In no particular order:
(1) The Perm stories in Summers and Mangold are discredited. You would have to disregard every bit of testimony concerning the executions in Ekaterinburg. The bodies would have had to be transported back to the grave of Nicholas, Trupp, Kharitonov, Demidova and Botkin --- and Alexei and Anastasia would still be missing. The File on the Tsar has moments of insight, but there is no evidence that supports the Perm story other than hearsay, and a great deal of forensic eveidence that supports the idea that the Imperial Family was, in fact, massacred on July 16, 1918.
The Perm stories have not been discredited. Â What has occured is that people have set these testimonies aside.
Greg King wrote in a post which I'll have to find said that he and Penny didn't find information which they found interesting enough to follow. Â Like others, Â it was their opinion at the time he wrote the post and the book that there were no survivors. Â However, they did include the fact that Anastasia may have survived for a time but not Alexei. Â [Note: It's been too long since I read these posts so I may not remember this as accurately as I should.]
Most posters here think that an escape was impossible because they lean so heavily on Yurovsky, Ermakov and the other men who were the shooters of  Nicholas II and at least eight others who were found in the mass grave in Pig's Meadow.
My clue is based a geat deal on the lack of bones which should have been in the grave but were not.  Indicating to me that this was not the original  grave for some.
Since most of these testimonies as well as evidence was destroyed not just by the Reds, it was also destroyed by the Whites, including men like Gilliard who admitted in AA's trial that he had destroyed important information/evidence.
The reason I have to depend so much on the outdated book of Summers and Mangold is because they are the only ones who dug into the testimonies which are still in existence and placed them in a book I have read. As far as I know, they did not fabricate the testimonies they entered into their book.
(2) The "biting the hand that fed her" behavior was not limited to the early years of Andersen's impersonation. It was a pattern of a lifetime, and continued until she went to Charlottesville in 1969. A case could be made that her treatment of Jack Manahan made him her last victim, but she was also nasty to people like Prince Frederick and others. To be fair, these continued to support her claims. But she treated them badly.
Like I said, Â I'll have to let others who know more about AA's life to make comments.
(3) The idea that she was a CHEKA agent who couldn't come in from the cold is too silly to take seriously, as is the idea that "independent" operations could be run at the level of her impersonation. Both Lenin and Stalin were perfectly aware of her claims --- you hardly needed a secret service to be aware of them --- and if she was either a rogue agent or a double agent, they would have dealt with her. I think it most likely that they let her be because a) it was known that she wasn't a Grand Duchess and b) it created dissension within the emigre community, and that would have pleased the communist government.
This is just a "out of the box" speculation and needs to be suggested and investigated to see just how "silly" or "impossible" this could have been.
I'm not sure how many of you understand how entangled Felik D., the head of the CHEKA's, agents were in Europe. Â These agents had worked their way into very high positions even in the British SIS as well as their world of politics.
Lenin and Stalin in those early years had given Felik D. freedom with his agents, including the organizations called TRUST, the Lysma and other revolutionary "cells" [groups].
It was not uncommon for revolutionaries to infiltrate the factories like the one AA, if she was FS, Â was working. Â
Lenin and Stalin may not have known about  AA and the reason behind the need of creating a false GD Anastasia.
Like the woman in  My Fair Lady,  AA  must have had gone through a period of training to become a GD Anastasia claimant.  Why?  There was a great deal a commoner had to learn about being royal, Russian and enough of the various languages (High German, French, Enlgish and Russian) to fool people  who knew the GD.
(4) The idea that her depression was severe enough to blend into her playacting and create a worldview in which she actually believed she was Anastasia is interesting. Was she treated for depression at Dalldorf?
Again, Â I'll have to let others answer this because I don't recall this part of AA's life.
(5) Suicidal people will sometimes keep attempting the act until they are successful. There is no one reaction to it.
Like I said, Â there are always the acceptions.
I think on one of these threads, Â people thought that some of the scars AA had were self inflicted.
I don't know.
(6) In fact, I don't think Anna Andersen was afraid to be found. I think she wanted to be found. In the end, she was the one who pushed the identification of herself as Grand Duchess Anastasia by pointing out her resemblance to the real girl pictured in the magazines at Dalldorf. This information is in Kurth. Andersen asked the night nurse at the sanatorium if, in fact, she didn't notice the resemblance. She supplied the correct name when asked whether she was Tatiana by striking out all of her sisters' names on a list. Far from avoiding publicity, she allowed herself to be exploited by people like Gleb Botkin (even granting that he truly believed in Andersen, Botkin pushed the envelope by his open letter of attack upon those Romanovs that did not).
My suggestions were possible reasons she may have been afraid if she was GD Anastasis  or  FS or AA  (if she was not FS).
(7) I agree that she may have indeed suffered from the anxiety that the Romanovs would prove she was a fake.
But in the end, I don't think she was afraid to be found. And remember, thereafter this woman never had to hold a job in her life. If you were originally a factory worker, you are then elevated to a life beyond your wildest imagination.
Simon
Since I'm not sure, yet,  that AA was FS,  then  I really can't respond to your question, accept to say,  whomever she was,  anxiety had to have raised it's ugly head and could have caused all kinds of mental problems,  one of which, I think, was probably depression.
AGRBear
