Author Topic: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson  (Read 193195 times)

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Offline LadyTudorRose

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #195 on: January 08, 2011, 11:22:57 PM »
I had to order my copy and it got delayed because of the snow storm, so I didn't get it until last week. I finished it a few days ago and was really impressed. I found myself feeling really bad for Franciska; if my life was that horrible I'd probably want to pretend to be someone else too.

Everyone has at some point in their life found themselves in a series of lies that spiraled out of control, and you get paranoid about getting found out and feel sick and uneasy until it's all smoothed over. Well, for Franciska it turned into her whole life. The book made it seem like she never had any intention of it getting as big as it did or lasting for the rest of her life.

I did not have much sympathy for Harriet Rathlef-Keilmann and the like. This book did make me more willing to believe Gleb Botkin wasn't in on it, but surely some of her other supporters (like the aforementioned Rathlef-Keilmann) had to have figured out she wasn't actually Anastasia or at least realized the good chance that she might not be. Yet they continued to lie and cause problems for Anastasia's family because they didn't "recognize" her. On her own I don't think Franciska would have stirred up so much unpleasantness. It wasn't in her best interest to get anyone's family involved. For her supporters, they had very little to lose and all the more to gain by going for high profile recognitions. But for Franciska she was constantly at risk for being arrested, or for the time the Nazis were in power, killed. I can only imagine how terrified she was when she encountered people who knew her in her former life. To me it demonstrates some level of acting ability that she didn't completely break down out of fear. Being caught in a lie, or even almost caught, is a really unpleasant experience. The bigger the lie, the worse it feels. When Doris Wingender greeted her after all those years, she probably had to keep herself from passing out.

As wrong as what she did was, I feel like she probably got punished enough in the hell of her own making. Even after she knew she wouldn't get caught, and had stopped caring whether people believed her, I don't think she was every really comfortable as Anastasia.





Offline Greg_King

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #196 on: January 08, 2011, 11:28:41 PM »
Boy, I'm glad others can discuss recessive genes and eye color-I have no clue as I freely admit.

But we're happy to discuss anything that we can about the book or evidence-I'll check between here and the section Rob created.


Offline Greg_King

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #197 on: January 08, 2011, 11:34:49 PM »
I did not have much sympathy for Harriet Rathlef-Keilmann and the like. This book did make me more willing to believe Gleb Botkin wasn't in on it, but surely some of her other supporters (like the aforementioned Rathlef-Keilmann) had to have figured out she wasn't actually Anastasia or at least realized the good chance that she might not be. Yet they continued to lie and cause problems for Anastasia's family because they didn't "recognize" her.


Too many people have wanted to blame Gleb and Tatiana in this case, first pointing out they scarcely knew Anastasia and then just as adamantly insisting that they knew Anastasia "so well" that it was impossible that they did not know AA was not the Grand Duchess! But as we try to show, both of them were sincere in their beliefs-they just happened to be wrong about her identity. Gleb, it is true, let his troublesome nature loose and hurled unfounded accusations at everyone, though I think he probably did it for the same reason that someone like Rathlef-Keilmann, who probably DID actually believe that AA was Anastasia, did: That it was OK to "stretch the truth" on little things or change stories to make her case more believable in the service of a larger, just cause of proving that she was Anastasia. That's merely an opinion, but likely what led to a lot of these things taking place-self-justification for erasing AA's mistakes and rewriting portions of the tale to make it seem more plausible.

Offline TimM

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #198 on: January 09, 2011, 12:45:04 AM »
To me, Rathlef-Keilmann came across as someone who knew she wasn't Anastasia, but was thinking:  "Oh boy, if we can convince everyone, we get access to the Tsar's fortune.  KA-CHINNNGGGG!!"  Back then there were rumours about the Tsar's lost fortune floating around. 
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Offline Greg_King

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #199 on: January 09, 2011, 09:25:39 PM »
I think Rathlef-Keilmann was more of a devotee who believed AA was Anastasia than someone who thought of her in terms of heiress to a Tsarist fortune.

