TRIBUTE TO A GRAND DUCHESS

The most famous face of any Romanov, Anastasia has become the story in which legends are made; however, so few know who she really was aside from inaccurate movies, cartoons, and worst of all the imposters who posed as her after the Russian revolution.
Anastasia Nikolaevna was born June 18, 1901, the fourth daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicolas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. As succession laws in Russia existed, only a male could inherit the throne and after the birth of three other girls, Anastasia's birth was not as celebrated as modern day customs would expect; that is not to say, however, that she was unloved.
Of her four siblings, Anastasia without a doubt had the most character. She was notorious, and remains so today, for her sense of humor. Her character is displayed perfectly in the letters she wrote to her father:
Random Qutoes from a letter Anastasia wrote to her father

Tell Bob when you see him that I shall be punching him yet, I am itching to.
I sat digging my nose with my left hand. Olga [her older sister] wanted to give me a slap but I escaped from her swinish hand....Tatiana is as stupid as ever

Her practical jokes among the family oftentimes bordered to cruelty which lead some to see her as a mean tempered child. In one incident she had wrapped a rock inside a snowball and hurled it her older sister, Tatiana, knocking her out; this incident, as her Aunt noted, was one of the rare moments that Anastasia actually cried.
In the book Fate of the Romanovs Greg King and Penny Wilson state

She was the rebel of the family, her small, boyish frame well suited her wild pursuits. She climbed trees, then refused to come down; terrorized her tutors with practical jokes; and made frequent, often barbed comments at the expense of those around her. Once, when discussing portraits of her children with a visiting artist, the empress declared, 'It is Anastasia who will give you trouble.'

Upon the breakout of the Russian Revolution, Anastasia and her family were held under house arrest and eventually murdered by their Bolshevik captors.
Where the other equally charismatic members of her family, the names Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, her sisters, have tragically faded throughout history; while Anastasia has become infamously immortalized, not through who she was but through the imposters who in their shameful attempts for fame, glory, and wealth, insulted a grieving family and the memory of a murdered seventeen year old girl by presenting outrageous far-fetched claims of escape from a very real and brutal murder and slandering her identity by claiming it as their own.

Anna Anderson and Anastasia Nikolaevna, two women who never met one another, yet in the course of history their names will be forever intertwined. In the photographs one sees of Anna Anderson, the fraudulence is evident in her deceptive eyes and one can sense the fanatical relentlessness of her claim.

In the eyes of the real Anastasia, dignity and truth are present. Frozen in an erased era the viewer sees the image of a young girl who doesn't flaunt or exploit the existence of her high birth but rather revels in the experience of life; a life that will be tragically cut too short. She is oblivious to the fame she will one day have and the viewer is left imagining the jokes she would have made at the expense of the imposters who immortalized her name.