According to a story in the Independent from 1999 about files that were released, King George was following the matter closely
And 75 years later, documents which have been locked inside the most secret archives of the British state are chilling in their account of the murders: "She kept running about and hid herself behind a pillow, on her body were 32 wounds. The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna fell down in a faint. When they began to examine her she began to scream wildly and they dispatched her with bayonets and butt ends of their rifles."
The assassination of Tsar Nicholas II and his family horrified the then British King, George V, and the fate of his close Russian relatives has been the subject of mystery and speculation ever since.
The newly declassified files, compiled at great personal risk by British diplomats and secret agents, were handed over yesterday by the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, at a ceremony at the Foreign Office. They contained hundreds of documents from the British archives on the death of the last Tsar and his family at the hands of the Bolsheviks. The exchange of documents came as Mr Cook and Mr Ivanov signed a memorandum of co-operation between the archives of the two foreign ministries. In return Mr Ivanov handed over original documents captured by Soviet forces from the Germans at the end of the Second World War. They relate largely to the fate of British prisoners of war held by the Germans.
According to a Foreign Office spokesman many of the British files on the murder of the Romanov family were classified as "top secret" until this release. They contain voluminous encrypted correspondence between the Foreign Office and its representatives in the field from 1918 to 1920. Some are hand-written letters between King George, Nicholas's cousin, and the then foreign secretary, AJ Balfour.
The 38 bulky files now released to the Russians have taken British archivists several years to compile. They begin with a despatch from the British Consul in Ekaterinburg on 18 May 1918, noting the arrival of the Tsar and other members of the Russian royal family under a Red Army guard. The next, a terse telegram from Moscow, delivers stark news. "Ex-Emperor of Russia, Nicholas: Reports that he was shot on July 16 by order of Ekaterinburg Local Soviet." The memo is marked for the attention of the king.
And once again I ask you if the presence of the Tsar's mother or sister in England caused a revolution? The evidence points to the fact that neither would the presence of the Tsar's family or probably the Tsar himself. Only King George's fears prevented the Imperial family's survival.
