Yeppers - you're certainly right there. Not just those two either. It seems that almost any time a king, or heir to the throne was murdered, and then buried in secret, or even not so secret circumstances, someone would be ready to come forward to make the claim that they were really the missing royal.

In England, we have Simnel and Warbeck, the pretenders during the reign of Henry VII, pretending to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the murdered Princes in the Tower, and the Earl of Warwick - who had a better dynastic claim to the throne than Henry, who Henry was actually keeping prisoner at the time. Poor Warwick- he was publicly executed by Henry during Warbeck's ascendancy, to disprove his claim.

Russia seems to have more than its fair share. Following the usurpation of the throne by Boris Godunov , Ivan the Terrible's minister, there were at least two 'False Dimitrys' , who claimed to have been Ivan's son, who had died years earlier. One of them did not even speak Russian. Having said that, though, its by no means clear whether Anna Anderson herself ever spoke Russian.

Anna Anderson remains a splendid enigma. During the 90s, human remains were uncovered from a shallow grave near the four brother's mine outside Sverdlovsk, or Ekaterinburg as was, in Russia. According to testimony taken from guards involved in the killing of the family of Tsar Nicholas II,by white russian investigators who took control of the town soon afterwards, the four brothers mine was where they had tried to dispose of the bodies.These remains were believed to be the Imperial Family.
Modern DNA tests, compared DNA from the bodies with those of close relatives of the family. Among those whose DNA was compared was Prince Phillip, whose grandmother, and the Tsarina were sisters. Experts are certain that they have the remains of the Tsar, the Tsarina, and Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia. They have so far been unable to identify the remains of Alexei, the Tsarevitch, or Grand Duchess Marie. The remains which cuased most lively interest have been those of the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Which is all because of the remarkable Anna Anderson.

The lady who was to end her life known as Anna Anderson was fished out of a Berlin Canal , having tried to commit suicide, in, I believe, 1921. For a pretender to being one of the murdered Romanovs, there was no better time to have appeared. In the cou-ple of years following the murders of the family, a whole spate of rumours had grown concerning how one or other of the family had managed to escape. In particular, there was one persistent rumour that Anastasia had not been killed by the shooting, or by the blow on the head she received from the guards, and that a sympathetic guard had somehow spirited her away in the confusion of the night , when as we know, the white army had been in the process of taking Ekaterinburg. Actually, this myth does probablyt have its basis in truth. Anastasia's skull does show a serious wound, which could easily have been made by the butt of a rifle, which probably killed her, rather than any gun shots.

At first the claim that the girl from the Canal was Anastasia was forced on her by others, and she showed remarkable reluctance to discuss it. Soon afterwards she was positively identified as a missing Polish factory worker( sorry - the girl's name escapes me at the moment )- however the Anastasia bandwagon was soon put back on the road again following the Polish Girl's brother meeting Anna, and claiming that he had never seen her before in his life. Over the next fifteen years or so, Anna pressed her claim to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and met with some remarkable success on the way. Trusted friends, servants, and even a few members of the extended Imperial Family recognised her as Anastasia, although the Dowager Empress Maria, Tsar Nicholas' mother, never recognised her claim, and refused to even meet her.Anna married a Mr. Anderson, and in later years refused to even talk about her previous claims, before she died.

For me, the most interesting and remarkable thing about the Anna Anderson story is that so many people who might have been expected to have known her were taken in. its interesting to consider how and why this might have happened. I have my own ideas about this.

1)Wishful thinking. The death of family/friends in such a way is a horrible thing to contemplate. Yet if just one could have survived - and lets face it, this girl looks a bit like Anastasia - the voice is similar - she acts a bit like her- etc.

2)Nobody saw Anna Anderson until two or three years after the murders, in which time they would have expected Anastasia, who was in her mid teens, I believe, to have changed. Maybe they made too much allowance for what changes the adolescent growth spurt, and terrible experiences could have wrought.

3) I ask myself how well would anyone have got to know her anyway ? As close intimates of our British Royal Family have said - they may be friendly towards you, but don't ever make the mistake of thinking that they are your friends, or that you really know them at all. Surely Anastasia's position precluded anyone getting really close to her.

4) Not everyone was convinced, and those who weren't tended to be extremely firm and vocal about it.

5) Her refusal to speak russian ( although this is not SO unusual considering that the imperial family spoke a lot more French to each other than Russian, and English and even German for that matter )