The VERY Messed Up Origins of Anastasia | Disney Explained - Jon Solo

this video is brought to you by Squarespace where website design is made easy what is going on solo fam my name is John solo and welcome to another episode of messed up origins and for the new folks that are watching welcome to messed up origins the show where I break down the often disturbing source material that your favorite childhood stories are based on for our first episode of 2019 we covered the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen the fairy tale that inspired frozen then I asked you guys what story we should cover this week and the majority of you said Anastasia not gonna lie I posted that poll expecting the lion came to win but the solo fam has spoken so we'll talk about it some other time sometime soon don't worry now for those unfamiliar Anastasia was an animated film produced by 20th Century Fox in 1997 it was very loosely based on real events that took place in Russia after World War 1 and the main character was inspired by the Grand Duchess Anastasia of house Romanov you heard that right by the way it's a common misconception but 20th Century Fox not Disney made Anastasia however Disney did go on to purchase 20th Century Fox in 2017 thus making in a stage at their property and why I'm calling this episode Disney explained that and it's also more catchy than 20th Century Fox explained now since the Russian princess was a real person this episode is going to be structured a little different than previous ones instead of breaking down a linear story with a beginning middle and end we're gonna be comparing certain characters and events in the movie with their real-life counterparts this includes the Romanov family the Russian Revolution the horrible faith that Anastasia actually suffered as a result of the revolution the mysterious grigori rasputin and more like always I'll do a quick recap of the movie because if you're anything like me at the start of this project you probably haven't seen it in about 15 years and might need a refresher right after I shout out the people who made this video possible Squarespace whether you consider yourself an artist entrepreneur or influencer Squarespace is a great service anyone can use to start building a platform their intuitive design tools make creating a website super easy you can buy domains through them there's a massive library of themes to get you started and there's nothing you have to download patch or upgrade to use their services as you can see I use Squarespace to set up Mazda borgen's calm and even though I don't know jack about designing websites I think it looks pretty good so far if you want to try MOT yourself and support them like they supported us you can go to Squarespace comm to sign up for a two week free trial if you like what you see and want to commit just add John solo to the end of that URL to get 10% off your first purchase now I don't know about you guys but I am ready to get started don't forget to smash that like button with all your heart so we can reach our goal of 10,000 likes and subscribe and ring that bell to be notified about new messed up origins coming to your sub box every week in 1916 on a snowy winter's night in Russia the Romanovs are celebrating the 300th anniversary of the family's rule when rigor arrests butan the former royal advisor who was exiled for treason shows up without an invitation Tsar Nicholas ii the emperor and princess Anastasia's father kicks Rasputin out and even though the sorcerer is very obviously in the wrong for showing up in the first place he plays the victim card and sells his soul for the power to destroy the Romanov family cut to a mob forming outside the Romanov estate Rasputin's demons help open the gate and before long the entire palace is being torn apart with several of the Romanovs being killed in the process anastasia barely makes it out thanks to the servant boy dmitri but he takes the butt of a gun to the face as a result of helping her while trying to make it to the train station anastasia and her grandma are confronted by Rasputin on a frozen river before he can do any damage beyond psychological the ice below him breaks and he drowns in the freezing water alas this slowed the Royals down just enough that only grandma could make it to the train in time before Anastasia can get on she stumbles hits her head and falls to the ground while the train to Paris leaves her behind fast-forward 10 years in Anastasia who now goes by Anya is being forced out of the orphanage she was raised in and we learned here that hit to the head caused her to forget her entire childhood a few hours later she's in st. Petersburg and runs into the boy who saved her all those years ago Dmitry but she doesn't recognize him and vice-versa after catching her dancing in the old Romanoff banquet hall Dmitry offers Anya a train ticket to Paris under the guise that she might be Anastasia but he doesn't mention the 10 million rubles offered for her safe return after some consideration she accepts and shortly after we learned the evil Rasputin is still alive and kicking it in limbo he realizes now his soul is trapped because he never finished his mission killing all the Romanovs