Larissa Tudor

[GDSophie]

Now that we know the family are all accounted for, is anyone else just curious on who Larissa Tudor was? I do believe she may have been just a Tatiana look-like or doppelganger, but her background is so foggy and unknown if I was alive before Tatiana's body was found I would have definitely believed Larissa was her.

She died eight years after the Romanovs, to the day even. Why did she use Feodorovna as her patronymic (unless it was the obvious reason; her real father was called Feodor if Adolph Haouk was not her real one), why was June 10th associated with her (It could have actually been her birthday and just a coincidence, or the day her and her husband met) and is her body still in her grave? (On 30th of July 1998 it was found that the railings surrounding her grave had been removed and some stone masons arrived later and cleaned the headstone and the marble surrounding the grave, this was all done without the Tudor family's permission or the Council's knowledge).

Now that the Romanovs are found, I'm definitely interested in her specifically.

[TimM]

I'm guessing that not much is known about her.

[DNAgenie]

Larissa Tudor could have been a descendant of the von Hauke family, best known member of which was Julia von Hauke, Princess of Battenburg, who married Prince Alexander of Hesse in a morganatic marriage in 1851 in Breslau, Prussia. Julia was the mother of Prince Louis of Battenburg and great grandmother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Julia's father was a Polish general who was shot during the November Uprising so his children were made wards of the Tsar. Julia's father and his two von Hauke brothers had been generals in the service of Russia and all three had become Counts of the Russian Empire. It is conceivable that Larissa came from this line, with the surname Von Hauke. She was certainly not Grand Duchess Tatiana, but if she had escaped from Russia after the revolution it is not surprising that she preferred to remain a private person.

[tenorsfan]

I'm just reading Occleshaw's book. A spooky tale of mysteries and coincidences. A few things not mentioned above, a witness heard her yelling at a small boy in Russian, and another witness, who picked Tatiana's pictures as her, asked, "she was a Russian princess, wasn't she?", as if it was a common rumour and no big deal, I guess with all the Russian aristocracy around. Another witness recalled Larissa saying her happiest time in England was the three years she had spent in Yorkshire, which squeezes the timeline of her being an exotic dancer in Constantinople, but would explain how she got back into England to marry Tudor. Occleshaw explains she wouldn't be allowed in England unless she had special help or unless she was previously a resident.

Also he only confines his speculations that Larissa was Tatiana. Never wonders if Larissa just lied to Tudor about being Tatiana, everybody else seemed to be doing it. Or maybe Tudor was as bad a Romanov fan as us and just flipped when he saw Larissa's Tatiana looks and married her. I could relate to that.  All that flowers on the grave on Tatiana's birthday and his hermetic behavior after her death is spooky. As is seeing the picture of his second wife with Tatiana's hairdo. And her grave being disturbed right on the Romanov burial. Spooky stuff.

Occleshaw doesn't  mention if Larissa died suddenly or not. Tudor collapsing at her burial suggests it was unexpected, I would think. The certificate says heart exhaustion. Is that a heart attack? A broken heart right after the murder date? A murder was never suggested, but it was the same year as the murder of Michelle Anchess. Just saying. What a tale!

[GDSophie]

I'm just reading Occleshaw's book. A spooky tale of mysteries and coincidences. A few things not mentioned above, a witness heard her yelling at a small boy in Russian, and another witness, who picked Tatiana's pictures as her, asked, "she was a Russian princess, wasn't she?", as if it was a common rumour and no big deal, I guess with all the Russian aristocracy around. Another witness recalled Larissa saying her happiest time in England was the three years she had spent in Yorkshire, which squeezes the timeline of her being an exotic dancer in Constantinople, but would explain how she got back into England to marry Tudor. Occleshaw explains she wouldn't be allowed in England unless she had special help or unless she was previously a resident.

Also he only confines his speculations that Larissa was Tatiana. Never wonders if Larissa just lied to Tudor about being Tatiana, everybody else seemed to be doing it. Or maybe Tudor was as bad a Romanov fan as us and just flipped when he saw Larissa's Tatiana looks and married her. I could relate to that.  All that flowers on the grave on Tatiana's birthday and his hermetic behavior after her death is spooky. As is seeing the picture of his second wife with Tatiana's hairdo. And her grave being disturbed right on the Romanov burial. Spooky stuff.

Occleshaw doesn't  mention if Larissa died suddenly or not. Tudor collapsing at her burial suggests it was unexpected, I would think. The certificate says heart exhaustion. Is that a heart attack? A broken heart right after the murder date? A murder was never suggested, but it was the same year as the murder of Michelle Anchess. Just saying. What a tale!

I believe she might have been a member of high Russian society, but not a Russian Princess (and I don't mean a Grand Duchess!). If she was, we would know about it by now. Her dying on the anniversary of the Romanovs death and her grave being 'desecrated' around about the same time of the first burial is suspicious though, and I do not believe that Larissa claimed to be Tatiana to anyone, her neighbors and Occleshaw did that for her. A teacher of mine actually suggested that she was Tatiana, and when the first burial site was found Olga and Anastasia (he believes M was missing) were the only daughters in the grave, Russia knew that L WAS T and took her body in the middle of the night to bury her with the others, saying Tatiana was found with most of her family and servants and not buried in a grave in England. Of course there's no evidence that the coffin was taken out of the ground and opened OR that Larissa's body is missing, but that's what he believes.

