Genetics Plays a Role in History

Queen Victoria’s daughter, Alice, married a German prince, Louis, and converted to Lutheranism. Their daughter, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Alexandra was, thus, a German princess, grew up in Germany, and was raised in the Lutheran church. Alexandra, married Tsar Nicholas, the last tsar of Russia, and they had four daughters: Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia. Many people in Russia didn’t like Tsarina Alexandra because she was German, not Russian, and Lutheran, not Russian Orthodox. Her mannerisms, speech, and dress were not what many people in Russia thought of as appropriate for the Tsar’s wife. Also, in Russia at that time, only a male could be tsar, so unless Alexandra and Nicholas had a son, the leadership would pass to another of Nicholas’ relatives when he died. Finally, however, they had a son who they named Alexei. Unfortunately, however, they soon discovered that he had inherited the hemophilia allele from Alexandra, from Alice, and from Queen Victoria. Realizing that chances were very slim that Alexei would survive to adulthood, Tsar Nicholas and his family became very withdrawn to try to keep that a secret (Alexandra was not very outgoing, anyway, which the people didn’t like). However, at that time, there was much social unrest in Russia, and the general public mistook the royal family’s withdrawl for aloofness and as a sign that they didn’t care about the poor living conditions of their people. Thus, Alexei’s hemophilia was probably a major contributing factor in the Russian revolution. On several occasions, Alexei had severe internal bleeding, and a rather disreputable man named Rasputin was somehow able to stop the bleeding. Because of his inexplicable ability to help Alexei, Rasputin became part of the “inner circle” and close confidant of the royal family, which also angered many people who did not trust him.

Thus, when the Russian Revolution began, Rasputin was among the first to be executed. Eventually, Tsar Nicholas and his family were put under house arrest in Siberia. On 18 June 1918, Anastasia, the youngest of the daughters, turned 17 while the family was still under house arrest, and about a month later, just after midnight on 16 July, the royal family and several of their servants were all ordered down into the basement of the house, and the soldiers who had been guarding them shot and killed them all. Then, their remains were taken out of town, burned in a bonfire, then buried, together, in an unmarked grave. For years, no one knew where that grave was until, when Communist rule ended, records became available. In 1991, what was thought to, perhaps, be that grave was found, the bones were carefully removed, and as much as possible, the skeletons were reconstructed. Through the use of modern DNA technology, DNA samples from the bones were compared to DNA from the Tsar’s brother’s body (buried in a crypt in a church in St. Petersburg) and to DNA from someone in the English royal family. On that basis, one adult male skeleton was identified as the Tsar, several young adult female skeletons were identified as several of the daughters, and the DNA of several of the other skeletons didn’t match, showing that they were unrelated, family servants. The skeletons of Alexei and one of the four daughters were not with the rest, and are still unaccounted for. After the bones were studied and identified, a few years ago, the remains of the last Tsar of Russia and his family were given a proper funeral and burial.

In 1919, a young woman jumped off a bridge in Berlin, Germany and was rescued and hospitalized. While in the hospital, on one occasion she showed a magazine article with a photo of the Russian royal family to a nurse, pointing out to the nurse how much she thought she looked like Anastasia. After that, she claimed to be Anastasia and claimed to have escaped and survived. She later moved to the U. S. and went by the name of Anna Anderson. The rest of her life, she stuck to her story that she was Anastasia, but people were dubious and tried everything they could think of (including things like comparing pictures of ear lobes) to figure out whether she was Anastasia, or not. When she died and was cremated in 1984, no one still knew if she was really Anastasia or not. At some point before her death, she had had surgery, and the hospital had kept the removed tissue preserved in formaldehyde. Again in the 1990s, with the advent of modern DNA technology, scientists were also able to test DNA samples from her preserved tissue and compare those to the other DNA samples, with the result that there were no similarities – she was not related.

Another possible use for DNA technology has been suggested. The big question in all of this is, “From where did Victoria get the hemophilia allele?” Neither her mother, Victoria, nor her father, King Edward showed any signs of having that allele. The “standard” explanation which, for many years, has been offered to freshman biology students is that there was a chance, random mutation in that allele on one of Queen Victoria’s X chromosomes. More recently, however, I have heard suggestions that, at that time, if the royal couple was having trouble conceiving a child, it would not have been out of the question to quietly, unobtrusively “loan” the Queen out. People have raised the suggestion that maybe King Edward is not Victoria’s biological father. It has been suggested that perhaps there was not a chance mutation in one of Queen Victoria’s X chromosomes, but that, perhaps, that was inherited from another man. Since the bodies of deceased members of the royal family are in crypts in Westminster Abbey, it would be fairly easy to lift the lids on a couple of crypts to get DNA samples for comparison, but needless to say, the British royal family probably isn’t very enthused about that idea.

Taken from http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Courses/bio105/sex-link.htm