so that's what he vows to do once more their journey to Paris onion Demetri and his partner in crime Vlad are almost killed twice thanks to RESP utans interference when the mystic fails both times he returns to the surface with his pal Bartok skip to a Paris Opera House where Anya is just about to be reunited with her grandmother that is until the old lady who's sick of meeting in a station and postures at this point as a meeting with Dmitry that doesn't go well and ends with Anya furious with him when she realizes is helping her it was all part of a con the problem is that now Dmitry really does believe that Anya's Anastasia so after some further convincing aka Grand Theft Auto and kidnapping Maria agrees to meet with the girl there was simple in short conversation Anya proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she really is Anastasia Romanov and before long she's living the high life in Paris with her grandma until Rasputin shows up and tries using his magic to kill her once and for all after a fierce battle between her Rasputin Dmitry and a giant possessed stone horse our hero gets the upper hand and shatters the source of Rasputin's power in life which causes him to disintegrate in one of the most terrifying death scenes in any children's movie in the end Anastasia Dmitry reconcile after she learns the truth that he was the boy who saved her all those years ago and he refused the very handsome reward her grandma offered proving he had pure intentions after all the to elope and everyone lives happily ever after even Bartok I wished the real-life version of the story had an ending there was at least 1% as happy as the movies unfortunately the fate the Romanov suffered was horrifying by all accounts before we get into that though let's break down who the family actually was the Romanovs were high-ranking aristocrats and known as the most powerful family in Russia for over three centuries Michael the first was elected emperor by a Russian parliament in 1613 and over the next 300 years 18 Romanovs took the russian throne including peter the great catherine the great Alexander the first and of course Anastasia's father nicholas ii he was also connected to a great number of noble families across europe due to blood and marriage to name just a few prince george ii who hailed from england was his cousin and queen victoria was his great-aunt in the movie we don't even see Anastasia's mother Alexandra Feodorovna and her siblings only make a brief appearance in her her older sisters were Olga Tatiana and Maria and her younger brother was named Alexi as you might be able to guess from that lineage of the Romanovs were trying desperately for a son so Nicholas could have an heir as a result when their fourth consecutive daughter Anastasia was born she was met with utter disappointment in fact their disappointment was so great that instead of naming her a traditional Russian name she was given the Greek name Anastasia which means resurrection and some historians believe that was her parents way of praying to God that the Russian monarchy would be quote unquote resurrected by the birth of a son funnily enough her names meaning also contributed to rumors of her survival for decades after her death but more on that later now Anastasia may have been the focus of the movie in several other creative works romanticizing her life but she was far from the most adored child in fact she was quite the troublemaker those who knew her described her as energetic quick-witted and a good actress but she was also called nasty to the point of being evil it said that she loved mischief and playing pranks on people she was known for tripping the servants and playing too rough with her cousins but no matter how much she was scolded for her misbehavior she never seemed to care bottom line Anastasia was gonna do what Anastasia wanted if this meant climbing trees skipping private school lessons eating chocolate with priceless white gloves on at the Opera House she was gonna do it even if it annoyed her family and friends she really didn't care servants and family members often referred to her and her sister Maria as the little pair because they both had energetics somewhat flirtatious personalities and were always seen together her older sister Olga's described as having a more fiery temperament and Tatiana was a bit more reserved the two of them were called the big pair now when her brother Alexei was finally born the entire family was overjoyed but his arrival came with a few unexpected complications their new baby boy suffered from a severe case of hemophilia a bleeding disease that his mother carried the gene for and that killed her brother and uncle to put it simply hemophilia comes from a lack of blood clotting proteins in the body which means that even a minor scratch or bruise could cause you to bleed far more than normal and take longer to recover because of his condition alexei wasn't allowed to play as rough as his sisters and on the rare occasions he did he was often confined to a bed during the days following over all the Romanovs were pretty normal for a family that was considered royalty for over 300 years like any political figures they had their supporters and