Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia in 1918, Princess Helena Petrovna, the wife of Anastasia's distant cousin, Prince John Constantinovich of Russia, reported that a guard brought a girl who called herself Anastasia Romanova to her cell and asked if the girl was the daughter of the Tsar. Helena Petrovna said she did not recognize the girl and the guard took her away. Although other witnesses in Perm later reported that they saw Anastasia, her mother and sisters in Perm after the murders, this story is now widely discredited. Rumors that they were alive were fueled by deliberate misinformation designed to hide the fact that the
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1890–1958) as you described to me in your last letters." The marriage had positive political and diplomatic implications for both Russia and Sweden and Tsar Nicholas II gave his consent. Grand Duke Paul was not consulted. From Peterhoff, Maria Pavlovna went to Grand Duchess Elisabeth’s rural estate, Ilinskoe, near Moscow, where Wilhelm joined them for a month before he left on a cruise to America. The young couple maintained their intimacy through letters. Maria imagined herself in love: “It’s lovely to have somebody, even far away, who love you more than anything and whom you love more than everybody on earth“,