Anna Anderson

Anna Anderson was the name adopted by a woman who emerged in Berlin after a suicide attempt in 1920 and later claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II of Russia. Her uncertain identity attracted former members of the Russian court, journalists, lawyers and supporters, and her claim became the most famous of the stories that one of the Romanov children had survived the family’s execution in 1918.

Anderson pursued recognition for decades and eventually settled in the United States. After her death in 1984, DNA comparisons using preserved biological material showed that she was not related to the Romanovs; the genetic evidence was consistent with the family of the Polish-German factory worker Franziska Schanzkowska, with whom Anderson had long been identified by opponents of her claim.

Ariana Franklin’s City of Shadows places Anna Anderson at the centre of a fictional conspiracy in 1920s Berlin. The novel uses her historical claim to be Anastasia, the uncertainty that surrounded her identity at the time and the political atmosphere of Weimar Germany, while inventing the murders and investigators who surround her.