A man who claimed to be the last page to the last tsar of Russia is, in fact, buried in El Encinal Cemetery in Monterey. He said he taught the tsarevitch to ride a pony, and knew Rasputin. Our character and his descendants, while inspired by this story, are entirely fictional.
The facts regarding the Romanov family’s execution at Ekaterinburg and exhumation of the remains of only five of the family in the 1990s are true. Alexis and one of the princesses were allegedly cremated, and their deaths have continued to be hotly disputed over the decades that followed, as no evidence of cremation has ever been found.
It’s an unusual fact that a bone-marrow transplant gives the recipient, permanently, the blood DNA of the donor while the skin and hair DNA remains that of the recipient. Our thanks to Deej Dambrauskas for these facts.
Others, especially on the Web, have advanced the theory that the tsarevitch did not have hemophilia. He suffered from high fevers as part of his attacks, which is not characteristic of hemophilia but is characteristic of thrombocytophenia.
The last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, loved to give unique, elaborate Fabergé eggs as gifts to his family.