This category of myth is not peculiar to royal families or political executions, though those contexts are among its most common venues. The conditions that generate it are fairly consistent: death under circumstances where the body was not publicly displayed or publicly identified; a political, social, or emotional interest in the possibility of survival; and a culture willing to sustain the hope without demanding its resolution.
The Romanov case had all of these features. The Soviet government conducted the execution in secret, buried the bodies secretly, and offered no public accounting of the fate of the children for decades. Russian émigré communities had profound emotional investments in the possibility that the dynasty had not been completely destroyed. And the specific figure of Anastasia — young, vivid, the “mischievous one” in family accounts — was particularly well suited to the role of the miraculous survivor.
What made the Anderson case extraordinary within this category was its duration. Most survival myths fade within a generation; the individuals who might have provided authoritative testimony die, the cultural investment fades, and the story recedes. The Anderson case persisted for sixty years through a combination of aggressive legal action, sustained support networks, cultural reinforcement through fiction and film, and the real evidentiary ambiguity that the absence of the burial site created.
The DNA evidence arrived at a moment when the case had already substantially outlived the deaths of most people who had personal stakes in its resolution. It settled a question that had become primarily a matter of historical and cultural record rather than active legal dispute. The settling was no less important for coming late.