But the whereabouts of the czar’s two other children – Crown Prince Alexei, 13, and Grand Duchess Maria, 19 – remained a mystery until 2007, when their suspected remains, a few bone fragments, were unearthed at a separate grave site in the Urals region.
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Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and their five children were executed in 1918 as White Army forces closed in on the Bolsheviks holding them prisoner.
Scientists said that DNA evidence was sufficient to conclude that the grave contained the remains of the tsar and tsarina, along with three of their daughters, and the government officially identified them in 1998.
Russian investigators have exhumed the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Aleksandra as part of a new probe into the 1918 slaying of the Romanov family. After being identified with DNA analysis, they were reburied in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998, the 80th anniversary of their deaths.
The murdered Romanov family members are buried at a St Petersburg cathedral.
Samples were also taken from the blood stains found on the uniform of Emperor Alexander II, Nicholas II’s grandfather who was killed by radical revolutionaries on 1 March 1881.
The church somewhat reluctantly allowed the family’s remains to be interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
The Soviet authorities portrayed him as weak, vacillating and despotic but he was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. The remains are kept in the Russian State Archives.
Together with their four daughters and son the family was killed by revolutionary Bolsheviks in 1918.
BBC News further noted that the church was the one who ordered the remains be re-examined to confirm links to other relatives whose remains were found elsewhere.
“Head of the House of Romanov Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna supports the resumption of the investigation and insists that all questions asked by the church would be given full and clear answers in the course of the preliminary investigation and that studies be of scientific nature”, he added.
Russia plans to rebury Alexei and Maria, alongside the rest of the family, but before the reburial goes ahead, the Russian Orthodox Church wants to verify the remains.
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Vladimir Putin’s prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has led efforts to give them a civilised burial 97 years after they were shot dead, but this will only now happen after the next forensic tests.
1 Comment on this Post
Louis Ferdinand Freiherr von Wetzler
The DNA studies and tests which were carried out twenty years ago, were more than enough, there is no doubt that the bones found near Ekaterinburg, were those of HIM Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, three of their daughters Olga, Tatyana and Anastasia and even from Doctor Eugene Botkin the personal physician to the Imperial family and three others who were murdered the very same day in a wood just 5 miles away of the city, Prince Vassily Dolgorukov, General Aid-de-Camp Count Tatischev, and Countess Anastasia Borisovna Hendrikov, lady in waiting to the Empress. This new study is completely absurd, is politically motivated and is part of the war between Maria Vladimirovna Romanov, who is not a Russian Grand Duchess at all and the rest of the family living abroad.