Duchess Wannabe

...In her tidy and well-written book, Frances Welch resists the temptation to analogize or even analyze this passion to believe in the unbelievable, which most of us in varying degrees share...

...there wasn’t anyone left within her immediate circle to dispute the claims of a lunatic...

...Anyway, who needs analysis when we have Prince Felix Yussoupov doing a Beliefnet play-by-play in the middle of the book...

...deliberate engagement of the will...

...Here she married a wealthy guy named Jack who lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, called her Anastasia, and believed in her utterly...

...The less biased might attribute these frailties to limited schooling and limited means—as, indeed, proved to be the case: Our Fr?ulein was actually born in Poland and used to wash bottles in a brewery—but her legions of fans were obdurate...

...BY JUDY BACHRACH In 1921, in an insane asylum just outside Berlin, an inmate registered as Fr?ulein Unbekannt (“Miss Unknown”) gradually came to inhabit the demanding persona of the Grand Duchess Anastasia...

...Or did she slide so easily...

...But it is also true that the Bolsheviks, who aimed at her and her family three years earlier, were hopelessly drunk and the scene of the massacre chaotic...

...A German psychoanalyst—and what does this say about the profession?— declared after examining her that “the curious amnesia is a result of a more or Judy Bachrach is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair...

...It is probably a case of loss of memory by auto-suggestion...

...She remembered almost nothing about Imperial Russia: “That is so far back and so dead, all so past,” was her unvarying reply to the curious...

...Hysterical, vulgar and common,” was his verdict, and as Yussoupov was not simply a critic of character but also the assassin of the nasty monk Rasputin, who shared these same sad fl aws, his judgment may be considered to carry some weight...

...Why not...

...Nor was he alone in his opinion...

...The University of Mainz came to the conclusion that she was absolutely genuine...

...as did the anthropologist Otto Reche, the respected graphologist Minna Becker (who had a hand in authenticating Anne Frank’s diary), and most important to Welch’s story, Gleb Botkin, son of the Imperial Family’s devoted physician and Anna’s most devoted acolyte...

...And as Frances Welch makes clear in her intelligent and often incongruously droll account of fraud and contagious credulity, in the case of Anastasia, anyone did...

...Throughout the history of Anna Anderson (as the would-be Anastasia ultimately permitted herself to be called by ever-changing sets of courtiers of assorted nationalities), there were a vast number of personal oddities on display, clues that might give pause to observers of normal intelligence...

...Ultimately, and perhaps inevitably, Anna was brought to the United States, birthplace of reincarnation...

...Or better still, a Romanov and an amnesiac...

...Academic triumphs also seemed to elude her, most notably the ability to count or tell time...

...As both royal parents were without a doubt murdered in Ekaterinburg, along with at least four of their fi ve children and their remaining servants—one of whom made the mistake of struggling to her feet after a round of bullets and declaring, wrongly as things transpired, “God has saved me...

...Always, however, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that a dose of healthy skepticism might have been in order...

...The body of Anastasia, the most mischievous and spirited member of the Romanovs, was never—then or since—discovered, so anyone, really, could adopt her identity...

...You could be a Romanov and an illiterate...

...In the fi rst place, Fr?ulein Unbekannt didn’t dream up the royal identity for herself: It was suggested to her by a fellow asylum inmate who, on perusing the tabloids of the day, informed Fr?ulein U that she was actually a ringer for the (dead) Grand Duchess Tatiana, Anastasia’s older sister...

...When this incarnation was disbelieved by the czarina’s lady-inwaiting— who, on meeting the young woman, found her to be far too short to be Tatiana, dead or alive—Fr?ulein U casually remarked, “I never said I was Tatiana,” and easily slid into the persona of Anastasia instead...

...The new Anna/Anastasia was, signifi cantly, a lot homelier than the original, and unable to speak Russian, although this last defi ciency was explained away, as Welch dryly notes, by “supporters [who] maintained that the language had too many bad associations for her...

...At that point, the youngest child of the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his wife Alexandra, was very likely dead, shot when she was just a teenager along with the rest of the Imperial Family...

...and very likely this is to her credit...

...Even Hollywood swallowed the bait, sort of: Fans of Ingrid Bergman may recollect that, in a 1956 fi lm costarring Yul Brynner, the actress played a role based in large measure on the cunning Fr?ulein, who received $30,000 from Twentieth Century Fox for her acquiescence...

...These false pretenders ought to be gathered up and sent to live together in a house somewhere,” the prince concluded with uncharacteristic moderation...

...Ultimately, too, the story goes full circle, in a lot of ways: Anna’s 1984 death certifi cate lists her father as “Czar Nikolai,” and under the listing “Usual or Last Occupation,” the word “Royalty” is typed...

...If you had seen her, I am convinced that you would recoil in horror at the thought that this frightful creature could be a daughter of our Tsar,” Yussoupov informed Grand Duke Andrew...

...For example, the Grand Duchess claimed early on, before she grew more practiced, to have given birth to a child fathered by a common soldier on December 1, 1918: That would have been fi ve months after the Bolsheviks shot her family...

...In other words, Professor Karl Bonhoeffer concluded unequivocally, the patient was, however damaged by personal trauma, indeed “the daughter of the Tsar” and not at all a fruitcake just because she kept 40 cats, some with maggots, or “a deliberate fraud...

...The studio, in turn, basically declared her to be the real ticket...