Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankie. Listener discretion advised. If you
Speaker 1: were living in eastern Toronto in the year nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: you might have seen an old woman bustling in and
Speaker 1: out of a little apartment that she lived in above
Speaker 1: the local barbershop. She might have nodded at the patrons
Speaker 1: of Ray's Barbershop and Gerrard Street East, which was located
Speaker 1: a short walk away from Lake Ontario, with a view
Speaker 1: to New York State across the water. The woman was
Speaker 1: a widow who spoke with boundless love for her late husband.
Speaker 1: She adored her grandchildren. She was an artist, often seen
Speaker 1: with a paint brush in her hand. But this woman
Speaker 1: also had unusual guests come visit her from time to time,
Speaker 1: people whose bearing and dress appeared undeniably regal. Rumor had
Speaker 1: it that when Queen Elizabeth the Second visited Canada, the
Speaker 1: Queen herself invited the old woman onto the Royal yacht.
Speaker 1: Rumor had it that if you looked closely around the mouth,
Speaker 1: the old widow bore a slight resemblance to the Queen.
Speaker 1: They were, after all, first cousins twice removed, and if
Speaker 1: you looked even closer at the old woman's face, you
Speaker 1: might have seen that she had a haunted look about
Speaker 1: her eyes. Because this woman who lived above the local
Speaker 1: barber shop in Canada was no ordinary widow. She was
Speaker 1: Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, the last living member of Russia's
Speaker 1: once fearsome Romanov dynasty, not the only descendant, but the
Speaker 1: last person alive who had actually lived during the Romanov's
Speaker 1: three hundred year reign. She was the final vestige of
Speaker 1: a lineage that had ruled Russia from sixteen thirteen to
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen. Grand Duchess Olga was a decorated nurse who
Speaker 1: served on the front in World War One, a mother
Speaker 1: who escaped Russia while pregnant with a child in tow.
Speaker 1: But most of all, she was the last living remnant
Speaker 1: of the dynasty that had ended in revolution and the
Speaker 1: gruesome murder of her brother's entire family, including most famously,
Speaker 1: the little Princess Anastasia. Grand Duchess Olga had called the
Speaker 1: young Anastasia the little One, and she had loved the
Speaker 1: girl with all of her heart, and Grand Duchess Olga
Speaker 1: had been deceived later in life by Anastasia, Ja's most
Speaker 1: famous pretender, and after all of that, there she was
Speaker 1: in Toronto at the end of her life. You can
Speaker 1: almost see her, aged seventy eight in nineteen sixty, the
Speaker 1: year JFK was elected president, when Elvis Presley and Chubby
Speaker 1: Checker played on the radio. It was there that Olga
Speaker 1: Alexandrovna lived and eventually died, above the clippers and hair
Speaker 1: shavings of the barber shop below. The public had been
Speaker 1: obsessed with the possible survival of the little Grand Duchess Anastasia,
Speaker 1: but the public largely ignored this other Grand Duchess of
Speaker 1: the Romanovs, who was still living in their midsts. The
Speaker 1: one survivor left behind. I'm Danish Schwartz and this is
Speaker 1: noble blood. The Grand Duchess Olga was born on June thirteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty two, at the Peterhoff Palace in Saint Petersburg.
Speaker 1: She was the youngest and last child of her father,
Speaker 1: Czar Alexander, the third of the Romanov dynasty, and her mother,
Speaker 1: Grand Duchess Dagmar Baby. Olga's birth was heralded with a
Speaker 1: one hundred and one gun salute, a sign of how
Speaker 1: cherished she would feel in her youth before it would
Speaker 1: all get taken away with the revolution that was still
Speaker 1: decades in the future. At this point, Olga had a
Speaker 1: very happy childhood. Her big, burly father adored her, and
Speaker 1: she adored him. He was everything to her. In her
Speaker 1: own words, some observers even remarked that they were soulmates.
