I Was Anastasia: A Novel

Paris, France. July 17, 1968: Anna stands on a bridge over the Seine. Prince Frederick comes to find her. He has worried about her since the court in Hamburg decided against her case a year earlier. Dominique Aucléres, a French reporter who is convinced Anna is Anastasia, gives Anna a dress for her meeting with a film producer. The producer says he wants to make the film to “set things right in the public eye” (55). He shows Anna an early film clip of the imperial family: the tsar and his wife, and the three elder daughters with their escorts. Anna asks where she was just as a young girl runs up behind her sisters. In the film, her father picks her up and kisses her, and Anna says she remembers that day. The next shot is of soldiers storming the Winter Palace. Anna says she is tired of being exploited and walks out of the studio.

Ten years earlier. The High Court of Hamburg, Germany. March 30, 1958: Anna is furious when Frederick tells her the court in Hamburg wants more evidence. She has not shown them the photo album. All the earlier evidence supporting her case was lost when her lawyer’s office in Berlin was bombed.