History is messy. Usually, when a royal family is executed in a basement in the middle of a Russian revolution, that’s the end of the story. But with the Romanovs, the end was just the beginning of a hundred-year headache. If you've spent any time looking at historical fiction lately, you've probably seen the I Was Anastasia book by Ariel Lawhon sitting on a shelf. It’s got that striking cover—partly a regal portrait, partly a gritty, mud-stained face. It grabs you. It makes you wonder if the "Grand Duchess Anastasia survived" legend actually has legs, even though DNA evidence eventually threw a bucket of cold water on the whole thing back in the nineties.
Honestly, the fascination with Anna Anderson is weird when you think about it. She wasn't particularly charming. She was often prickly, demanding, and lived in a house filled with cats and clutter in Germany and later Virginia. Yet, for decades, people—including some surviving Romanov relatives—believed she was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. Lawhon’s novel takes this duality and runs with it. It’s not just a biography; it’s a dual-timeline puzzle that forces you to look at two women who might be the same person, or might be total strangers.
The Dual Narrative of the I Was Anastasia Book
The structure of this thing is what usually trips people up at first. It’s ambitious. One storyline follows the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov starting in 1918, moving forward in time toward that horrific night in the Impatiev House. The other storyline follows Anna Anderson starting in 1970 and moves backward in time.
They meet in the middle.
It’s a clever trick. By moving Anna Anderson’s life in reverse, Lawhon strips away the layers of her persona. You see the old, litigious woman in Charlottesville, Virginia, and then you see the younger, more desperate woman in a Berlin asylum. Meanwhile, the 1918 chapters are heavy with the smell of woodsmoke and the claustrophobia of house arrest. You feel the silk of the Romanov girls' gowns being sewn with hidden diamonds—jewels that were supposed to be their dowries but ended up acting as makeshift bulletproof vests, tragically prolonging their suffering during the execution.
Why the Reverse Timeline Works (and Why It’s Frustrating)
Reverse chronology is a bold choice. It’s not just for style. By peeling back the years of Anna Anderson’s life, the book mimics the way a detective would work. You start with the "fraud" or the "survivor" (depending on what you believe) and go back to the moment of trauma.
Some readers hate this. They find it jarring. I get it. You’re trying to keep track of dates while the emotional weight is shifting. But it forces you to pay attention to the details. You start looking for the scars. The bunions. The specific shape of an ear. These were the real-world "proofs" that kept the Anna Anderson trial going for thirty years in the German courts.
Fact vs. Fiction: What Really Happened in Siberia?
We have to talk about the basement. The execution of the Romanovs in July 1918 wasn't clean. It was a chaotic, bloody mess in a room that was roughly 12 by 15 feet. Yakov Yurovsky, the man in charge, left a detailed report—and while he’s not exactly a reliable narrator, the physical evidence found decades later mostly backs him up.
💡 You might also like: Ashley My 600 Pound Life Now: What Really Happened to the Show’s Most Memorable Ashleys
In the I Was Anastasia book, Lawhon doesn't shy away from the brutality. She captures the transition from being the most powerful family in the world to being prisoners who had to ask permission to use the bathroom. It’s that contrast that fueled the survivor myths. People couldn't accept that such a gilded life could end in a dusty cellar.
- The Diamonds: It is a historical fact that the sisters had sewn over 1.3 kilograms of diamonds into their corsets. When the firing squad opened fire, the bullets literally ricocheted off the girls.
- The Bayonets: Because the bullets didn't work initially, the executioners used bayonets. This is the grim reality that makes the "survival" story so statistically improbable, yet so narratively compelling.
- The Burial: The bodies were thrown into a pit, doused in acid, and buried under railroad ties. Two bodies—Alexei and one of the sisters—were buried a short distance away to confuse anyone who found the primary grave.
This gap in the grave counts—nine bodies found instead of eleven in 1991—is exactly why the Anna Anderson story stayed alive. Until 2007, when the final two bodies were found, there was a tiny, microscopic window of "maybe."
The Real Anna Anderson: Franziska Schanzkowska?
If you go into this book expecting a fairytale, you're going to be disappointed. Lawhon leans heavily into the complexity of identity. Most historians and DNA experts now agree that Anna Anderson was actually Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who disappeared around the same time Anna appeared in a Berlin canal.
Franziska had a history of mental health struggles. She had been injured in a factory explosion. She had scars that matched some of the "evidence" she later used to claim she was Anastasia.
But here is the thing: Anna Anderson knew things.
