Bones are those of Crown Prince Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria

On July 17, 1918 a firing squad executed Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children. The murder took place at the house of a merchant in the town of Yekaterinburg, but when the grave of the rest of the family was discovered in 1991, the remains of the Crown Prince Alexei and of his sister, the Grand Duchess Maria, were missing. Rumors and speculation about the possible survival of the children persisted until their remains were finally discovered last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg.

The story of the deaths of Tsar Nicholas and his family is tragic, but Alexei’s fate is particularly unsettling. Born with hemophilia, he was supervised and over-protected by his parents and court retainers. Both Nicholas and Alexandra were so concerned that Alexei would not live to inherit the throne that they ignored the fact that Russia was falling to pieces around them. When Rasputin, a womanizing, somewhat deranged monk, convinced Alexandra that he could alleviate Alexei’s pain, both the Tsar and Tsarina became convinced that he would not only save their child, but was capable of making wise political decisions for them. They allowed Rasputin to amass too much power, isolating themselves still further from the growing maelstrom in the country. With Russia’s concession to Germany in 1917, and the country’s complete collapse over the next months, Nicholas lost all political command as well as personal control.

When the graves of the Tsar, Tsarina, and three of their daughters were unearthed in 1991, they were re-buried in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg. Though most researchers agreed that Alexei and Maria had also been murdered, no real proof existed. When the bone shards were discovered, they were sent to an American laboratory for DNA testing. The analysis was based on mitochondrial DNA, the type of DNA that is passed only from mothers to children. It is more stable than nuclear DNA, the type passed from fathers to children, and is more suitable for testing when the genetic material is badly damaged. The tests appeared to conclude that the bone shards were those of Alexei and Maria, but the American team has left it to Russian scientists to announce the final conclusions.

 

However, Eduard Rossel, governor of the Svedlovsk region where the bones were found stated: “This has confirmed that indeed it is the children. We have now found the entire family.”