I Was Anastasia

by Ariel Lawhon

They size her up against the memory of the woman she is accused of being. Their long-lost sister. A mentally unstable woman who disappeared in early 1920.

Ah, memory, that great liar. I recently had a conversation with one of my sisters about “An Event” from her childhood and my adolescence (there are many years between us). What happened that day changed…well, everything. It lasted five seconds yet my entire family is still dealing with the fallout. And what I remember with crystalline clarity—blood, fear, a frantic drive to the emergency room, surgery, a miracle—is not at all what she remembers. It’s as though we lived two different moments entirely. And yet we were both there. We both saw it happen. So, who is right? That, dear reader, is exactly the point. And that feeling—equal parts uncertainty and conviction—is what I drew on day after day to tell the story of Anastasia Romanov and Anna Anderson.