She knew details about the private life of the Romanovs that a Polish factory worker shouldn't have known. Or did she? Skeptics argue she was coached by people who wanted to use her to get to the "Romanov Gold" (which probably didn't even exist). The I Was Anastasia book plays in this gray area. It doesn't treat Anna as a simple con artist. It treats her as someone who might have actually believed her own lie—or someone who was so traumatized that the lie became her only reality.
The Role of Gleb Botkin
You can't talk about this story without mentioning Gleb Botkin. He was the son of the Romanovs' personal physician (who was killed with them). Gleb grew up playing with the royal children. When he met Anna Anderson, he became her most vocal supporter.
📖 Related: Album Hopes and Fears: Why We Obsess Over Music That Doesn't Exist Yet
Why? Was he blinded by grief? Did he see a resemblance that wasn't there because he needed a piece of his childhood to be alive? Lawhon explores this loyalty. It shows how "truth" is often less about facts and more about what we need to believe to keep going.
The Writing Style: Blood and Silk
Lawhon’s prose is evocative. She has this way of describing the Russian winter that makes you want to reach for a blanket. But she also describes the smell of gunpowder and the metallic tang of blood with a clinical precision that keeps the book from feeling like a "trashy" historical romance.
It’s a heavy book. It’s about the loss of identity. When you’re a Grand Duchess, your identity is defined by your title, your jewels, and your father’s crown. When that’s stripped away, who are you? If you’re a nameless woman in a canal, why not become a Duchess?
The dialogue is snappy, often cynical. Anna Anderson, in particular, is written with a sharp tongue. She’s not a victim; she’s a fighter. Even if she’s fighting for a lie, you can’t help but respect the sheer tenacity it took to maintain that persona for sixty years.
Comparing "I Was Anastasia" to Other Romanov Media
The Romanovs are an industry. From the 1956 Ingrid Bergman film Anastasia to the 1997 animated musical with the talking bat, we’ve been fed a version of this story that is sanitized.
The I Was Anastasia book is the antidote to the Disney version.
It aligns more closely with works like The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport or The Resurrection of the Romanovs by Greg King. It respects the history enough to show the darkness. It doesn't give you a happy ending where the princess finds her grandmother and lives in a palace. It gives you the ending history gave us: a quiet death in Virginia and a pile of bones in a Russian forest.
👉 See also: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads: Why This Live Album Still Beats the Studio Records
Actionable Insights for Readers and History Buffs
If you’re planning to pick up the book or you’ve just finished it and want to separate the "book world" from the "real world," here is how to approach it.
1. Fact-Check the DNA
In 1994, years after Anna Anderson died and was cremated, researchers used a small tissue sample preserved at a hospital to run DNA tests. They compared it to Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh), who was a direct descendant of the Tsarina’s sister. It wasn't a match. They also compared it to the Schanzkowska family. It was a match. Understanding this makes the book much more poignant because you realize you are watching a woman lose herself in a fantasy.
2. Look at the Photography
The Romanovs were obsessed with photography. There are thousands of private family photos available online (the Beinecke Library has a massive digital collection). Looking at the real faces of the sisters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—while reading the book makes the 1918 chapters much more visceral. You see them as real teenagers, not just symbols.
3. Visit the "Impatiev House" (Virtually)
The house where they died was demolished in 1977 on the orders of Boris Yeltsin, but there is now a "Church on the Blood" at the site. Mapping out the layout of the house helps you understand the logistics of their imprisonment described in the novel.
4. Read the "Reverse" Chapters Carefully
If the timeline gets confusing, don't be afraid to flip back. The book is designed to be a bit of a labyrinth. Pay attention to the recurring motifs—the jewelry, the specific memories of "the boy" (Alexei)—as they appear in both timelines.
The I Was Anastasia book works because it acknowledges that we don't just want the truth; we want a story. We want the girl to escape. We want the diamonds to save her. Lawhon gives us both the fantasy and the cold, hard reality, and lets us decide which one we want to live with. It’s a masterful bit of storytelling that reminds us why, over a century later, we are still obsessed with the girl who wasn't there.
To get the most out of your reading experience, start by researching the "Trial of the Century" in Germany. Knowing the legal hurdles Anna Anderson faced adds a layer of tension to her 1920s and 30s chapters. Then, move into Lawhon’s narrative and see how she weaves those legal depositions into emotional beats. Once you finish, look into the 2007 discovery of the remains of Alexei and Maria—it provides the final, sobering "period" at the end of a very long historical sentence.