The House of Romanov was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after Anastasia Romanovna married Ivan the Terrible, the first crowned tsar of all Russia. Nicholas II and his immediate family were executed in 1918, but there are still living descendants.
Alexandra Feodorovna, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Emperor Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November [O.S. 14 November] 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917. A favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, she was, like her grandmother, one of the most famous royal carriers of haemophilia and bore a haemophiliac heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years. She and her immediate family were all murdered while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. In 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized her as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia was the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and of Tsarina Alexandra. She was born at Peterhof Palace, near Saint Petersburg.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.
Alexei Nikolaevich was the last Tsesarevich. He was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. He was born with haemophilia, which his parents tried treating with the methods of peasant faith healer Grigori Rasputin.
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia was the third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky was a Russian Old Bolshevik, revolutionary, and Soviet Chekist. Yurovsky was commander of the guard at Ipatiev House during the assassination of the Romanov family on the night of 17 July 1918. He is known as the chief executioner of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family, and four of their servants. Yurovsky was responsible for the distribution of weapons, ordering the family to the cellar room, announcing the execution to the family, and the disposal of the eleven bodies.
Ipatiev House was a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg where the former Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family, and members of his household were executed in July 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution. Its name is identical to that of the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, from where the Romanovs came to the throne. As an act for the 60th anniversary of the Russian Revolutions, it was demolished in 1977 by orders of the Politburo to the local soviet government, almost 59 years after the Romanov family murder and 14 years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.
Charles Sydney Gibbes was a British academic who from 1908 to 1917 served as the English tutor to the children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia. When Nicholas abdicated the throne in March 1917 Gibbes voluntarily accompanied the Imperial family into exile to the Siberian city of Tobolsk. After the family was murdered in 1918 Gibbes returned to the United Kingdom and eventually became an Orthodox monk, adopting the name of Nicholas in commemoration of Nicholas II. He died in 1963 and is buried at Headington cemetery, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England.
Alexander Nikolayevich Avdonin is a Russian who was the first known person, in 1979, to begin exhuming the grave of the seven murdered Romanovs and four members of their household. He was born in Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union, where the Romanovs were murdered in 1918.
Princess Helen of Serbia was a Serbian princess. She was the daughter of King Peter I of Serbia and his wife, the former Princess Ljubica of Montenegro. She was the elder sister of George, Crown Prince of Serbia and King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Helen was also a niece of Queen Elena of Italy, Princess Anastasia of Montenegro, wife of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia and of Princess Milica of Montenegro, wife of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich of Russia, the women who introduced Grigori Rasputin to Tsarina Alexandra.
The canonization of the Romanovs was the elevation to sainthood of the last Imperial Family of Russia – Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei – by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Anna Stepanovna Demidova was a lady-in-waiting in the service of Empress Alexandra of Russia. She stayed with the Romanov family when they were arrested, and was executed together with Alexandra and the Romanov family on 17 July 1918.
Members of the ruling Russian imperial family, the House of Romanov, were executed by a firing squad led by Yakov Yurovsky in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918, during both the Russian Civil War and near the end of the First World War.
Pyotr Zakharovich Ermakov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, notable as one of several men responsible for carrying out the murder of the Romanov family, including the deposed Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their children, and their retinue.
The Romanovs: An Imperial Family is a 2000 Russian historical drama film about the last days of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The Russian title implies both the Imperial Crown of Russia and the crown of thorns associated with martyrs. The film premiered at the 22nd annual Moscow Film Festival. The film was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards, but it didn't make the final shortlist.
The Russian Imperial Romanov family were shot and bayoneted to death by Bolshevik revolutionaries under Yakov Yurovsky on the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. Also murdered that night were members of the imperial entourage who had accompanied them: court physician Eugene Botkin; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and head cook Ivan Kharitonov. The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, where they were stripped, mutilated with grenades to prevent identification, and buried.
Stepan Vaganov was a Russian sailor and Bolshevik revolutionary. A participant in the establishment of Soviet power in the Urals and in the civil war, he is known for his personal participation in the killing of the Romanov family under Yakov Yurovsky on 17 July 1918.
Alexandra Alexandrovna Tegleva, also known as Shura Tegleva and Sasha Tegleva, was a Russian noblewoman who served as a nursemaid in the Russian Imperial Household. As nursemaid to the children of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, she went with the family into exile in Tobolsk following the abdication of Nicholas II during the February Revolution, but was ultimately prevented from staying with them during their house arrest at Ipatiev House. She survived the Russian Revolution and married Pierre Gilliard, a Swiss academic who served with her in the Imperial Household as the children's French tutor. She moved to Lausanne as a white émigré and remained there the rest of her life. Tegleva worked with her husband to investigate and debunk the claims made by Anna Anderson, a Romanov impostor who pretended to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.
Elizaveta Nikolaevna "Liza" Ersberg was a German-Russian parlormaid who served in the Russian Imperial Household. The daughter of a stoker employed by Emperor Alexander III, she was hired by Empress Maria Feodorovna as a parlormaid at the Alexander Palace in 1898. She used her post to obtain a position at court for her friend Anna Demidova, who became a lady-in-waiting to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
