Anna Anderson aka Franziska Annalie Schanzkowska

Anna Anderson is one of two central characters. She is the woman whose identity is under question. Most of Anna’s story is told by a third-person narrator. Anna speaks to the reader directly only in two parts of the novel, the Foreword (“Fair Warning”) and the Post Word (“I Told You So”). Anna warns in the Foreword of the novel that she does not believe the reader has the courage to learn the truth about her. She asks the reader to pay attention to the details of the story and then decide her identity. In the Post Word, Anna apologizes to the reader. Then, she says that she did not promise a happy ending.

Anna turns out to be Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish woman who is described as being mentally unstable. Anna suffered injuries similar to ones that might have been caused...