came down to it, none of the guards wanted to be the ones to shoot any of the children.

Kyle Risi: I can imagine. 

Adam Cox: Yeah. That's horrific. They're like lined up to be shot at. 

Kyle Risi: And they have no idea still. They just still think they're waiting for their convoy. So the first rounds were fired at the Tsarina, killing them almost instantly. And this left the girls absolutely terrified and all cowering in the corners.

Kyle Risi: And the awful thing is that the bullets that were fired at the girls just ricocheted off them because they had sewn all of their jewels into their clothing. So the guards just resorted to having to use the bayonets that were mounted on the end of their guns to stab all the kids to death.

Kyle Risi: Isn't that horrendous? That's 

Adam Cox: awful. I knew they're fate, but just, I didn't realise quite how gruesome it was. It 

Kyle Risi: was awful. And the only reason why we know any of this happened is through the detailed accounts given by the guards themselves. And this information is also corroborated by the kind of the forensic evidence that was found on their bodies when their bodies were eventually discovered.

Kyle Risi: once all the smoke in their basement had cleared, all the Romanovs, including Nicholas, Alexander, Olga, Tatiana, Maria... Anastasia and Alexei. They're all dead. Poor family. Yeah. Awful. 

Kyle Risi: So the Bolsheviks decided to load the family's bodies onto a truck with a plan to dispose them down a mine shaft.

Kyle Risi: Then they were going to pour acid all over them. However, the truck broke down on the way, so the soldiers decided that they would just bury them at the side of the road. 

Adam Cox: that's nicer than pouring acid on them. That's disgusting. 

Kyle Risi: They still did. They still did though.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, because they were going to do that down the mineshaft. But in an attempt to make identification of the bodies more difficult and to conceal what they had done, the soldiers disfigured the bodies with acid and fire and decided to also bury Alexi. And his sister, Maria or Anastasia, in a separate grave.

Kyle Risi: And the idea was that if anyone stumbled upon the grave later down the line, they wouldn't be able to put two and two together and work out that it was the Romanovs, because of course there's six of them in the family, but one grave there's four, hopefully they wouldn't find the other one.

Kyle Risi: They'll either find one grave or the other. It was just a makeshift attempt to just try and disguise it. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, beginning the next day. The Bolsheviks started targeting wider members of the Roar family. People like Alexander's sister, her aunts, her cousins. They were all hunted down by the Bolsheviks for the next 85 days and murdered.

Kyle Risi: And most of them were thrown into mine shafts alive. And just left to bleed out or freeze to death. 

Adam Cox: So they went on a rampage around Russia, was this or around the world? Around Russia. Around Russia and wiped out the entire 

Kyle Risi: family. 

Kyle Risi: As many as 

Kyle Risi: they could. I guess a lot of them were probably getting word of what was happening.

Kyle Risi: Some of them did escape. Because, they don't want a competing claim to the throne if it ever got reinstated, right?

Adam Cox: I can understand that. I'm sure, with disputes in the past, they just exiled them, don't they? The royal family, but they really went to Not Russia, man. A horrible length. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, absolutely. They were brutal. As for public relations, the Bolsheviks had to be cautious. they issued a statement saying that Tsar Nicholas had been executed but claimed that the Tsarina and her children had been exiled.

Kyle Risi: So the official statement was that they'd been put onto a train and sent to an undisclosed safe house. But the reality was they couldn't well admit to have murdered them, especially when they were still trying to establish themselves as a new government and wanting to be seen as legitimate in their own right. So they just made up this bullshit story that they had sent them away. But this is where all the speculation then begins. 

Kyle Risi: So people start to wonder like, where did these princesses end up? At first, various imposters started coming forward claiming to be various members of the royal family. Most of these imposters were claiming to be Anastasia, largely because obviously she was the youngest and gave kind of Imposters a bit more room to claim that they were her age, right?

Kyle Risi: Yeah, 

Adam Cox: greater chance that your features might look different as you're older. 

Kyle Risi: Exactly, and less photographs and things like that. And how soon were people coming forward then? pretty soon, like just a handful of years. God, 

Adam Cox: because I would be, I'd be worried to do that based on what happened to them.

Adam Cox: Yeah, 

Kyle Risi: I think that the first big one came in 1920. So by far the most famous imposter was a woman called Anna Anderson. So she first appeared in Berlin in 1920, a couple years after the Romanovs were executed. So she came to the public's attention after she tried to end her life by jumping off a bridge But she was saved and ended up being interred into a mental institution.

Kyle Risi: So while there She didn't give her name and she said that she had no idea who she was yet she became fixated on reading about the Romanovs which was a massive news story still at the time. Grabbing headlines, there was gossip swirling around worldwide, there was still like stories of people coming forward claiming to be kind of members of the royal family, people speculating where they were, etc.

