Likelihood of Success

Associated Press:

DNA tests carried out by a U.S. laboratory prove that bone fragments exhumed last year belong to two children of Czar Nicholas II, putting to rest questions about what happened to Russia’s last royal family, a regional governor said Wednesday.

Bone fragments dug up near the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg are indeed those of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister, Maria, whose remains had been missing since the family was murdered in 1918 as Russia descended into civil war, said Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk region.

An amazing thing, to resolve a great historical question this way. The Romanov Dynasty was wicked and cruel as a whole, but there was no moral basis — other than Leninist “revolutionary justice” — to kill the children of tsar. They were killed, and brutally too, and now any lingering questions would seem to be resolved.