The Children of Tsar Nicholas II ("OTMAA")

[CyrilVladisla]

It would have been a magnificent blessing from the Lord if the Tsarevich had been born without the illness. This would have been one less concern for Alexis' mother to worry about.

 

[CyrilVladisla]

Tsarevich Alexis at Darmstadt in 1910
http://the-romanovs.tumblr.com/image/87732532874

 

[Toledo]

Per video description:

This video is produced as part of the project for the book "The Romanov Royal Martyrs”, which is an impressive 512-page book, featuring nearly 200 black & white photographs, and a 56-page photo insert of more than 80 high-quality images, colorized by the acclaimed Russian artist Olga Shirnina (Klimbim) and appearing here in print for the first time.

The Last Letter of Alexis Romanov

 

[Toledo]

The first book I bought about the Romanovs was Nicholas and Alexandra in the late 70s or early 80s. I was so absorbed by it that I became a bit obsessed looking for books about Russia. I recall I had around the 80s I was already in the USA and bought a Coins Collector Magazine because it had an article on the imperial coins with a small black and white picture of people climbing the fence and walls of the Winter Palace.

My favorite Russian theme movie for years was Anastasia, with Ingrid Bergman, until I read in another book she was an impostor all along. Even her own family in Poland exposed her con. This now reminds me on the current scandal in the USA involving a member of congress. All it took for Anna Anderson was to repeat the lie till a few people could not differentiate it from the truth.

But my fascination with Russian history goes all the way to my teens, when I read Nicholas and Alexandra for the first time.

 

[Denville]

The first book I bought about the Romanovs was Nicholas and Alexandra in the late 70s or early 80s. I was so absorbed by it that I became a bit obsessed looking for books about Russia. I recall I had around the 80s I was already in the USA and bought a Coins Collector Magazine because it had an article on the imperial coins with a small black and white picture of people climbing the fence and walls of the Winter Palace.

My favorite Russian theme movie for years was Anastasia, with Ingrid Bergman, until I read in another book she was an impostor all along. Even her own family in Poland exposed her con. This now reminds me on the current scandal in the USA involving a member of congress. All it took for Anna Anderson was to repeat the lie till a few people could not differentiate it from the truth.

But my fascination with Russian history goes all the way to my teens, when I read Nicholas and Alexandra for the first time.

Anna Anderson was a mentally unstable girl who probably deluded herself that she was Anastasia. But yes once she told some people it took on a life of its own.

 

[Blog Real]

Alexei’s christening:

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=726718838895937&set=a.192985695602590

 

[shady lady]

1. + 2. Olga and Tatiana
3. Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana (l-r)
4. + 5. Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia and Olga (l-r)
6. Elisabeth of Hesse, Olga and Tatiana (l-r)
7. The girls: Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia and Olga (l-r)
8. The girls with two women
9. Alexey
10. Tatiana, Olga, Alexey, Maria and Anastasia (l-r)

The picture of Alexei with his curly hair and little hat is a favourite of mine; he really does look so sweet in that picture!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=708282384072916&set=pb.100046734830921.-2207520000.&type=3

 

[Blog Real]

Alexei at about nine months old:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wJFJ2DNb...IXno/s1600/tumblr_m50aryiGFp1r71ilwo1_500.jpg

 

[CyrilVladisla]

Baptism of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna
http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/M523737

 

[Blog Real]

Photo of Tsarevich Alexei in 1912.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAq8JUw0CMVE-DygB1aR82U3u9eXNS4lL4kr4rZM3QpzxgE1fxV13pCo-vM5QH4_gR4TQ3-4_xKK0Q1riq8hwJEZ2Jh7xvfC92k9FNSYU4HVIYv5rWWTqbfhFRpM0fnuDz0cFr-vGevMKAmN5y_kblF5CsfjqyCOwCA-9LM8QjOR22tfX9cD-_9lOmfAPo/s16000/430924292_1085785392461379_9203861453849275010_n.jpg

 

[Erin9]

The first book I bought about the Romanovs was Nicholas and Alexandra in the late 70s or early 80s. I was so absorbed by it that I became a bit obsessed looking for books about Russia. I recall I had around the 80s I was already in the USA and bought a Coins Collector Magazine because it had an article on the imperial coins with a small black and white picture of people climbing the fence and walls of the Winter Palace.

My favorite Russian theme movie for years was Anastasia, with Ingrid Bergman, until I read in another book she was an impostor all along. Even her own family in Poland exposed her con. This now reminds me on the current scandal in the USA involving a member of congress. All it took for Anna Anderson was to repeat the lie till a few people could not differentiate it from the truth.