Kyle Risi: And so after immersing herself in the story, Anna starts claiming that she was the missing princess Anastasia. So when word gets around, people found her story absolutely captivating, and as Anna started noticing the increased attention towards her, she starts really doing her homework.

Kyle Risi: And she starts practicing Anastasia's signature, she starts learning about the Romanov family, she starts speaking more eloquently and elevating kind of her overall demeanour, and although people closely link to the Romanovs dismiss her as just an imposter, some do vouch for her, saying that they'd met Anastasia, and this was definitely her.

Kyle Risi: Really? Yeah, it was a big story. 

Adam Cox: So she would have to put on like a Russian accent, right?

Kyle Risi: I guess so.

Adam Cox: Yeah. I love the fact that people start to believe her and then she's okay, now I really need to up my game. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, She's just leaning into it. I guess people chance it and then they see the opportunity and then they just lean into it even more, right?

Kyle Risi: Yeah. And that's what Anna did. So when Anna finally left the institution, wealthy aristocrats from all across Europe started inviting her to stay with them, partly due to the fact That they wanted to believe that the Romanovs weren't all wiped out, but Also because it was a massive advantage to them to be seen to be mixing with a Romanov, the once the richest royal families in the world, right?

Kyle Risi: Yeah. So regardless of whether or not she was who she said she was, as long as their name was associated with Anastasia, that's all that mattered to these people. So they start supporting her financially, and despite the scepticism, for some, Anna becomes a huge media sensation. She becomes outrageously famous.

Adam Cox: This reminds me of, remember in Big Brother? When they had like a celebrity version and they put in a just a civilian who had to pretend that they were a celebrity. Was it Chantel? 

Kyle Risi: Chantel with what was the band called? Oh my god like girl pop or something. Bubblegum. 

Adam Cox: I can't remember that but I remember and she ended up winning it because she managed to convince everyone that she was this actual celebrity.

Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's like that. She faked it till she made it. And then she became a celebrity own right. Yeah. the opportunity was given in the form that people wanted to believe that she was still alive and she was like, I'm young enough, I'm sassy enough, I'm smart enough, I've got the signature down to a damn T. And then boom, she's Anastasia and now she's mixing with all the different royals and aristocrats from around the world.

Adam Cox: Cool. Good for her. Although I'd still be really worried that a hit was going to be put on me from Russia. 

Kyle Risi: Who do you think? 

Adam Cox: Wouldn't you? Because like news is going around and like surely that's going to be, yeah, it's going to get to them that Anastasia is going to be partying up with some other royal.

Kyle Risi: Yeah, maybe. She better watch her back. So Anna Anderson eventually marries a wealthy professor named John Manahan who lives in South Carolina.

Kyle Risi: They become that kind of that odd couple in everyone's neighborhood that seem to walk around in their fur coats, just the creepy, weird eccentric couple that you see in every kind of town or village, etc. And this pretty much became them. And they were also massive hoarders. On top of that, they also had like around 30 cats that were just really roaming around their mansion.

Kyle Risi: Now... While that might sound like a dream, it probably wasn't as idyllic as you think it is. Can you just imagine all the poo and the pee and the crap everywhere? Oh, I 

Adam Cox: don't know, 30 cats. 

Kyle Risi: No. Sounds good. no, Adam, one cat's enough. They could have 

Adam Cox: their own rooms. 

Kyle Risi: I guess so. If they have servants and stuff to take care of them, great.

Kyle Risi: But I imagine that because they're hoarders, I imagine they don't have many servants. Yeah. So I just imagine all these cats roaming around, scratching at your kind of varicose veined legs, demanding food. Yeah, fair point. So Anna passes away in 1990 and right up to her last moments she claims that she is Anastasia.

Kyle Risi: Up until that point? Up until she dies, but she's not Because her DNA test in 1991 proves that she had no relation to the Romanovs whatsoever and that she's actually just a Polish woman who found herself in Berlin one night and she was feeling down, decided to take her own life, and that's how the story 

Adam Cox: started.

Adam Cox: I was just about to ask about DNA, so we do have definitive proof then. I guess if she's believed this story for so long that maybe she's, yeah, convinced herself that she 

Kyle Risi: is her. to come clean is to give up on the life that you've built and the wealth and what you've, cause she had nothing before, so I wouldn't, I'll take it to my deathbed.

Adam Cox: Yeah, she might not have been THE Anastasia, but she was Anastasia in some capacity. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so, yeah. 

Kyle Risi: now let's talk about finding the Romanov bodies. In 1979, an amateur geologist and historian took it upon himself to search for the Romanovs. So he gathered all the information that was available to him and he began his quest.

