Charles “Sydney” Gibbes, the imperial tutor, is alleged to have met with her on occasion. Indeed, Ancestry dot com, does show records indicating that she traveled to Great Britain by ship various times before World War II. George, Sydney’s adopted son, entrusted her with many objects his father had spirited out of Russia, some under the noses of the Bolsheviks from the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Urals, Russia.

One speculates that such a long trip abroad would have given her opportunity to visit others, and one is left to wonder WHOM.

Would an impostress have been so generously welcomed by a trusted former member of the tsarist imperial retinue? Under the guise of the pseudonym “Evgenia Smetisko,” at times anglicized to “Eugenia Smith,” would the protagonist of Froebel-Parker’s book have visited relatives in London? If so, might they have been sworn to secrecy as part of a multi-national “state secret?”

“Anastasia” means “resurrection,” and it seems the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, nee von Hessen und bei Rhein, lived up to the essence of her moniker.

GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA: STILL A MYSTERY is available at histriabooks.com/product/grand-duchess-anastasia.

Portrait of adult HIH Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov, Grand Duchess of Russia by Barbara Korr Green.

photo by JF-P