Speaker 1: Olga lived more simply than we might imagine of a
Speaker 1: Russian royal. Her biographer Ian Vores notes that she slept
Speaker 1: on a slim mattress with one hard pillow, but then
Speaker 1: he goes on to tell us that she spent her
Speaker 1: days a in a nine hundred room palace, so she
Speaker 1: still lived far more opulently than most. The resident palace
Speaker 1: ghost of Oga's childhood was Paul the First, the assassinated
Speaker 1: son of Catherine the Great. Even as a child, Olga
Speaker 1: was even keeled in the face of death. I never
Speaker 1: did see his ghost, she would later tell her official biographer,
Speaker 1: and it made me despair. I would have liked to
Speaker 1: meet him. Olga's beloved father was unusually doting and present
Speaker 1: for a Czar of Russia, but he was also gone
Speaker 1: too soon after a shockingly short bout of kidney disease.
Speaker 1: He died in Olga's mother's arms in eighteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: when he was forty nine years old. Olga was only twelve.
Speaker 1: It was the first of a long series of heartbreaks
Speaker 1: that fate had in store for her. Olga's brother took
Speaker 1: the throne as Nicholas the Second, twenty six years old,
Speaker 1: and everyone agreed ill prepared for the rule. He was
Speaker 1: to be the last Czar of Russia and the end
Speaker 1: of the three hundred year rule of the Romanovs, but
Speaker 1: Olga didn't know that yet. She had her own personal
Speaker 1: problems to deal with. In nineteen oh one, just before
Speaker 1: her nineteenth birthday, the same year her niece Anastasia was born,
Speaker 1: Olga was attending a seemingly normal party. Suddenly she was
Speaker 1: swept unceremoniously to a sitting room upstairs. Inside was Duke
Speaker 1: Peter Alexandrovitch, a distant cousin of hers, who was fourteen
Speaker 1: years older. Olga didn't understand what she was doing alone
Speaker 1: in a room with him, and what he did next
Speaker 1: made even less sense to her. In Olga's own words,
Speaker 1: I was just tricked. I saw old cousin Peter, standing there,
Speaker 1: extremely ill at ease. He did not look at me.
Speaker 1: I heard him stammer through a proposal. I was so
Speaker 1: taken aback that all I could say was thank you.
Speaker 1: She had gotten engaged without realizing what was happening. The
Speaker 1: proposal was a shock, largely because everyone at court and
Speaker 1: across Saint Petersburg assumed that Peter was gay. He probably was.
Speaker 1: Olga's marriage to him would go unconsummated. Olga spent the
Speaker 1: night of her betrothal crying. The problem wasn't only that
Speaker 1: Peter had no interest in women. He was a gambler who,
Speaker 1: according to Olga's biographer quote, loathed pets about the house,
Speaker 1: open windows and walks. Seems like a fun guy. So
Speaker 1: poor Olga, once the beloved, littlest daughter of her father,
Speaker 1: the Czar, was married to a man who could not
Speaker 1: make her happy. She was so depressed that she lost
Speaker 1: her hair for some time and had to wear a wig.
Speaker 1: Unable to focus on domestic bliss, Olga focused instead on
Speaker 1: a white villa she had built for herself, called Olgino.