their haters but for the majority of that time Russian citizens felt like their leaders were doing an okay job that is until world war one came along and revealed Tsar Nicholas to be so dangerously incompetent that all of Russia suffered as a result so when the Anastasia movie Nicholas is disgraced advisor grigori rasputin sells his soul and this is what causes the Russian citizens who were already feeling disenfranchised to storm the palace gates in actuality the situation was much more complicated and while Rasputin really did play a unique role in causing the revolution there were many other factors at play for starters consider the context we just talked about the Romanovs took over Russia in 1613 and was the only family in control of that autocracy for over 300 years that means literally every single Russian citizen knew who they were and whenever something went wrong they knew who was at fault now Russia as a whole was doing okay for most of the Romanovs time in power but throughout those three centuries citizens became less and less tolerant W autocracy always acting in the interests of the upper class especially while there were so many workers and peasants living in hardship and then in 1914 a massive wrench was thrown in the gears in the form of world war one important disclaimer I am NOT a historian and I haven't played battlefield since Bad Company 2 so my understanding of world war 1 is very much a layman's understanding so I'm gonna try summarizing it in the most simple way possible to avoid angering any history buffs that are watching essentially the austro-hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist and the two empires went to war because of the alliances each Empire had with the surrounding countries the rest of Europe was dragged into the conflict as well including Russia the Russian citizens were not happy about this and understandably so and meant they had to lay down their lives to defend the country that started the conflict in the first place and to put them at odds with the neighboring country of Germany and between the Russian army being personally led by the wildly inexperienced nicholas ii and the majority of their soldiers being working class citizens and dozens with hardly any military training they were basically cannon fodder only a few years into the conflict in millions of russian lives had been lost in the country was in a social agricultural and economic crisis and there was one central figure to blame for it all saw her Nikolas fans of the movie might not want to hear that he may feel some attachment to Nikolas because after all he's Anastasia's dad but trust me when I say there was plenty to dislike about him before he dragged the citizens that he was supposed to care about into a war that killed millions of them here's an excellent overview of his character from Town and Country magazine and Nicholas the second died after the first 10 years of his reign he would have been regarded as a moderately successful Emperor ultimately though his well-intentioned but weak personality which also comprised of duplicity obstinacy and delusion contributed to the disasters that befell the dynasty in Russia he was handsome and blue-eyed but diminutive and hardly majestic and his looks and immaculate manners concealed an astonishing arrogance contempt for the educated political class as vicious anti-semitism and that unshakable belief in his right to rule as a sacred autocrat he was jealous of his ministers and he possessed the unfortunate ability to make himself utterly distrusted by his own government so he hated that his citizens were becoming politically aware hated Jews and hated that he had to share just the smallest amount of power with the National Assembly that was a rush in Parliament that was created before World War one in response to the citizens demand for political reform but to no surprise it didn't really satisfy anyone on either side of the issue tension between the aristocrats and the rest of the population culminated into the Russian Revolution which was made up of two events the February Revolution and the October Revolution the first of which is what we saw in the opening of Anastasia and took place in 1917 in Petrograd Russia the capital at the time On February 23rd thousands of women had taken to the streets to establish International Women's Day and protest over bread shortages the following day they were joined by striking workers and students who were also tired of the Tsar's poor leadership and the government's treatment of the working-class as the protesters became more Restless the military was ordered to start shooting at them and while some listen to those orders a huge portion of the soldiers actually joined the protesters it wasn't long before the government lost total control of the capital and on March 2nd 1917 Nicholas agreed to abdicate and give up his power after he stepped down the autocracy was replaced by a new government that was made up of two parties the Petrograd Soviet hsihu mostly consistent working-class people in the provisional government who continue to act in the interests of the top 1% and chose to remain in World War one despite that being a major cause of the revolution