The male remains from the 2007 site were identified as Alexei through Y-STR analysis, which matched exactly with Nicholas II and with male-line Romanov relatives tested as references.
The female remains from the 2007 site — the missing daughter — were identified as a daughter of Nicholas II and Alexandra through mtDNA matching with Prince Philip’s reference profile. Which specific daughter she was — Maria or Anastasia — remained and remains disputed: the two sisters share identical mitochondrial DNA (having the same mother), and no reference DNA exists from either Maria or Anastasia individually that would allow their remains to be told apart from each other by mtDNA alone. Russian scientists concluded the remains were Maria’s; American researchers maintained they were Anastasia’s.
What the 2009 research established definitively: all five children of Nicholas II and Alexandra were physically present across the two grave sites. There was no missing child who could have escaped. Whatever the unresolvable naming dispute between Maria and Anastasia for one set of remains, neither sister had survived.
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## The Problem of Recognition: What the Anderson Case Reveals
The Anna Anderson case is, among other things, a sustained demonstration of the limitations of human recognition as evidence — and the particular difficulty of maintaining those limitations in the face of emotional investment.
The people who recognized Anderson as Anastasia were not, in most cases, acting in bad faith. They had known Anastasia. They were looking at a woman who shared some physical characteristics with their memory of her. Time had passed. Circumstances had changed both the observer and the observed. The conditions under which they made their assessments — often emotional, often in settings shaped by the existing belief that this might be Anastasia — were not optimal for dispassionate evaluation.