Speaker 1: It was where she spent her happiest times. Out near
Speaker 1: the peasant classes, Olga discovered an interest in nursing and
Speaker 1: a passion for helping the poor and wretched. It was
Speaker 1: a passion that would hurt her years later, when a
Speaker 1: woman in ill health pretending to be Anastasia would try
Speaker 1: to trick her. And perhaps Olga's life would have gone
Speaker 1: on that way, happy at her villa, lonely at home,
Speaker 1: if not for the fateful day in nineteen o three
Speaker 1: when she spotted Nikolay Kolokovski. He was the tall man
Speaker 1: standing in a guard's uniform at a military review, and Olga,
Speaker 1: with all of the quashed love she had felt in
Speaker 1: her youth rising up in her heart, met his eye. Suddenly, unexpectedly,
Speaker 1: Olga's life became a love story. Suddenly she was a
Speaker 1: fairytale princess meeting her prince charming. She described it as
Speaker 1: love at first sight. Quote. I was twenty two years old,
Speaker 1: she said, and I loved for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life, and I knew that my love was accepted
Speaker 1: and returned. Of course, there was still the small matter
Speaker 1: of her being married. Olga knew she needed to take
Speaker 1: care of that, so, flushed with the urgency and passion
Speaker 1: of new love, she cornered her husband in the library
Speaker 1: at home, just as he had once cornered her at
Speaker 1: a party with his unwelcome proposal. She told her astonished
Speaker 1: husband that she was in love and she needed them
Speaker 1: to get divorced. Olga was surrounded by his books and
Speaker 1: backlit by the open door. Her husband had no sexual
Speaker 1: attraction to her, had never pretended to any from the
Speaker 1: moment of their proposal Throughout the two years thus far
Speaker 1: of their marriage. She must have been flushed there in
Speaker 1: the library, requesting her freedom from him. I can imagine
Speaker 1: her excited round cheeks, the hair on her neck standing up.
Speaker 1: Though history does not remark upon her as a great beauty,
Speaker 1: to modern eyes, she was beautiful. One photo of her
Speaker 1: as a young woman shows her with a delicate, long
Speaker 1: neck encircled by a single strand pearl necklace, her expression
Speaker 1: somewhere between serene strength and coming fear, her long hair
Speaker 1: flowing down her back. There in the library, she stood
Speaker 1: facing her husband. But Peter, of course, said that they
Speaker 1: could not get a divorce right then, maybe in time
Speaker 1: seven years. He proposed a sabbatical that would waste the
Speaker 1: best years of her life with him. Yet Olga's husband
Speaker 1: was calculating not cruel. A gambler to the last, took
Speaker 1: on another kind of gamble, probably hoping for a win
Speaker 1: win scenario. He appointed his wife's great love to be
Speaker 1: his own aide, moving Nikolay Kolokovski into their house. Olga
Speaker 1: spent over a decade as a married woman who lived
Speaker 1: alongside a man who was the love of her life,
Speaker 1: a strange but not unworkable domestic drama. If only that
Speaker 1: had been the greatest challenge of her life. During those
Speaker 1: years married to Peter but in love with Kolokovsky, Olga
Speaker 1: did have familial love in her life as well. In particular,
Speaker 1: she took a liking to her brother Nikki's children. The
Speaker 1: Emperor Nicholas the second had four daughters, and Olga's favorite
Speaker 1: was the youngest, like Olga had been herself, Little Anastasia,
Speaker 1: Olga said, was always my favorite. I liked her fearlessness.
Speaker 1: She never went or cried even when hurt. She was
Speaker 1: a fearful tomboy. Goodness only knows which of the young
Speaker 1: cousins had taught her how to climb trees, but climbed
Speaker 1: them Anastasia did, even when she was quite small. Anastasia
Speaker 1: was feisty, bold, spirited, Olga lovingly called her quote the
Speaker 1: Little One. Aunt Olga would take the Little One and
Speaker 1: her sisters out to see the world beyond the palace gates.
Speaker 1: She delighted in Olga's impish talent for imitating palace guests,
Speaker 1: even as inside Olga's own heart she wondered whether she
Speaker 1: would ever get to have children herself. Her husband had
Speaker 1: never slept with her, and the man she loved lived
Speaker 1: in the home with them, but they could not share
Speaker 1: a bed. And then war came for the world, and
Speaker 1: the problem of marriage, childlessness and true love was shunted
Speaker 1: aside for Olga as it was for the rest of Russia.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fourteen, she left to serve as a nurse
Speaker 1: on the front. It was astonishing the tsar's own sister
Speaker 1: donning a nurse's uniform as the Great war raged, kneeling
Speaker 1: to apply a tourniquet, her hands splashed with wounded soldier's blood.
