TCA: TLC’s ‘Secret Princes’ Sticks With Stout Denial

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TLC’s reality dating show is not revolutionary in premise, but it manages to Secret Princes endeavors to have their four royals-in-disguise meet and but as a final sell to the Democratic voters still licking their wounds about.

On the night of July 16, , a Bolshevik assassination squad executed Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children, putting an end to the Romanov family dynasty that had ruled Russia for more than three centuries. The murder of the Romanovs stamped out the monarchy in Russia in a brutal fashion. But even though there is no throne to claim, some descendants of Czar Nicholas II still claim royal ties today.

So do a handful of imposters. Since , people all over the world have come forward claiming to be the young crown prince, Alexei, or one of his four sisters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. So who are the real Romanovs? At the time of the executions, about a dozen Romanov relatives were known to have escaped the Bolsheviks, including Maria Feodorovna, the mother of Czar Nicholas II, her daughters Xenia and Olga, and their husbands.

For Russian royalists, the continued existence of Romanov descendants keeps hope alive that at some point someone in the royal family might reclaim the throne—if only they could work out which member of the family has the strongest claim. As it stands, two branches of the Romanov family disagree on who is the legitimate pretender, or claimant to a monarchy that has been abolished.

Here are the people alive today with ties to the ill-fated imperial family.