[tenorsfan]

That's an appealing theory. You could wish that's what happened.  Poor Tatiana, the sister so conscientious about doing her duty to serve her beloved Russia, and the one taking care of her mom and brother at the end there, she clung, I guess as a means of coping, to the hope they might be exiled, and she might get to live the life of a regular English girl. Poignant that Larissa got to do it, at least for a bit. And that image of Owen and Larissa, heard by their neighbours as laughing and enjoying each others company in their backyard, you could see Tatiana in a similar situation. I forget which acquaintance said she dreamed of having great friendships, and there's that amazing Romanian film of her sitting in the middle of the picture shoot, chattering and laughing away with all and sundry, with Olga and Maria shyly quiet at either end. And that amazing kid who came to sit on Tatiana's lap for the last photo, then runs up to the camera, as if, with her modern dress and hairdo, she had ran from Tatiana's time right into ours.

Larissa in Constantinople is mysterious. How long and how she got there. And why. White slave trade of Russian girls who wind up in Turkey goes on now and I guess was rife back then with so many refugees. Maybe there was a rescue but it was Tudor helping Larissa escape.D

[GDSophie]

That's an appealing theory. You could wish that's what happened.  Poor Tatiana, the sister so conscientious about doing her duty to serve her beloved Russia, and the one taking care of her mom and brother at the end there, she clung, I guess as a means of coping, to the hope they might be exiled, and she might get to live the life of a regular English girl. Poignant that Larissa got to do it, at least for a bit. And that image of Owen and Larissa, heard by their neighbours as laughing and enjoying each others company in their backyard, you could see Tatiana in a similar situation. I forget which acquaintance said she dreamed of having great friendships, and there's that amazing Romanian film of her sitting in the middle of the picture shoot, chattering and laughing away with all and sundry, with Olga and Maria shyly quiet at either end. And that amazing kid who came to sit on Tatiana's lap for the last photo, then runs up to the camera, as if, with her modern dress and hairdo, she had ran from Tatiana's time right into ours.

Larissa in Constantinople is mysterious. How long and how she got there. And why. White slave trade of Russian girls who wind up in Turkey goes on now and I guess was rife back then with so many refugees. Maybe there was a rescue but it was Tudor helping Larissa escape.D

The little girl was Princess Ileana of Romania, and I believe from my analysis of the Romanian/Russian photoshoot video that they were all trying to figure out a better place for Ileana to sit, with her ending up in Tatiana's lap.

[tenorsfan]

Going with GDSophie's teacher's theory for a sec, that the government stole away Larissa's body back to Russia to place in the grave, why would the Bolsheviks allow AA to traipse all over the world with her claims and yet Michelle Anchess, with her Tatiana clams, winds up murdered, allegedly by them? The obvious answer would be they knew Tatiana survived, Anastasia didn't.

You get the sense the government  wants to play both sides here, they want the closure of having the family being buried honorbly, respectfully at last, but the underlying source of their power is that people be afraid of them, and what  better example being what they were capable of with their murder of those girls. Like Stalin said one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.  They wouldn't be seen as so Ozymandias all powerful if a girl had escaped their power, and maybe turning the political execution being more seen as a revenge murder for that escape. So maybe kill Michelle, just in case, maybe repatriate Larissa's body, just in case, if not murdering her on that date.

[tenorsfan]

Googling Michael Occleshaw I came across in Google Books, Lost Eagle, The Untold Story of Tatiana.. I see here in AP there was a thread on it but it was all about the fictionalized part of Tatiana's life and which I gather was done rather distastefully and disrespectful of her. I'm not sure if I want to read that part, but the author also has a section of her rescue and it's along the same lines as Occleshaw's story. But the astonishing part is he claims this story was hidden in full view in Ian Fleming's 1957 novel From Russia With Love. So many things that Occleshaw uncovered in 1990, this author claims Ian Fleming slipped into his novel, without spelling things out, back in 1957. You recall Fleming was a secret agent, so if there were secret British files as Occleshaw claims, he could have been the man to see them.

Lost Eagle lists eight coincidences from Tatiana's rescue story that appear in Fleming's story. Most glaring is his heroine is named Tatiana Romanova, also when he needs a date for something, he uses Tatiana's birthday, Alexi's birthday, and Larissa's wedding day date. He uses that date for James Bond's and his Tatiana's wedding date. The author speculates both Noel Coward and Sergei Rachmaninov, who knew Tatiana, may have met Larissa in Lydd and they told her story to Fleming. Fleming's Tatiana lived in Istanbul, just like Larissa, too, and at one point Fleming calls her that Russian princess.

Needless to say, I just ordered the book, and a dvd of From Russia With Love.

[tenorsfan]

I forgot to add the link to the book. The author also states he shows the 'rescue' was officially suppressed, as well he points out Fleming writes at the opening, his book was based in part on true facts. I can't tell if I'm keeping an open mind or just love a good mystery. He adds the Church still doesn't trust the DNA results, rightly or wrongly.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=xm4dAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT285&lpg=PT285&dq=michael+occleshaw&source=bl&ots=JtrkmSiOgw&sig=xUX-JxYhzLRUTgz-mt7B9_hH8cE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj8j73v0MDeAhWRtVkKHd1HAhY4MhDoATAEegQIABAB#v=onepage&q=michael%20occleshaw&f=false

[TimM]

Good story.  However, that's all it is, a story.