Yekaterinburg Revelations

Mysteries have always been a fixture in my interest in anything from biology to history to current events. The more questions unanswered, the more boxes opened to reveal more boxes inside, the better. Perhaps this is my obsessive immersion in the strange , the unknown and the questionable, a product of a childhood trauma where my friends never showed me answers to their riddles which came from a silly newsletter published by a giant Chocolate drink brand for their young market. This explanation is becoming too lengthy and is making me digress from my main point. One true thing is I have been a sucker for mysteries for a long time now. And I have had many blog entries anyway to prove that too! There you are.


As I turned on my television for a highly anticipated program, I brace myself for the final say on a near-century old mystery which has tickled my imagination to no end but has plagued the whole world which persistently demands for answers. The House of Romanov ruled Russia for hundreds of years and was the last Imperial dynasty of the country. Czar Nicholas II became the last Emperor of Russia when he and his family were executed by members of the Bolsheviks in 1918. They were thought to have all died within the confines of the cellar in the house were they were kept for more than a year under government arrest.


Mystery then surrounded the whole family and the circumstance of their deaths from then on. The original story was all of them, the family and the members of the Royal Staff, eleven in all, died in that instant. But because of so many details being spewed forth by the higher levels to both local and international entities and units curious about what befell the Romanov family that fateful night in July 1918, the whole story became obscure and muddled. The most popular story to have come out of this and the initial reason that drew me to the Romanov mystique though is the belief that their youngest daughter Anastasia somehow managed to cheat death coming at her in the form of bayonets and bullets. Another side to the story was that she had indeed been shot and wounded but she managed to cling onto dear life and pleaded with a kind soldier, while they were on their way to the burial site, to release her. Anyhow the premise is she managed to live to tell her tale.


That was the point where history mixed with myth and to tell you the truth I would have nothing against any of that because I love the elusive search of Anastasia and the mystical fate of the Romanov siblings! The power of the unknown is just so irresistible for me! But for some perverse reason I guess I am also thankful that National Geographic muscled such great effort to research, examine and exhaustively solve the Russian Royal family mystery finally provided the missing piece of the puzzle. The whole world has been remedied off one thorn and can heave a collective sigh of relief.


The final verdict is....Yes they all died during that night of the execution. Nobody survived and the claims to being the heiress or heir to the Romanov fortune are totally bogus. Nine bodies were found in 1991 in the Koptyaki forest and after a massive scientific and historical blow-by-blow study resulted in the verdict that yes, these were the bodies of the Romanovs with their staff buried with the purpose of concealment from the whole world. The absence of two bodies from the burial site found in 1991 because they would be found more than a decade later a few meters from where the original nine were found. The reason for this slight geographical gap was that way back in the morning after the killings, the executioners attempted to burn the two bodies first but they could not with the weather not cooperating plus the conditions of the soil not helping their cause. They were also fearful of the incoming daylight and the possibility of eyewitnesses to their inexplicable cover-up.


Cutting-edge DNA testing plus a lot of scientific applications as well as mind-boggling research through the historical archives of the Communist party chambers KILLED my Romanov mystery obsession! Their conclusion certainly nailed the coffin on the Russian family's fate. My feeling is ambivalent though in the sense that as much as i want the fire of the enigmatic fate of Russia's last Imperial Family to keep burning, the scientists and the historians who contributed to this historical unraveling of a ninety-year old Pandora's box DO deserve all acknowledgment, papacy(!!!) and command the highest respect! They are champions of this world obsessed with science. The scientific realm is always seeking to dispel myths and mysteries and I am one who recognizes the premise, "Seeing is Believing" greatly.