Kyle Risi: Amazingly, after 60 years he found one of the graves with the Tsar and the Tsarina in it and two of the children in an unmarked grave at the edge of a field. Now, even at the time he was puzzled by the absence of Alexei and Anastasia in the graves. But at the time, Russia was still part of the USSR and so discussing the Romanovs or bringing it to any academics attention, et cetera, was still seen as taboo and potentially could have led to severe consequences.

Kyle Risi: Even execution, that's how bad it was. Like even towards the end of the USSR, you couldn't really talk about it that much. So fearing repercussions, he just reburied the bodies and didn't tell anyone for 15 years. So when the USSR finally had fallen, the political climates had shifted and discussions about the Romanovs started up again.

Kyle Risi: And so the same geologist decided to report what he had found almost 15 years previously, and that was that he had found the Romanovs. So they went to the site, they exhumed their bodies, but because Alexei and one of the daughters, either Marie or Anastasia, were buried separately, And it only again reinforced these conspiracies that Anastasia had in fact survived along with her brother.

Adam Cox: Was still out there. He was still out there. I love that this guy was just like, when it came up that the Romanovs, you could now talk about it in Russia. And the guy's just sitting on it like, I wonder where they could be? And he's just sitting there at home going, 

Kyle Risi: I know. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so.

Kyle Risi: I can talk about it now. Yeah. Eventually the bodies were handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church who eventually canonized the four bodies that they did find and they declare them as martyrs and still to this day, they're all interred at St. Petersburg Cathedral. 

Kyle Risi: Now here's the final piece of the puzzle. In 2007, the last two missing bodies were found in a separate grave and it was identified that they were the remains of Alexei and most likely Maria. Okay. So this finally put to rest any speculation that some of the Romanovs might have survived.

Kyle Risi: but the Russian Orthodox church who'd buried the first set of bodies in St. Petersburg's Cathedral rejected the notion that the final two bodies were the remains of Alexei and Maria, which is not so considering that Alexei's body is probably one of the most important bodies of that lot because he represents the end of the line.

Kyle Risi: So you would think that the church would jump at the chance of getting hold of his body. But no, the church refuses to acknowledge. Those two bodies authenticity, even though they were found just 50 metres away from the other grave. So Alexei and Maria's remains are stored in a box tucked away in some Russian archive.

Kyle Risi: these very particular actions by the church has led some to speculate, could the Russian Orthodox Church know something that we don't know? something that tells them that the bodies aren't actually Alexi's and Maria's? Do they know for a fact that Alexi and Maria survived, for 

Adam Cox: example?

Adam Cox: And so they're held in this box and I'm assuming no one is doing anything with them at 

Kyle Risi: the moment? Not at the moment. they've done DNA tests on them, they've checked them out, they, as far as they're concerned, science proves that they're... There are the 

Adam Cox: bodies. Okay, so science is saying these are them.

Adam Cox: Apparently, yeah. But the church is 

Kyle Risi: going no. So the theory is that if Anastasia Maria or Alexei because they're not quite sure which who's who they think is Maria if they had survived and had children then maybe the Russian Orthodox Church has plans for a grand royal comeback like people believe that the Russian Orthodox church has been hiding the last of the remaining Romanov lineage for the last 60 years, and they have the DNA. They can prove that those are the remains of Alexei and Maria, yet they reject the notion that it's them, and therefore they don't want to inter them.

Kyle Risi: But then if we've got 

Adam Cox: the DNA, results and the DNA and the science is saying that they are part of the family, then why would the church want to do this unless, okay, yeah, they could either know something we don't, but then science is saying, no, that's not the case. This is the family. Or could they be hoping to, bring in an imposter in the future and go, yep, this is part of the lineage that we can now bring 

Kyle Risi: in.

Kyle Risi: What about the other, what about the opposite, right? So the official science maybe by the Federation of Russia is saying we don't want to risk the idea of kind of the Romanov royal family coming back and being reinstated. So we want you to recognize these two last bodies. That puts a rest to it, but they're like, but we know it's not theirs.

Kyle Risi: And yes, you might fake the DNA results, but we know it's not theirs. 

Adam Cox: Oh, I see. So the other side of it, that's interesting. this is Russia we're dealing with. And so I feel like either is an option. Yeah. and Putin would be that happy having royal family coming back. 

Kyle Risi: No, cause he, I guess he assumes that he's the royal, like he's ordained by God.

Kyle Risi: Probably. Yeah. And yeah, that's the story of the execution of the Romanov royal family. It's mad that this story ended up captivating so many people for so many years. there are countless stories and documentaries, books and podcasts that just focus on telling the mystery of what happened. 

Kyle Risi: Did any of them actually escape? That's the question. this brings me to... My childhood fascination with the story and it's all because of the animated 

Kyle Risi: movie of Anastasia that was released in 1997. Have you seen it? No, I've never seen it. I cannot believe you've not seen it. It's like the equivalent to like the Lion King.