Speaker 1: And yet it's completely true. Olga had always had a
Speaker 1: soft spot for the infirm, even when her brother Nikki
Speaker 1: was losing favor with his people. As Russia retreated and
Speaker 1: soldiers died and morale nosedived, she continued to care for
Speaker 1: the wounded. At one point, an angry fellow nurse attempted
Speaker 1: to kill the tsar's sister by smashing a giant glass
Speaker 1: jar of vasileene on her head, but Olga escaped intact.
Speaker 1: It was to be the story of her life. She
Speaker 1: escaped intact, even when her family did not. As the
Speaker 1: nineteen tens wore on, Olga's brother was becoming increasingly unpopular.
Speaker 1: As tzar, he could not please his people, but he
Speaker 1: was able to offer one final gift to his youngest sister.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixteen, he granted her the long awaited annulment
Speaker 1: from her husband, Peter. She immediately married her longtime love Kolikovski,
Speaker 1: but there was no grand Russian wedding for Olga. She
Speaker 1: spoke her vows wearing a Red Cross uniform. Yet she
Speaker 1: felt that quote something like new strength came to me.
Speaker 1: And then and there, in that chapel, standing beside my
Speaker 1: beloved Kukushkin, I resolved to face the future, whatever it brought.
Speaker 1: That future was to be darker than she might have imagined.
Speaker 1: In the bitter cold of winter nineteen seventeen, the February
Speaker 1: Revolution succeeded in ending the Russian monarchy, Olga's brother Nicholas
Speaker 1: abdicated the throne. It was a dangerous time to be
Speaker 1: a Romanov. Olga and her now husband fled south, but
Speaker 1: their train was intercepted and they were captured. Olga thought
Speaker 1: she was going to die. She was a dynastic Romanov,
Speaker 1: the non creepy soulmate of her father, the late Czar Alexander,
Speaker 1: A loving sister recently gifted the blessing of love by
Speaker 1: her brother, who was being hunted by the revolutionaries. The
Speaker 1: soldier who held Olga and her husband in captivity did
Speaker 1: not make eye contact with her. He did not want
Speaker 1: to look at those he might have to murder. But
Speaker 1: the Soviets could not decide between Sevestopol and Yalta, whose
Speaker 1: duty it was to chop off Olga's royal head. So
Speaker 1: Olga and her husband Nikolay were essentially placed under house
Speaker 1: arrest in Crimea while Olga feared for the rest of
Speaker 1: her family. What had become of her brother, her nieces,
Speaker 1: the Sarvich, her only nephew, and what had become of
Speaker 1: the little one Anastasia. Olga heard horrific rumors about what
Speaker 1: might have happened to her brother and his family, but
Speaker 1: she didn't want to believe them. The Emperor and his
Speaker 1: family had disappeared, Olga and her mother hoped against hope
Speaker 1: that they had escaped, perhaps to England. If you want
Speaker 1: the story on that possible escape, go back to a
Speaker 1: very early episode of Noble Blood called Our Dearest Cousin Nikki.
Speaker 1: The Russian sky seemed dark, almost bloody. Olga gave birth
Speaker 1: to her first child, a son, essentially under house arrest.
Speaker 1: She was pregnant again when she and her husband managed
Speaker 1: to escape, this time to the Caucuses. They kept fleeing,
Speaker 1: facing extreme danger. At one point, Olga and her two
Speaker 1: boys were kicked out of a moving train into a
Speaker 1: freezing night, but Olga's story was to survive. At last.
