The poem "The Dauphin and the Duchess" is based on inaccurate history.

I don't know when or where I first heard the story of Anastasia Romanov, but it likely was in my undergraduate history courses. That tantalizing snippet that maybe she wasn't executed with the rest of her family was the sort of fact that made a budding alternate history author take notice. And conspiracy theories on the topic abounded, so there was no dearth of information.

The problem, of course, was that it was only a story, perpetuated by women who wanted to claim the fame and wealth of the Romanov family, or perhaps by people who hoped that perhaps a member of the Tsar's family still survived. When the bodies of the Tsar's family were finally found in 1991, only the bodies of the parents and three d...

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