Royal response: Last czar’s legend spawns would-be Romanovs in Russia

By definition, all but one or two must be impostors, lured by the romance surrounding the murdered czar, his wife and five children. So far, not a single claimant has been able to prove the relationship, including Filatov, who says he is trying to arrange a DNA test.

“I want to know the truth,” he says.

The Bolsheviks who killed the czar went to great lengths to obscure the truth. They didn’t want the remains of the family, especially those of the heir to the throne, Alexei, to become objects of worship or to be used to rally political opposition to their new regime.

But the secrecy that helped their political cause also made it difficult to disprove many of the stories told by would-be Romanovs, whobegan popping up around the world soon after the family disappeared.

Over the years, their tales have teased imaginations and spawned books and films, including 20th century Fox’s animated feature Anastasia.

The movie is based on the story of Anna Anderson, a woman who appeared in a mental hospital in 1920 and claimed to be the czar’s youngest daughter, Anastasia. She said she had been rescued by one of the soldiers who killed the rest of the family and was carried out of Russia on the back of a peasant cart, eventually winding up in Berlin.

Anna Anderson died in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1984. A decade later before the movie went into production DNA tests revealed she was not related and was a Polish peasant named Franziska Schanzkowska.

The truth about would-be Romanovs clearly doesn’t dampen the appeal of the legend. And because two bodies remain missing those of the eldest son, Alexei, and a daughter claimants likely will keep coming forward.

Filatov’s tale is typical. He says14-year-old Alexei was still alive when he fell off the truck carrying the bodies through the forest where they were to be buried. He was found and befriended by a number of Russians, including a couple who gave him the name of their deceased son, Vasily Filatov. He later taught geography and was said to have an uncanny command of foreign languages and world history.

Filatov says his father never claimed to be the czar’s heir. But he did tell stories about the czar’s family and talk about a “little boy” who escaped.

“We always wondered, who is that little boy he kept talking about?” Filatov says. After his father died in 1988, he and his sisters reflected on his life. Then we knew “he was that little boy.”

Filatov acknowledges that there are holes in his story: How could a hemophiliac survive gunshot and stab wounds? Why could his father speak German but not English, which the Romanov children spoke with their English-educated mother?

And sooner or later he may have to face the truth of DNA.