Speaker 1: She and her little family wound up in Denmark, where
Speaker 1: they finally settled into their exile in nineteen nineteen. Her mother, Dagmar,
Speaker 1: had been Danish. Only later would Olga really let herself
Speaker 1: hear about the brutal end to her brother's family, the
Speaker 1: story that would enrapture the world. They were brought into
Speaker 1: a basement by Bolshevik revolutionaries and shot and then bayoneted
Speaker 1: until they were all dead. The myth of The Survival
Speaker 1: of the Lost Romanov Anastasia is full of wild hope,
Speaker 1: painful delusion, Disney and Broadway musicals, but most of all pretend.
Speaker 1: Anyone familiar with the historical stories about Anastasia's possible survival
Speaker 1: will be familiar with the name Anna Anderson. If you
Speaker 1: aren't an Anastasia enthusiast listener, then you should know that
Speaker 1: Anna Anderson was the most famous of the women who
Speaker 1: came forward claiming to be the beloved lost daughter, the
Speaker 1: sole survivor of the Russian Revolution, the miraculously enduring Anastasia.
Speaker 1: And the reason that Anna Anderson was the most famous
Speaker 1: impostor of all was in large part the perceived acceptance
Speaker 1: of her as Anastasia by Anastasia's own dear aunt, Olga.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen twenty five, Olga left Denmark, not
Speaker 1: as a refugee this time, but as a seeker. She
Speaker 1: was headed to Berlin to visit a young, very ill
Speaker 1: woman who claimed to be her niece, Anna sion Stasia.
Speaker 1: The young woman had been pulled from a canal. In Berlin,
Speaker 1: Olga found her very thin, frail in a hospital bed.
Speaker 1: Though the young woman seemed to understand Russian, she would
Speaker 1: speak only German. Still, she had the same joint problem
Speaker 1: that Anastasia had in her feet, she knew a nickname
Speaker 1: that only the Imperial nieces would have known. And most
Speaker 1: of all, in the moment when the Grand Duchess Olga
Speaker 1: saw her, Olga told the Danish ambassador that her heart
Speaker 1: told her this was the little One, or did she so.
Speaker 1: Much of the truth of the story of Olga's meeting
Speaker 1: with Anna Anderson wound up recanted and changed later, perhaps
Speaker 1: in service of truth or perhaps out of embarrassment, which
Speaker 1: means that we can't be entirely sure. What actually happened
Speaker 1: is that, after meeting the girl, Olga did not dismiss her.
Speaker 1: She wrote five letters to the girl imploring her to
Speaker 1: get well. She also asked her own people to investigate
Speaker 1: the matter more deeply, writing in a letter that she
Speaker 1: could not definitively say the woman wasn't Anastasia. So the
Speaker 1: question is, did Olga believe the pretender? History doesn't know.
Speaker 1: Olga's own memoirs were written after the fact, after Olga
Speaker 1: had decided to insist that she had never believed Anna
Speaker 1: Anderson and never had a moment's hesitation, but here's what
Speaker 1: I think. We have to remember who we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: Olga Alexandrovna was, according to her granddaughter, quote, kindness itself
Speaker 1: to anyone in need. This was the daughter of the
Speaker 1: tsar who found happiness serving the peasants at her villa,
Speaker 1: the brother of the Emperor, who had worked as a
Speaker 1: humble nurse to wounded soldiers at the front. The woman
Speaker 1: who later in life would respond to every letter she
Speaker 1: received in Toronto quote, be they from kings or crackpots.