in the first place later that year the October Revolution happened in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union also known as the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and took over custody of the Romanov family who were living in surprisingly comfortable exile during those months its time went on though their imprisonment conditions became more strict they lost access to most of their servants luxuries like butter and coffee and were eventually fed exclusively soldiers rations I know that losing access to most of your servants doesn't sound like much of a punishment and that's because it's not but I doubt it took much to get under the skin of such an incredibly pampered group of people before we get into the horrifying way the Bolsheviks ended the Romanovs imprisonment there's one more person we have to talk about Gregory Rasputin in the movie Rasputin was the former royal advisor and was exiled for treason but in reality he remained on good terms with the Romanovs his entire life in being close with the family doesn't mean that he was a good person but he did bring them a certain amount of joy and peace of mind over the years with his supposin mystic abilities yeah believe it or not the magic element of the movie wasn't just something that was thrown in by the writers to make the story more interesting best butan was actually known for having some kind of mystical healing powers and that's how he became one of the Romanovs most trusted allies remember how their son Alexei was a hemophiliac and regularly confined to a bed as a result of minor cuts and bruises well after years of him struggling with his condition his mom Alexandra who felt immense guilt for passing on the genetic mutation to her baby boy was desperate for a treatment that actually worked she was a devoted member to the Russian Orthodox Church which rasputin's was loosely affiliated with and while the exact circumstances of them meeting are still unclear we know he was introduced to her as a holy man who potentially had the power to treat her son through faith healing you might call BS on that one and I do too but weirdly enough there were at least two separate occasions where a spute ins powers appeared to work and that was enough to convince the Romanovs in the spring of 1907 he was called upon by Alexandra to pray for Alexei who was suffering from an internalized Han rich and the next morning the boy recovered five years later during the summer of 1912 Alexi suffered another internal hemorrhage in his thigh and groin after a bumpy carriage ride and was delirious with pain yeah it was that easy for him to hurt himself you can see why his parents were so desperate for a cure after days of his suffering it was thought that Alexi wouldn't survive so Alexandre sent the telegram to rest butan who was chilling in his home country of Serbia at the time asking him to pray Rasputin wrote back quick time and said God has seen your tears and heard your prayers do not grieve the little one will not die do not allow the doctors to bother him too much only two days later Alexie's bleeding stopped and the family was convinced of rasputin's powers i should mention there's a few theories out there about how Alexi actually recovered one of which is that the doctors leaving him alone gave his body time to rest and heal up not to mention they stopped giving him ibuprofen a blood thinner that was likely making his symptoms worse seeing that both alexandra and nikolas saw Rasputin's presence as essential to their son and only heir survival the mystic man had incredible influence over the couple in their trust and his spiritual connection meant they often listened to his insight on political matters which is something the Russian citizens were not happy about many experts believe that it's partially because of Rasputin's influence that Russia gotten involved in World War one and fought at the site of his home country Serbia he also claimed to have a revelation that the Russian armies wouldn't be successful unless Nikolas led them personally and as I mentioned earlier they suffered heavy losses as a direct consequence of his leadership while Nikolas was away managing the war effort Rasputin continued to get closer with Alexandra and soon became her closest confidante and advisor their odd relationship fueled rumors they were having an affair and over time those rumors grew until not only Russia but the Romanovs family members on both sides believed that Rasputin was sexually abusing the princesses though no proof has ever been found of that what we know for sure is that he was very public about how much influence he had over the royal couple and how he was willing to sell that influence that blatant corruption combined with his public drunkenness and sexual promiscuity among his religious followers led Russian citizens and politicians to despise him and by consequence the Romanovs in December of 1916 a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich and Vladimir purist decided they had enough of rasputin's damaging the war effort and devised a plan to assassinate a-- they invited him to the princes home and Felix hung out with him in the basement where he fed him some cakes