Anastasia Nikolaevna: Jesting Warrior

When World War I broke out in 1914, Anastasia was only thirteen, too young to nurse, but old enough to visit hospitals, and on August 28 (O. S), Maria (at fifteen, also too young to nurse) and Anastasia’s own hospital was opened. Maria and Anastasia, known in the family as the little pair, set to work visiting their wounded. Their studies suffered considerably, but as Anastasia had a horror of studies and studies had a horror of her inattentive, rude ways, she cared little. Besides, this experience was broadening horizons for all the sisters. “[W]e all want for a ride, went to church and to the hospital… now we have to go eat dinner and then to the hospital again, and this is our now life, yes!” Anastasia wrote excitedly.¹

In 1917, in the days leading up to her father Nicholas's abdication, it was only the little pair who remained free of measles within the children. Running around gaily to administer to their ill siblings and carry out their mother's errands, the little pair stayed healthy, and Anastasia, who despite her ferocious exterior had a "heart of gold" and a loving interior, was dubbed as "my legs" by her mother. Anastasia's father Nicholas was at the time away, and she begged that she might be allowed to stay out of bed until he came home, expected to be that night, although he had still not come. She exclaimed piteously, "[T]he train is never late. Oh, if Papa would only come quickly.... I’m beginning to feel ill. What shall I do if I get ill? I can’t be useful to Mamma."⁸ Nicholas returned from the train no longer a tsar–he had abdicated, and the Romanovs were imprisoned, Anastasia was the court jester who kept everyone spirits high – and yet, she too would fret. “It is terribly sad and empty,” Anastasia wrote. Still, “many funy things had hapend [sic]” and “I am remembering a lot … everything good, of course!”¹ The guards at the Ipatiev House, the Romanovs' final place of captivity, remembered her as a “charming little devil.” Colonel Kobylinsky, who had oversaw the family's imprisonment when they were in Tobolsk, seemed rather disdainful of Anastasia, describing her as "over-developed for her age; she was stout and short, too stout for her height", echoing tutor Sydney Gibbes's judgement that "the only one in the family that appeared to be ungraceful." True to Anastasia's nature, even in the trying time of captivity, she cheered her family up with jokes and humor, and yet Gibbes noted that "she made everybody laugh, but never laughed herself."¹⁸ Maybe Anastasia was in a bad mood when Gibbes saw her, or was she truly beaten down and exhausted by imprisonment? Or was Gibbes being overanalytical?

Anastasia celebrated her seventeenth and final birthday on June 18, 1918. Confined within the whitewashed windows of the Ipatiev House, she and her sisters spent the day baking bread and learning to cook. The end was a mere month away. It came on July 17, 1918, when Anastasia, her family, and their four remaining retainers were led down twenty-three steps into the basement, where they were murdered with pistols and bayonets. Anastasia was one of the last to die.

Rumors persisted of her survival; Anna Anderson, in particular, garnered attention as a possible Anastasia. None of it was true. DNA testing on remains found confirms that Anastasia died. Unless people wish to argue Anastasia had a secret fourth sister or deny the DNA testing results, the case is closed.