Offline TimM

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #200 on: January 10, 2011, 04:06:10 PM »
I guess I misread her then.   Truth is, it was hard to tell who really believed and who was just in it for this mythical fortune.
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Penny_Wilson

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #201 on: January 10, 2011, 07:00:45 PM »
Of course it's hard to second-guess the motivations of other people, but I just never got the idea that any of the early "Anastasians"  -- those involved before the organization of the Grandanor company -- were all that interested in the money potential.  They seemed to me to be true believers, each with a varying degree of ability to ignore and/or explain away contradictory evidence.

To me, this case is all very psychological -- on almost all sides!!

Alixz

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #202 on: January 11, 2011, 09:15:55 AM »
Penny or Greg - would you post just what Grandanor is an acronym for?  I might have missed it, but I didn't think you put it in your book and I have forgotten the exact wording.

Thanks.

Offline Greg_King

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #203 on: January 11, 2011, 09:16:50 AM »
I guess I misread her then.   Truth is, it was hard to tell who really believed and who was just in it for this mythical fortune.

I don't think any of the well-known names surrounding her that REALLY mattered in terms of recognizing her or supporting her were in it for the money-they all genuinely believed (this excepts a few of the more disreputable emigres in Berlin with whom she lived and mixed in these years).

It's one of the common misconceptions-that AA or her supporters were all out for money-and as we found and tried to show nothing could be more wrong. There's much that Gleb Botkin did with which one can disagree, but one thing I have always thought unfair-and can now support in the book-is the idea that he was attempting to use AA for personal enrichment. As Penny says, the GRANDANOR Corp was another issue but even there it was not personal gain for those true intimates of AA like Botkin.

Penny_Wilson

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #204 on: January 11, 2011, 09:32:47 AM »
Penny or Greg - would you post just what Grandanor is an acronym for?  I might have missed it, but I didn't think you put it in your book and I have forgotten the exact wording.

Thanks.

Take the capital letters in this: GRANd Duchess Anastasia Of Russia = GRANDANOR.

Alixz

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #205 on: January 11, 2011, 09:37:04 AM »
Thanks, Penny.  It was the "O" that I couldn't figure out.

Anyone who invested in that corporation certainly didn't get their money's worth, did they?

Offline TimM

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #206 on: January 11, 2011, 12:03:18 PM »
As I said, for years I thought Gleb Botkin was after money, but this book made me revise my opinion of him.  He really believed AA was Anastasia, or he really WANTED to believe her.  He was the one that suggested she come to the U.S. and was Best Man at hers and Jack Manahan's wedding.
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Penny_Wilson

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #207 on: January 11, 2011, 03:22:45 PM »
Thanks, Penny.  It was the "O" that I couldn't figure out.

Anyone who invested in that corporation certainly didn't get their money's worth, did they?


I believe they all went bankrupt, including Edward Fallows, the attorney who set it up.  His daughter (Annette?) was quite bitter about it for a long, long time.

I always think that Grandanor was kind of a cheesy name...

Offline TimM

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #208 on: January 11, 2011, 04:32:57 PM »
Well, in any event, it was a very good book, well written, well researhed.  My hat is off to both of you.

There was only one thing that bothered me, and it is minor.  I was uncomfortable with the repeated use of the term "execution" in reference to what happened in Ekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.  Execution made it sound like due process was followed, that there had been a trial in which the Romanovs could speak in their own defense.  Of course, no such event occurred (although I understand Trotsky was pushing for such a trial).

What happened on July 17, 1918 in that cellar was not an execution, it was cold blooded murder.  No more, no less.
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Penny_Wilson

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Re: "Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson" by King And Wilson
« Reply #209 on: January 11, 2011, 05:14:48 PM »

Interestingly, I asked two Romanov relatives during two different interviews how the family themselves called the killings.   One said that she thought that the answer to such a question mattered only to a romantic -- and she wasn't going to romanticize the events of July 1918.   And the other said that she's heard her husband and his immediate family use anything from "assassination" to "murder" to "killings" to "execution"  -- not that they spoke about it much.  Life moves on, she said, especially in subsequent generations. 

I wouldn't say that these were the opinions of all Romanovs; they're the opinions of the two I happened to ask.