Free Republic

London — A book to be published this week says that Britain's Queen Victoria may have been illegitimate, possibly undermining the whole Royal Family's legitimacy, the Sunday Times reported. In his book The Victorians, acclaimed biographer A.N. Wilson alleges that Victoria's mother, Princess Victoire of Leiningen, had a lengthy affair with her Irish-born secretary Sir John Conroy and that he, rather than Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, was Victoria's real father. Buckingham Palace said it would not comment on the allegation. Mr. Wilson based his argument partly on medical data, the newspaper said. Records show that the illness porphyria...

Kiev, July 26, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate might reconsider its attitude toward what is widely believed to be the remains of Russia's last Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family and entourage, which were found at the site of their shooting near Yekaterinburg and were buried at the Imperial Burial Vault at the Cathedral of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg in 1998. "I would like to announce very important information we have received from New York, which is related to the circumstances of the royal family's death. I believe these circumstances will help us determine...

Russia's Supreme Court has ruled that the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family were victims of political repression and should be rehabilitated... Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, their five children, doctor and three servants were shot dead by Bolshevik revolutionaries in July, 1918. Lower courts had previously refused to reclassify the killings, which had been categorised as simply murder... The Romanovs were shot by a firing squad without a trial, in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. The Supreme Court "declared as groundless the repression of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and ordered their rehabilitation", the judge's decision said on...

News   July 17, 2008, 4:55DNA confirms Tsar’s family remainsDNA results have confirmed that remains found near Ekaterinburg a year ago belong to Prince Aleksey and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna of the Romanov family. The announcement comes on the 90th anniversary of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family by Bolsheviks.On Wednesday, church services are being held across Russia to remember the tragic event. The last Tsar of Russia and his family were shot in the early hours of July 17 1918, less than two years after the abdication of Nicholas II, in the Urals city of...

MOSCOW (AP) - For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne. Some said the delicate 13-year-old had somehow survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war. Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery by identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria. The remains of their parents—Nicholas...

MOSCOW - DNA tests carried out by a U.S. laboratory prove that bone fragments exhumed last year belong to two children of Czar Nicholas II, putting to rest questions about what happened to Russia's last royal family, a regional governor said Wednesday. Bone fragments dug up near the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg are indeed those of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister, Maria, whose remains had been missing since the family was murdered in 1918 as Russia descended into civil war, said Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk region. "We have now found the entire family," he told reporters...

MOSCOW: Prosecutors announced Friday that they have reopened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the last Russian czar and his family nearly 90 years ago after an archaeologist said the remains of the czar's son and heir to the throne at last may have been found. The announcement of the reopened investigation, while a routine matter, signaled that government may be taking the claims — announced Thursday by Yekaterinburg researcher Sergei Pogorelov — seriously. In comments broadcast on NTV, Pogorelov said bones found in a burned area of ground near Yekaterinburg belong to a boy and a...

Descendant of last czar pushes Russia to admit mistake. Relative seeks formal admission that Nicholas II was unjustly killed By GRAEME SMITH Monday, January 9, 2006 YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA -- On the face of it, Maria Romanova's legal application to Russian prosecutors might seem straightforward. As the self-described head of the surviving family of Nicholas II, Russia's last czar, Ms. Romanova wants rehabilitation for her ancestors, according to her lawyer. Under Russian law, this would mean a formal admission that Nicholas II was unjustly killed along with his wife, children and attendants after revolution swept away Russia's monarchy. Boris Yeltsin went...

I've been dating a woman in St. Petersburg, Russia for over a year whose grandfather was apparently given a lethal injection by the communists when he went in for a routine physical in the late 1940s. His name: Fyedor Korablyev, born 16 February 1907 Even before the apparent murder, the family has been afraid to talk about any relation to the Romanov Family but an older family member has just told me that Alexei Romanov died as a monk in Siberia in 1960. The world is aware that Alexei's bones were never found. He was not executed with this family...

Scientist: DNA Disputes Russian Tsar Remains July 14, 2004 — An American scientific team has disputed what was thought to be the definitive identification of the remains of the Russian royal family, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, London's Daily Telegraph said Monday. The Russian government in 1998 identified bones found in a common grave in Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk, as belonging to Tsar Nicholas, Tsarina Alexandra and three of their daughters. Tsar Nicholis And Family “ Calling us names, as Dr. Gill has done, will not help their fatally flawed position." ” The Russian authorities said then that the identification...

In Wilson's War Message to Congress on 2 April, 1917, Woodrow Wilson said the following: A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady...

Amateurs Unravel Russia’s Last Royal Mystery Agence France PresseCzar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife, Alexandra, wearing crown, and their children in 1914, four years before they were killed. By CLIFFORD J. LEVY Published: November 25, 2007 YEKATERINBURG, Russia — On the outskirts of this burly industrial center, off a road like any other, on a nowhere scrap of land — here unfolded the final act of one of the last century’s most momentous events. Excavations were done near Yekaterinburg in September. An archaeologist oversaw the search. A short way through a clearing, toward a cluster of birch trees, the...