Adam Cox: No, it's not. No, nothing is the equivalent 

Kyle Risi: to the Lion King. You, but you've not even seen it. So you can't even back that up. 

Adam Cox: I can back that up. Objectively. I can back that up by saying Aladdin is not the Lion King. Bambi is not the Lion King. 

Kyle Risi: In that sense, yes, but it's a brilliant movie.

Kyle Risi: And, it's loosely based on the legend of the Grand Duchess of Anastasia. Except the story follows an orphan called Anya. Who is desperate to discover the truth about who she is. So she gets mixed up with these two con men who then notice that she looks a lot like the missing princess Anastasia.

Kyle Risi: So they plan to pass her off as the missing princess in order to collect the reward money from Anastasia's grandmother. I see. So along the way, Anya begins to regain her memories when she sees all the different landmarks and sites and things like that. And she realizes that maybe she is actually the real Anastasia after all.

Kyle Risi: Of course, Rasputin is in the movie as well. He's the villainous monk seeking revenge after being banished from the royal family.

Kyle Risi: So just like with me.

Kyle Risi: Thank you. It was the release of this film that reignited this fascination amongst a whole new generation, like with Anna Anderson, that reignited this fascination with it, then the countless stories and documentaries throughout the years, and then in 1997, 1997. Talked to the whole new generation, and that was me.

Kyle Risi: That was you. Have you ever thought that you were Anastacia? sometimes I would go, maybe like I am the lost son of some kind of Duke or some King. And I look at my parents and go, yeah, I'm related to them. Definitely related to them. you can only hope. So there's also this brilliant show on Netflix called The Lost Tsar, which is like a docudrama on Netflix, which reenacts kind of the rise and the fall of the Romanovs, covering the last final few months leading up to their execution.

Kyle Risi: And the episodes with Rasputin. Are for me probably the best the most entertaining you should definitely check it out because he's just so creepy looking and because of his involvement it just adds another extra layer of intrigue that suggests that maybe a higher demonic kind of force is at play there as well because he's got that kind of creepy vibe to him you know and yeah so definitely worth checking out we'll leave a link to that in the show notes. 

Kyle Risi: So Yeah. What do you think, that Anastasia was killed along with the rest of her family or do you think that because there's so much speculation around her in particular, that maybe there is some truth to the idea that she escaped?

Adam Cox: I dunno. I feel we all love a conspiracy theory, so the thought that maybe there is something that's hidden by government or whoever it might be that actually maybe she could exist out there or her, her daughter or son or whatever, if she marries. So yeah, no, I don't think she exists.

Adam Cox: You don't think she exists? I feel as much as I would like that to happen. It feels I guess a sense of hope for those that maybe aren't happy with the way that things are. Yeah. to have this kind of, I don't know, potential that someone could come back and be a bit of a saviour to bring back the royalty and maybe stabilise things for some in Russia.

Adam Cox: I don't know. 

Kyle Risi: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. logic says that she was probably killed along with the rest of her family. But my imagination wants to believe that Alexei and Anastasia or Maria were in fact rescued that night. And I lean towards Anastasia because obviously she's the youngest. And, who wouldn't take pity on a small girl with a pink purse?

Adam Cox: With a pink purse? To be fair, I guess if you're a guard, and you're the one that's executing, you're not going to admit if you let anyone get away with it, 

Kyle Risi: maybe. And that's my thinking, is that I think that maybe a guard took pity on her being so young, her and Alexei. And I think that they planned a secret escape with the two kids, and perhaps as a result, Anastasia went on to live a long life. Maybe she found refuge within the Russian Orthodox Church, which would explain why they refused to acknowledge her remains. I think that maybe she had children and I think those children went on to have their own kids.

Kyle Risi: And so I just love the idea that in this version of the events, the Romanov lineage just continues. To live on. 

Adam Cox: And if you're a Romanov listening, then write 

Kyle Risi: in. I doubt they're going to be writing in. We found them! And that is the story of the execution of the Romanov royal family. That's really interesting.

Kyle Risi: Thank you for that. Did you enjoy it? Yeah, that's good. Good. Any last thoughts or should we run the outro? Let's do the outro. 

Kyle Risi: So here we come to the end of another episode of the Compendium and Assembly of Fascinating and Intriguing Things.

Kyle Risi: If you found today's episode both fascinating and intriguing, then subscribe and leave us a review. But don't just stop there. Schedule your episodes to download Instagram, at the Compendium Podcast. So stop by and say hi, or visit us. On our home, on the web at thecompendiumpodcast. com. We release new episodes every Tuesday and remember 

Kyle Risi: Fabergé egg. 

Kyle Risi: That's it. 

Kyle Risi: See ya.