Speaker 1: It's no surprise that Olga would give a frail, wounded
Speaker 1: woman in Berlin the time of day, if only for
Speaker 1: a brief time, whether or not she believed she was
Speaker 1: her niece. And I think this too. When Olga was
Speaker 1: traveling to Berlin beside her husband, all she could see
Speaker 1: was the little one in her mind. God, how badly
Speaker 1: Olga must have wanted the story to be true. Let
Speaker 1: Anastasia be alive for just a moment more, she must
Speaker 1: have been thinking as she stepped into that hospital room,
Speaker 1: Let me, for one moment pretend. Ultimately, both Olga and
Speaker 1: the world rejected Anna Anderson's claim, recognizing the younger woman
Speaker 1: for what she was. An impostor. Years later, DNA evidence
Speaker 1: would make that undeniable. It's hard to avoid noticing that
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting parts of Olga's life was
Speaker 1: the way it intersected with the life of a more
Speaker 1: famous person, Anastasia, more famous because her tragic life was
Speaker 1: cut short, and cut short brutally at only seventeen. Olga
Speaker 1: escaped both her niece's fame and her fate. She was
Speaker 1: blessed with a long and mostly happy life, but after
Speaker 1: twenty five contented years spent in Denmark on a dairy
Speaker 1: farm with her husband and children, the Romanov name did
Speaker 1: come to haunt Olga again. In nineteen forty eight, fearing
Speaker 1: extradition to the Kremlin. After World War II, sixty six
Speaker 1: year old Olga and her family fled to Ontario. Her
Speaker 1: sons married women who were not from royal families, and
Speaker 1: Olga loved her grandchildren. She painted charming in bright scenes
Speaker 1: of Russian folk life, replete with colorful flowers and teas.
Speaker 1: She was not above using her quote nepo baby status
Speaker 1: as a Romanov to help place her paintings in galleries.
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth the Second owned nine paintings by her cousin Olga.
Speaker 1: Olga outlived her husband, but she loved him to the last.
Speaker 1: As her health deteriorated, fittingly, she was watched over by
Speaker 1: a former Imperial guard who had also found himself in Canada.
Speaker 1: Still she carried the weight of her history. I always laugh,
Speaker 1: she said, for if I ever start crying, I will
Speaker 1: never stop. And at the very end, on November twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, at seventy nine years old, Olga died. The
Speaker 1: last living Romanov who had been quote born in the
Speaker 1: Purple to a sitting emperor, died above Ray's barbershop in Toronto,
Speaker 1: a reminder that history, with all its great heights and
Speaker 1: terrible falls, is never really far away. That's the story
Speaker 1: of Grand Duchess Olga, the last surviving Romanov. But keep
Speaker 1: listening after a brief sponsor break, to find out what
Speaker 1: really happened to her little one, Anastasia. If you've seen
Speaker 1: the Disney or Broadway musical, you are probably familiar with
Speaker 1: the legend of the survival of the young Romanov daughter Anastasia.
Speaker 1: People love a story and a fantasy of a missing
Speaker 1: princess who managed to survive a massacre. It's fascinating, but
Speaker 1: what actually happened to Anastasia. For a long time, the
Speaker 1: world did not know for certain, and in that gap
Speaker 1: of knowledge, many pretenders stepped in with compelling stories people
Speaker 1: wanted to believe, including a young woman in Berlin named
Speaker 1: Anna Anderson who was institutionalized in a mental hospital after
Speaker 1: a suicide attempt, a woman who was most likely a
Speaker 1: Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. DNA evidence that was discovered in Russia
Speaker 1: was analyzed and reported to the public in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: which proved definitively that the remains of Anna Anderson had
Speaker 1: no genetic overlap with the remains of Zar Nicholas and
Speaker 1: his wife. Anderson had been an impostor. On top of
Speaker 1: disproving the pretender, it was also announced that Anastasia's bones
Speaker 1: had been discovered alongside her parents, so the saddest story
Speaker 1: of Olga's favorite niece was the true one. She had
Speaker 1: been shot and killed, her remains identified. The discovery was
Speaker 1: made more than thirty years after Olga's death, so Olga
Speaker 1: never had to know for certain about the tragic fate
Speaker 1: of her little one. She could always hope. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by me Danish Forts,
Speaker 1: with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zewick,
Speaker 1: Courtney Sender, Julia Milani, and Armand Casam. The show is
Speaker 1: edited and produced by Noahmy Griffin and rima il Kaali,
Speaker 1: with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.