As usually, in ambiguous historical situations, a problem appears inevitably ; pretenders and mythomaniacs of any kind. The tragic end of the Dauphin Louis XVII which was imprisoned and died in the 'Tour du temple' in Paris during French Revolution had his Naundorff, Hervagault and others numerous pretenders.
     So, the tragic and mysterious end of Romanov in 1917 had everything to attract a lot of pretenders taking advantage of the credulity of relatives believing in a possible survival. So, in 1919, Pierre Gilliard unmasked in Omsk a young man called Alexei Poutziato who claimed he was Alexei.
     After this first case, pretenders will be strangely numerous (more than 200 distinct one) ! So, in this page, I tried to present the history of some of them.

• Most famous pretenders