The Unusual Fairy Tale

As Auður Eva Guðmundsdóttir said, “Fairytales are mystical, magical stories and it’s quite unusual for them to be based on real life events.” The tale of Anastasia, however, proves to be very distinct from all other fairy tales. The real story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia is an enchanted tale with a doomed finish and proves to be unlike any other fairy tale. Another point which verifies this story as a different type of fairy tale is that it is actually based on events that occurred in history. So how much of the story of Anastasia is fictional, and how much is history?

On June 18, 1901, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna became parents to Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov. As a child, she was a jokester, had a very lively personality, and was very vivacious; she would always make the whole room light up and was full of energy (Britannica Online). Anastasia would even make her father laugh when she imitated haughty visitors to the palace. One of Anastasia’s many nicknames was “shvibzik” the Russian word for “imp” (Brewster 23), and Anastasia’s French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, said, “She was the imp of the whole house and the glummest of faces would brighten in her presence, for it was impossible to resist her jokes and nonsense”(Brewster 23). During the First World War, when her older sisters, Olga, Tatiana, and her mother worked as nurses in military hospitals, Anastasia was only 13 and therefore she and her older sister Marie were too young to train as nurses; instead they visited the hurt soldiers and cheered them up. “I [Anastasia] sat today with one of our soldiers and helped him learn to read,” wrote Anastasia in a letter to her father (Brewster 46). Meanwhile in the government, revolts and strikes a...

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...om Anastasia and it is made clear that she has chosen Dimitri” (Guðmundsdóttir 35). Generally, Anastasia is the epitome of the picture-perfect heroine because she picks love over her royal title.

As a conclusion, “the film [Anastasia] has close to no historical references – it is nothing more than a fairytale. Then again... is that such a bad thing? It has all the necessary elements of a fairytale…” (Guðmundsdóttir 37). Although, the 1997 Fox movie Anastasia is filled with historical inaccuracies, it fulfills the goal of a movie and fairytale- it delights children and entertains children and adults too. The movie may have been twisted to conclude with a happy ending, which is inconsistent with real history, but as stated above, “It serves its purpose well…” (Guðmundsdóttir 37), providing the audience with the happy ending that makes fairy tales what they are.