laced with cyanide and poisoned wine the story goes that he showed no symptoms hours after ingesting a considerable amount of the poison so Felix went upstairs borrowed a gun from one of his constituents returned to the basement and shot recipes in the chest the schemers then made a quick trip to his apartment with one of them wearing his hat and coat so his neighbors would see him returning home that night then they returned to the princes house to dispose of the body but there's a plot twist coming up when the prince went back down to the basement Rasputin left up and started attacking him the Prince managed to get away but the mystic chased him into the courtyard where he was finally shot down by purush cabbage soon after they wrapped his body in cloth brought him to a nearby fridge and tossed him into the river below a few days later it was found floating downstream under the ice isn't that a nice image so yeah not exactly what happens in the movie but it did involve a bridge and his first death involves some ice so there's that at least when Rasputin's body was recovered in an autopsy was done they found he took three shots in total one of which was at close range to the forehead he also had a slice wound on his left side and some signs of blunt force trauma which may have been from the Prince beating him with a dumbbell he was buried on January 2nd 1917 and the royal family attended his funeral however a few months later after Nicholas had abdicated his power a group of soldiers dug up and burned Rasputin's body to prevent his burial site from becoming a place of worship by members of the old regime so now we know who the Romanovs were the basics of how and why the Russian Revolution took place and Rasputin's role in making it happen so now it's finally time to talk about how Anastasia died and how this story ends there's a few different versions of how it went down and historians can't agree on a specific sequence of events but what I'm about to share is a first-hand account from the Bolsheviks chief executioner the family was held captive in the home of a merchant for the last three months of their lives and all the attempts to negotiate their way safely out of the country had been stalled however they still maintained a positive outlook thinking their rescue was right around the corner the morning of July 17 1918 at around 1:00 a.m. they were woken up by their captors who were about to be under attack by the white army who supported the former Tsar not enough to put him back in power mind you but enough to rescue him and his family the Bolsheviks also known as the Red Army told the Romanovs to get dressed and brought them along with three of their servants into the basement claiming they'd be safer there during the fight in reality though the Reds knew they were outmatched by the white army and that it was likely they would lose their prisoners few chairs were brought in the basement so Alexi and Alexandra could sit and the family huddled together almost like they were taking a family portrait they waited there for a while and suddenly a dozen armed guards filed into the room and the chief executioner told them they were going to be executed as you can imagine the families started panicking and asking questions but received no answers from the guards the executioner repeated his order and the soldiers unloaded their guns into the Romanovs what makes it even worse as the Anastasia her sisters and her brother survived the first round of bullets because they had secretly sewn diamonds into their clothing in case they needed to fund an escape since diamonds are the hardest surface and existence they were basically wearing bulletproof armor when the second round of bullets still didn't finish them all off the terrified children who were crying out in fear and pain were beaten with guns stabbed repeatedly with bayonets and some were shot in the head the two that weren't killed by headshots two of Anastasia's sisters were allegedly alive for up to an hour after it happened the soldiers noticed them crying and spitting up blood when they loaded their bodies into the truck and he finally took them out of their misery when they hit them in the back of the head with the butt of their guns at the time of their deaths Olga was 22 tatiana was 21 maria was 19 anastasia was 17 and alexei was 13 so now if you aren't frozen in horror you might be wondering if Anastasia was killed when she was 17 where exactly did the whole Anastasia imposter storyline come from well as sad as it is prisoners of war don't often receive proper burials when they're killed their bodies are either destroyed or thrown into a mass grave that's exactly what happened with the Romanovs their bodies were missing for decades until 1981 when several skeletons were discovered buried and burned in the woods in the same city they were executed in the 1991 DNA tests proved them to belong to the Romanov servants and five of the seven family members the two missing skeletons belonged to Alexi and either Maria or Anastasia and they stayed missing until August of 2007 not even 12 years ago you see the chief executioner's memoirs revealed that they separated the body so enemy forces wouldn't ever be able