Anastasia Romanov, he’d said, keeping his voice low and his eyes on the screen. A Russian princess.

But Dad, I thought you hated the Russians, Katie had teased, as she descended to the floor cross-legged, a curled slice of pizza in her hand. The rest of us followed the birthday girl’s lead.

Mr. Shipman explained that the film was about a woman pretending to be Princess Anastasia, the sole survivor of the execution of the Romanov family during the Russian revolution. No one could confirm her identity because the entire Romanov family had been taken to the depths of a palace and murdered after months of captivity.

I made sure no one noticed that my hands had begun to tremble, that I hadn’t taken a second bite of my slice. I slipped away to the bathroom, ran the faucet, and pressed a towel over my mouth to muffle my cries.

Before the girls noticed I was gone, I had already run across two neighborhoods of Istanbul and back into Antonia’s arms. Mom fixed it all with a phone call. She’d become very good at explaining my curious behaviors by then.

Anastasia Romanov’s story tortured me. I needed to know everything about her. The more I read, the more obsessed I became with her story.

In 1918, after months of being held captive in a palace by the Bolsheviks, all members of the Romanov family were executed. Rumors circulated that seventeen-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia managed to survive the firing squad and had escaped from the palace. Over the years several women had come forward claiming to be Anastasia. A suicidal woman pulled from a Berlin canal lived in an asylum for two years before declaring that she was the grand duchess and had arrived in New York City in 1928. She submitted the scars on her body as proof, claiming they were from wounds inflicted on her by the Bolsheviks.

I remember looking down at my own body when I’d read that, thinking there wasn’t a single mark on me, not even the one on my foot, that could prove my identity. And if I told anyone my story, they might think me insane as well.

A year after I’d lost my family, a determined geologist, following a series of clues, found the remains of the Romanov family. The bodies had been buried, unburied, burned, and doused with sulfuric acid before being buried again. But instead of broadcasting his discovery, the geologist ran a few secret tests on the bones and buried them once more. There was still fear, even six decades later, that revealing the truth about the executions would invite punishment.