But my fascination with Russian history goes all the way to my teens, when I read Nicholas and Alexandra for the first time.

This was a long time ago, but this is similar to my story. As a teen, I read an article on Queen Victoria and her passing down hemophilia all over Europe. That led me to my parents copy of Nicolas and Alexandra- and down the Romanov rabbit hole I went…..

I even read a fiction book some years ago called The Romanov prophecy where one of the kids survived.

I enjoyed the Anastasia movie with Ingrid Bergman too. And the animated one years later.

 

[Alison H]

When we learnt about genetics in biology in the third year of secondary school, the textbook had a family tree showing how Queen Victoria's haemophilia gene spread all over Europe. I wasn't usually that keen on science. Russian history, yes, science, no ... but I took a big interest in biology lessons that year!

 

[Toledo]

When we learnt about genetics in biology in the third year of secondary school, the textbook had a family tree showing how Queen Victoria's haemophilia gene spread all over Europe. I wasn't usually that keen on science. Russian history, yes, science, no ... but I took a big interest in biology lessons that year!

Few years back Amazon produced one of the most stupid TV series called the Romanovs based on the fake descendants.

One particular storyline was the worst since they presented a modern family with the Hemophilia condition as proof, they were Romanovs. Problem was this was a condition passed from Alexandra to her children, and they all died during the execution. The rest of the Romanovs did not mingle with the UK/German princesses that carried Queen Victoria's disease.

Anna Anderson was a mentally unstable girl who probably deluded herself that she was Anastasia. But yes once she told some people it took on a life of its own.

Anna Anderson was cremated to prevent her lie to be exposed. But her claim to fame was finally proven to be the greatest fake royal story on the 20th century after her death. I recall reading during a surgery she had some organs removed and they were saved and DNA test matched her with her true family from Poland:

A sample of Anderson's tissue, part of her intestine removed during her operation in 1979, had been stored at Martha Jefferson Hospital, Charlottesville, Virginia. Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the sample and compared with that of the Romanovs and their relatives. It did not match that of the Duke of Edinburgh or that of the bones, confirming that Anderson was not related to the Romanovs.

However, the sample matched DNA provided by Karl Maucher, a grandson of Franziska Schanzkowska's sister, Gertrude (Schanzkowska) Ellerik, indicating that Karl Maucher and Anna Anderson were maternally related and that Anderson was Schanzkowska. Five years after the original testing was done, Dr. Terry Melton of the Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, stated that the DNA sequence tying Anderson to the Schanzkowski family was "still unique", though the database of DNA patterns at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory had grown much larger, leading to "increased confidence that Anderson was indeed Franziska Schanzkowska".​

Similarly, several strands of Anders

Anna Anderson - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[victor1319]

This was a long time ago, but this is similar to my story. As a teen, I read an article on Queen Victoria and her passing down hemophilia all over Europe. That led me to my parents copy of Nicolas and Alexandra- and down the Romanov rabbit hole I went…..

Is it sure, that Queen Victoria was a carrier of this terrifying disease?

I always suspected her husband, the Saxe-Coburg. Before him, how many cases were there in the European Royalty? And after him...

 

[Erin9]

Is it sure, that Queen Victoria was a carrier of this terrifying disease?

I always suspected her husband, the Saxe-Coburg. Before him, how many cases were there in the European Royalty? And after him...

I thought it was her. That’s how I remember reading it. But I’m not sure.

It definitely spread all over European royal houses with her and Albert’s direct descendants.

 

[Curryong]

I have read that it is now generally believed to have been a rogue gene malfunction in Queen Victoria, caused perhaps by her father being over fifty years of age at her conception, elderly by the standards of the day.
If haemophilia was present in the Saxe Coburg line it certainly wasn’t there with Prince Albert the Prince Consort, a cousin to Victoria, or with King Leopold of the Belgians, their mutual uncle, nor in the Duchess of Kent who had two other children, half siblings to Victoria who similarly showed no symptoms of this terrible condition. The Duchess of Kent, Victoria’s mother, and Leopold were brother and sister and none of their many siblings had this disease either.

 

[Curryong]

Plus, Queen Victoria and her children did not ‘pass Haemophilia all over’ Europe (the European Royal Houses.) It was (tragically) only the Spanish and the imperial Russian Royal families who had direct heirs to the throne who suffered from this condition, primarily because two of Victoria’s daughters and two of her granddaughters were carriers. Neither of those heirs had children.

