Claimant of Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna - Magda Boodts

This thread will contain all of the information about Marga Boodts and her claim to be the Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna.  Edited by Alixz 05/27/2009


Penny, thanks for telling us more about Marga!  I never knew her "story"...how amusingly entertaining!  Didn't one of Irene's boys end up claiming he believed she was Olga (just like he said AA was AN)?

Thank you Penny, for this information on Marga.   I've always heard about her, but never really heard about her story.  It's seems a very strange story, and can't wait to see those photos

Wow very interesting! How could Olga have been in a church outside the Ipatiev house when the family wasn't even allowed to leave the garden though? Oh well a good story nonetheless! I remember reading about Marga Boodts in various publications but I didn't know that much about her and am eager to see what she looks like!

That's some story. I never heard it before or the name Marga Boodts. I am sure there is a lot more where that came from. Are these actual photographs? They look more like very bad sketches!

The dead, it is assumed, can suffer no more. Nevertheless, when someone like this comes forward, the tragedy is threefold: for those who pin their hopes on the surivor's story being true; for those who truly have managed to survive and whose veracity now will also be in question; and for the actual person or personages whose lives are so bereft that they are compelled--via psychological disorders or cruel chicanery--to assume someone else's identity.

Are they really photos from a newspaper? They are very hard to make out...impossible to see the features!

A prie-dieu and a missal?! So when did GD Olga become Roman Catholic?!

It would take a huge leap of the imagination to think that a peasant girl no matter how close the resemblance may be could fool guards into thinking she was a Romanov! (Not that I would take the story seriously anyway...)

Maybe someone with computer skills can photoshop and enhance those pics of Marga Boodts?

I'm always interested in other claimant stories

Is somebody read "tsar's daughters" written by Jacqueline Monsigny? This woman met a man the duc Alexis of Anjou I think and this man pretended to have Maria Nicolaievna as grand mother. Monsigny did not believed him but however they became friend. About the age of 40, this duc died suddenly, we do not know how; in the same time, died his mother(so the daughter of Maria). They just decided to be recognised as Romanov. Before dying, Alexis told this story to the french autor:
In this book, Monsigny wrote that during this famous night of july 1918, only the tsar has been killed maybe with Alexei,Olga became Magda Boots, she would live in Italy near the lake of Côme where she helped children without parents; she would died in 1978(?). Alexandra and Tatiana died in Auschwitz during the war(can you imagine this?). Anastasia would have been Anna Anderson(I believe in this) and so Maria got married, had 2 girls, lived first in Africa, and then lived in Italy with Olga(sister that she loved the most:she called her daughter Olga). She died quietly in 1970.
Monsigny is CONVINCED of this. Isn't it flabbergasting, she give so much details about the place of the tomb of Olga(burried in Italy) for example. I also almost believe her. And you?      

...I have serious doubts Alexandra and Tatiana would have perished in a german concentration camp.  Other than being German, wasn't Hitler interested in maybe re-establishing the monarchy in Russia??

...wait, I have serious doubts about the whole story

Read Volkov. I think he pretty much can shut the door on this claimant...

This Alexis of Anjou wrote a book in French where he claimed his mother was GD Maria. I think he was inspired to write this after "The file on the tsar" by Summers and Mangold was published in 1975. As we know they tell the theory that the women in the family survived and were brought to Perm.  It was long before the remains of the IF were found so the theory was plausable at the time. The real name of this Alexis of Anjou was Brimeyer and  he died in Spain in 1993. He was known to have forged various papers and titles. Mark Ferro  gave some credence to this story in his biography of Tsar Nicholas.

I agree with you everybody. That is incredible but not impossible; it is not the same. This man Alexis of Anjou was already a duc so he did not need money or a royal title. However, I can't believe that dictionnaries and historicals books are wrong since 90 years. Why Elizabeth II and her husband weren't at the burial of the family in 1998 whereas duc of Edimburg lent his blood for the identification. Do they know something but can't say it?

I think the reason that they did not attend the burial  had something to do with them not wanting to be seen as taking sides in the debate over who was the true pretender to the Romanov Throne.
 

Jeremy, I think you're right, I remember reading something like this too. One branch of the Romanov family did not agree with the burial semantics and would not attend the ceremony while the other branch was totally fine with it. I think the British royal family probably just wanted to stand clear of that whole thing. Also, I think many Russians or else members of the Romanov family are still angry at the British for not accepting the IF into Britain when they were asked to in 1917, so many people still blame them for indirectly causing their death, or rather for failing to prevent it... So them being there may have been sort of controversial in that sense....