why so many anastasias?

[Margarita Markovna]

It makes sense, but I thought Tatiana was the most widely known? I read (somewhere here) that she was in the newspaper more often than her sisters.

[Romanov_fan]

Yes, the two oldest daughters of the Czar were most likely best known of his children. Tatiana was perhaps the most '' Princess'' like of the daughters, that could explain why she got attention. I read in a book once that even before she was dead, during their imprisonment, that Tatiana read about an imposter of her ( Tatiana) in a newspaper!

[komarov]

That's a bit premature, eh?  Unless that "imposter" knew something was coming...

[Romanov_fan]

Yes! It made me laugh when I read of it, although it's also sad. I wish I knew which book, it was one I read five years ago, though, so I don't know.

[OlgaNRomanovaFan]

I always assumed it was because the claimant would be able to argue any change in facial structure better with a younger GD than with an older. It's pretty implausible that women of 22, 21 and 19 as Olga, Tatiana and Maria were would have changed in their looks that much as they were fully grown.
However claiming that a 17 year olds looks had changed due to growth seems more plausible.

[komarov]

I always assumed it was because the claimant would be able to argue any change in facial structure better with a younger GD than with an older. It's pretty implausible that women of 22, 21 and 19 as Olga, Tatiana and Maria were would have changed in their looks that much as they were fully grown.
However claiming that a 17 year olds looks had changed due to growth seems more plausible.

Wow, that's a really good point!  I hadn't thought about that much beyond the "Granny Alina"/Maria issue...

[GD Alexandra]

Yeah, that's a really good point though still there were people who claimed to be the older sisters and even the own Imperial couple!

[OlgaNRomanovaFan]

People pretended to be Nicholas and Alexandra?! Crazy.
I suppose if you were to impersonate the elder girls or the Tsar and Tsarina you'd have to pick the person you most looked like and go with it. With Anastasia you'd perhaps at least be able to say that your facial features changed due to growth/maturity.

[Romanov_fan]

Is it true that people claimed to be Nicholas or Alexandra? I know there were supposed sightings of the family after they were killed, but these were more mistakes/dubious sightings than they were claiming to be anybody. I think there was one whole IF of claimants, if I am not wrong. But Nicholas and Alexandra never appeared, because it was sone years later that some of the alleged children revealed their claim. Maybe that's crazy, but I thought I read that somewhere.

[Ra-Ra-Rasputin]

These are the Imperial survivor statistics, copied from the sticky at the top of The Question of Survivors board:

Olga:    28 claimants

Tatiana:  33 claimants

Maria:    53 claimants

Anastasia:   33 claimants

Alexei:     81 claimants

Total:  228 "imperial children" who survived the Ekaterinburg massacre

It just goes to show how misinformed everyone is on this thread.  Alexei was actually the most popular among claimants, getting almost triple the amount of impostors using his name as his sister Anastasia.  Maria came next, with Anastasia and Tatiana sharing third position.  Olga is not too far behind.

So really, there weren't 'so many' Anastasias.  In general, if people wanted to pretend to be a member of the IF, I suppose they just chose the one that either most appealed to them or the one they thought they could most convincingly resemble.  It's nothing to do with Anastasia being the least visible/most childish/most likely to have changed appearance, because she wasn't the most popular choice of claimants anyway.

I would imagine it was a case of, 'I'm short...I'll have to choose Anastasia', or 'I have a wide forehead...I'll have to choose Olga'. Picking the GD with the most similiarities to yourself would give you more likelihood of success. It's common sense really.

Alexei was the most popular because he was the heir and the one who could inherit the 'fortune' and the 'throne', etc.  The majority of Russian people probably were either not aware Alexei had haemophilia (it was not widely advertised, though it was made public in around 1910 I believe) or did not know what it meant, therefore for contemporary (as in of the time, not of today) impostors would probably have not taken the haemophilia into account.

As far as I know, there have been claimants to be Nicholas and Alexandra, but I couldn't name specifics.  If there's a possible fortune to be had, it's surprising what stories crazy people can concoct.

And as for this 'Anastasia was the most likely to have changed facially' theory, that's complete nonsense.

Who can look back at their photos of being a toddler and recognise their facial features in that child? The vast majority of people.  If you look at photos of a five year old, ten year old, twelve year old Anastasia, etc, you can see clearly the 17 year old she became.  From the age of 17 she was not going to have her facial structure and features fundamentally changed beyound recognition.  That's like saying a woman of thirty is unrecognisable from her same self as a teenager.  How come my mum, at 52, still gets stopped in our home town by people she went to school with aged 10? People really don't change that much over the years.  They just look older versions of their younger selves.

Rachel
xx

[Bob_the_builder]

For starters from the very beginning there were rumors of Anastasia's escape from the massacre. Either it happened or people just thought that if anyone could have survived that terrible night, it would have to be Anastasia. There was one claimant in Paris in 1920, and then when Anna Anderson came forth with her claim, the legend of Anastasia's survival reached a new climax, turning into films based on this legend. Then suddenly, "Anastasias" were popping up like flies lol.

[Bob_the_builder]

These are the Imperial survivor statistics, copied from the sticky at the top of The Question of Survivors board:

Olga:    28 claimants

Tatiana:  33 claimants

Maria:    53 claimants

Anastasia:   33 claimants

Alexei:     81 claimants

Total:  228 "imperial children" who survived the Ekaterinburg massacre

It just goes to show how misinformed everyone is on this thread. 

I think you are wrong by calling them "misinformed". The above was just from a Russian documentary, but the doc gave absolutely no source for these numbers. I really don't think there were more than 50 claimants before the discovery of the bones.

[rosieposie]

I think out of all of them Anastasia's face never seemed to have changed in looks.    From her toddler pics to her teen pics her features never really changed.