If it had ‘spread all over Europe then the German and British Royal families would have had sufferers in the main line and they haven’t. Nor did the Romanian Royal family, whose Queen Marie was a granddaughter of Victoria.
Tsarina Alexandra’s sister Irene, who married Kaiser William II’s brother Henrik, had two sons with haemophilia, neither of whom had children, and Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, had one son who died in his twenties who was a sufferer.

 

[TLLK]

Is it sure, that Queen Victoria was a carrier of this terrifying disease?

I always suspected her husband, the Saxe-Coburg. Before him, how many cases were there in the European Royalty? And after him...

My understanding is that only females can carry the gene on their X chromosomes.

How Hemophilia Is Inherited

Hemophilia is a bleeding disorder that is inherited through the x chromosome.

www.cdc.gov

 

[TLLK]

Plus, Queen Victoria and her children did not ‘pass Haemophilia all over’ Europe (the European Royal Houses.) It was (tragically) only the Spanish and the imperial Russian Royal families who had direct heirs to the throne who suffered from this condition, primarily because two of Victoria’s daughters and two of her granddaughters were carriers. Neither of those heirs had children.

If it had ‘spread all over Europe then the German and British Royal families would have had sufferers in the main line and they haven’t. Nor did the Romanian Royal family, whose Queen Marie was a granddaughter of Victoria.
Tsarina Alexandra’s sister Irene, who married Kaiser William II’s brother Henrik, had two sons with haemophilia, neither of whom had children, and Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, had one son who died in his twenties who was a sufferer.

Curryong-Do you know who were the last of Victoria's descendants to have had hemophilia?

 

[Curryong]

I don’t. I know that a few were killed in car accidents in the years between the wars. Probably the last to be born, at almost the same date as Alexei, was the Infante Gonzalo of Spain, the youngest child of King Alfonzo and Queen Ena, (Princess Beatrice’s only daughter.) Gonzalo died in a car crash in 1934 at an early age, 19 I think.

I know who was almost certainly the last to die. Prince Waldemar of Prussia was the eldest son of Prince Henrik of Prussia and his wife Irene. He and his wife were fleeing from the Russians in the last weeks of WW2.

They reached a safe German town but Waldemar needed a blood transfusion. However the Americans were in charge and the town hospital and all its facilities had been given over to looking after the victims of a nearby newly discovered concentration camp. So Waldemar did not receive his blood transfusion and died in early May 1945.

 

[Curryong]

Later: the last descendant to be born with the condition as far as I know, (I’ve just read on Wikki about Alice’s son) was in 1907. Rupert was the son of Alice of Albany, a carrier of course, and the daughter of Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria’s haemophiliac son. His father was Alexander of Teck, brother to Queen Mary. He died in a car crash in France in the 1920’s when he was at Cambridge University

Rupert Cambridge, Viscount Trematon - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Erin9]

I know who was almost certainly the last to die. Prince Waldemar of Prussia was the eldest son of Prince Henrik of Prussia and his wife Irene. He and his wife were fleeing from the Russians in the last weeks of WW2.

They reached a safe German town but Waldemar needed a blood transfusion. However the Americans were in charge and the town hospital and all its facilities had been given over to looking after the victims of a nearby newly discovered concentration camp. So Waldemar did not receive his blood transfusion and died in early May 1945.

That’s sad.

Hemophilia may not have hit all the main lines, but it sure traveled through the royal families of Europe just the same.

 

[blooms_rulers]

Later: the last descendant to be born with the condition as far as I know, (I’ve just read on Wikki about Alice’s son) was in 1907. Rupert was the son of Alice of Albany, a carrier of course, and the daughter of Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria’s haemophiliac son. His father was Alexander of Teck, brother to Queen Mary. He died in a car crash in France in the 1920’s when he was at Cambridge University

Rupert Cambridge, Viscount Trematon - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

According to Xenia of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, her father might have been a sufferer. She said he had clotting issues and referenced Queen Victoria. I think I recall her saying one of her sons suffers, too.

 

[Alison H]

I once won a "what if" historical competition by suggesting that, if Vicky rather than Alice had inherited the gene, neither the First World War nor the Russian Revolution might have happened.

It's a gene on the X chromosome, so, as a boy inherits a Y chromosome from his dad, it comes from the mother. Theoretically, the daughter of a haemophiliac dad and carrier mum could have 2 affected X chromosomes, but I've never heard of that happening.

I remember once seeing a BBC documentary in which two sisters both had haemophiliac sons, even.though the disease had never been known in their family before, so it can definitely happen as a mutation. It's just very bad luck.