to confirm that they found them and they were burned and buried elsewhere in 2007 Russian archaeologists found a bonfire site that matched the executioner's description along with two partial skeletons in several DNA testing labs from around the world confirmed the remains belong to Alexi and one of his sisters unfortunately we can't confirm if that sister is either Maria or Anastasia and then a weird power move the Russian Orthodox Church refused to accept the newfound remains as the Romanovs the important thing is that seven Romanov bodies were missing and according to leading scientists from around the world seven Romanov bodies were found anyways because the bodies were missing for so long and as a result of the Russian government spreading misinformation about the Romanovs fate literally hundreds of imposters came forward after the revolution claiming to be various members of the Romanov family mostly Anastasia in Anderson a part-time resident of a multitude of insane asylums around the world was by far the most famous of the imposters after her death she was revealed to be Franziska shuns Kowski through DNA testing nadezhda vasilyeva was arrested in 1920 when she tried travelling from siberia to china while claiming she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia she was arrested by Bolshevik authorities and moved to various prison hospitals over the next decade she would often write letters to King George of England and beg him to help his cousin Anastasia but never received a response she died in an asylum in 1971 noticing a trend a lot of these people aren't all there that's only two examples but if you guys want me to do a full video on the Romanov imposters just let me know in the comments and we can make it happen you know people always ask me if Disney sugarcoating these incredibly messed-up origin stories bothers me and my honest answer is no it really does the movies they create are still masterpieces in their own right and if they were just a line for line remake up the original stories I wouldn't be a to analyze him like I do and I get so much more out of it that way it's the same thing with Anastasia 20th Century Fox made a beautiful totally original story and I enjoyed watching it before knowing the events it was inspired by but now that I can point to the exact events and characters they took inspiration from I can appreciate its beauty on a whole new level they put their own special twist on everything the Russian Revolution was caused by political dissent and occurs grigory rasputin was a royal advisor but the Romanovs picked up on his malevolent intentions their use of the imposters the way they portrayed Rasputin's legendary mystical abilities it's really well done would it have been cool if they stuck with the original story maybe but I think we can all agree that childhood would have been different if we saw a cartoon Romanov family get taken down to the basement and slaughtered like a bunch of animals then again I was pretty traumatized by rasputin's unhygenic to crap itself so who knows what would have been worse anyways that'll do it for today's episode of messed-up origins now I want to hear what you guys thought of that story did it change the way you're gonna watch Anastasia from now on if so is it for the better or worse leave your answers in the comments and I'll be reading them like always if you had fun watching this video and learn yourself something new do me a favor and smash that like button with all your heart so we can reach our goal of 10,000 likes and keep building the channel up if you haven't joined the solo fam yet don't worry all you got to do is subscribe and ring that bell to be notified when new messed up content gets delivered to your sub box and remember the best way to stay updated on messed up origins news what videos I'm working on next or if you just want to say hey and offer a suggestion is to follow me on social media if you haven't noticed I finally have the John solo handles on Twitter and Instagram and I'm really excited about it so go ahead and follow me help me become an influencer on more than one platform that's the dream right I also want to give thanks one more time to today's sponsors Squarespace don't forget you can check out their amazing website design tools for free when you sign up for a two-week trial at squarespace.com when you go to Squarespace comm / John solo get 10% off your first purchase I'll be seeing you all soon with some more messed up origin stories until then my name is John solo and remember John shot first [Music]

Channel: Jon Solo

Views: 1,764,684

Rating: 4.9395809 out of 5

Keywords: Messed Up Origins, Messed Up Origins of Anastasia, Jon Solo, Disney Explained, Anastasia Romanov, Anastasia Movie, anastasia true story, russian revolution 1917, grigori rasputin, grigori rasputin anastasia, grigori rasputin assassination, romanov execution, romanov imposters, messed up origins of frozen, snow queen story, messed up origins of hercules, messed up origins of pinocchio, messed up origins of the jungle book, tsar nicholas ii, the little mermaid, rasputin death

Id: p-IpJQM3mDQ

Length: 26min 21sec (1581 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019