Anastasia

For a century, women stepped forward claiming to be the tsar's surviving daughter. DNA closed the file. The legend refused.

Anastasia: after the Romanovs were shot at Ekaterinburg in July 1918, the Soviets concealed the grave, and claimants multiplied — most famously Anna Anderson, litigated for decades. Documented ending: the 1991 exhumation and 2007 discovery of the two missing children, with DNA studies (including Prince Philip's mitochondrial line) confirming the whole family died; Anderson's DNA matched a Polish factory worker. Seventy years of survival lore ran on one hidden grave — a controlled demonstration of what a concealed body does to history.