The agenda seems to be to keep it all in flux forever.
Exactly.
Very few people, if any, doubt the identity of the remains separate from the question of whether someone survived. People who don't see the possibility of anyone surviving that massacre seem to have no trouble accepting the hard science of the DNA identifications.
The people who doubt the DNA are almost invariably lined up behind some pretender to Romanov status and have sometimes put their, uh, "professional" reputations as journalists or authors on the line over it.
Over the years we've seen some interesting claims, with Anna Anderson's being only the most famous and, though strained, at least not the most ridiculous. My three favorites are:
Marga Boodts, who claimed to have been hidden in a sack of hay and shipped from Ekaterinburg to Vladivostock -- a distance of over 3,100 miles, and a very long way to go in a sack without a bathroom. (Boodts was, of course, recognized as Olga Nicholaevna by Prince Sigismund of Prussia, who also recognized Anna Anderson as Anastasia before being disinherited by his mother. A sterling endorsement if ever there was one.)
Suzanna de Graaff, who claimed to be the secret fifth daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra. (This claim was recognized by Anna Anderson which, one would think, would have been ample proof that she was a delusional crackpot without needing any DNA to establish it.)
Heino Tammet, a Canadian whose strongest proof that he was Alexei was an undescended testicle (which was examined by the Royal Canadian Mounties at his invitation) and a form letter from Buckingham Palace addressed to Alexei Romanov and thanking the self-identified tsesarevitch for his congratulatory telegram upon the occasion of a British royal wedding.
And, finally, although a rather bizarre detour off the main Anderson claim, there was the claim that Anderson's DNA actually was properly identified as non-Romanov because she was a changeling, substituted at birth for the real daughter who died.
If you want a sample of just how strange the "logic" of these survivor adherents can be, here is a quote off John Kendrick's website meant, I suppose, to show how well-received was his hypothesis that Heino was Alexei:
"I must express my gratitude to His Holiness Alexei II, Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Moscow and All Russia for the Christmas cards that he has sent for the past six years . . . . Russia's Dr. Pavel Ivanov appeared to mistake me for a fellow scientist the first time that we spoke on the telephone. He hasn't answered my letters now since September 1995. The late Dr. William Maples at the University of Florida stopped talking the year before that. England's Dr. Peter Gill sent photocopies of his 1994 NATURE GENETICS article without ever saying a word . . . . Richard and Marina Schweitzer (Granddaughter of the Tsar's Doctor Evgeny Botkin) have always been most kind on the telephone . . . . Greg King (THE LAST EMPRESS) had said back in 1994 he would pay us a visit, but never came."
I'm impressed.
