Whatever the inner life of the claim, whatever the mixture of confusion, calculation, belief, and performance that sustained it, the biological fact is settled. Anna Anderson was not Anastasia Romanov. Anastasia Romanov was killed in 1918, and her remains — however named in the ongoing dispute between Russian and American researchers — have been identified and returned to the family vault in St. Petersburg.
The story of the lost princess ends where it always had to end: with the finding that there was no lost princess. What remained was only the story itself — powerful, persistent, and ultimately unable to withstand the quiet testimony of the biology.
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## The 1928 Copenhagen Statement and Its Meaning
In October 1928, twelve surviving Romanov relatives signed what became known as the Copenhagen Statement — a formal collective declaration rejecting Anna Anderson’s claim to be Anastasia. The signatories included members of the Romanov family and their connections by marriage, and the statement was coordinated partly by those who stood to benefit from the rejection and partly by those who had known the imperial family personally and came to their conclusion through direct assessment.
The statement was significant in the public history of the case because it represented the most organized and broadly supported collective rejection of the claim up to that point. It appeared at a moment when Anderson had traveled to the United States and was attracting substantial American attention, and it was intended to counteract the growing infrastructure of American support that Gleb Botkin and Xenia Leeds were building around her.