New book on Franziska Schanzkowsky, the Anastasia pretender

[TimM]

Chapters didn't have the book.  So I've ordered it through the Canadian Amazon website.

[TheLionandTheEagle]

It's possible that FS got so deep into pretending to be Anastasia that, towards the end of her life, she actually started to believe it herself that she was Anastasia. 

I think it's quite likely, especially since she is said to have been senile.  And the Anastasia myth is what everyone around her bought into by that point.

[TimM]

Towards the end of his life, Johnny Weismuller would often wander his neighbourhood, doing the Tarzan yell.   He had lost touch with reality.

The same could have happened to FF.

[Maria Sisi]

It's possible that FS got so deep into pretending to be Anastasia that, towards the end of her life, she actually started to believe it herself that she was Anastasia.  

I think it's quite likely, especially since she is said to have been senile.  And the Anastasia myth is what everyone around her bought into by that point.

She pretty much was senile towards the end of her life unfortunately. It sounds cruel but some people have said if you want to know how out of touch with reality she was by the end just read James Blair Lovell's "biography" on her.

Her husband probably inadvertently hurt her as well. He seems to have had a few loose screws in his own head.

[TimM]

Of course, there was really no way to disprove them when they were alive.  Real evidence of Anastasia's death in 1918 would not surface until after both FF and Jack Manahan themselves were dead.

[Lochlanach]

I think AA was mentally ill, and that she did come to believe that she really was Anastasia, though at what stage in her lengthy career is debatable.

Ann

 I used to think that perhaps the AA case was a 'folie a deaux' event , or rather a 'folie a plusieurs' . It has elements of that , but largely I think she was a conduit for the dreams, and schemes, of others . Take Gleb Botkin for instance - I have no idea whether he genuinely believed in her or not, but he could certainly use her as a stick with which to beat the Imperial Family,  as they became the focus of his bitterness and grief (see the infamous 1929 letter). For her supporters she was the gift that kept on giving, as her claims could not be disproved. AA herself may not have been 'all there' but she was well organised and manipulative . I imagine she was stunned in the early days of her deception to discover how easily some people could be deceived. She soon developed a routine for her visitors/inquisitors and occasionally it worked . Her supporters did 99% of her work for her , facillitating her myth. She likely had a personality disorder long before any thoughts of being Anastasia entered her head but that is of course speculation.

[Kalafrana]

Of course, lots of the people who visited her inadvertently fed her the kind of useful little details that subsequently convinced the gullible.

A made-up example, 'Do you remember the polar bear rug in the green drawing room?'

Ann

[TimM]

Yeah, just ask vague questions with no clear answer.  Easy to make up a reply to one of those.

[TheLionandTheEagle]

It's possible that FS got so deep into pretending to be Anastasia that, towards the end of her life, she actually started to believe it herself that she was Anastasia.

I think that this was almost certainly the case once dementia set in.

And, of course, she was older than she claimed to be -- by five years.  Isn't that every woman's dream -- to be mistaken for younger?  But -- it does seem that she was rather ill for her age, especially toward the end, and I hear that she was rather "out of it" in her later years.

[Kalafrana]

During her career as 'Anastasia', she never seems to have been in good health, either physically or mentally, and spent long periods living in squalor, so it's not surprising that old age caught up with her faster than most.

Ann