Russia said on Wednesday that charred remains found in a pit belonged to Tsar Nicholas II's only son and his daughter, exactly 90 years after the Bolsheviks shocked the world by murdering the last Tsar.
Moscow's confirmation that the remains included those of Tsar Nicholas's 13-year-old heir, Prince Alexei, came as hundreds of Russians flocked to a church built on the site where the family was gunned down by Bolshevik executioners.
Nicholas II, lampooned by the Soviets as a failure, is considered by many Russians today as a martyr and presented as a symbol of the imperial glory which many now seek to recapture.
In a sign of renewed interest in the imperial past, the last Tsar is in first place in an Internet poll to select the greatest Russians, having overtaken Soviet dictator Josef Stalin this week.
"He is a symbol of a great and powerful Russia who also did great things for the country," 18-year-old Yevgeny Chindyasky said at the Church on the Blood where Russian Orthodox believers gathered to mark the 90th anniversary of the Tsar's execution.
The Bolsheviks shot the Tsar and his family on the night of July 16-17, 1918 in the basement of a merchant's house in the city of Yekaterinburg, 1,450 km (900 miles) east of Moscow.
The bodies of Russia's imperial rulers were burnt, doused in acid to make subsequent identification difficult and dumped in pits without a proper Orthodox burial.
Remains believed to belong to the Tsar, his wife and three of his daughters were exhumed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were reburied in 1998 in the imperial crypt of the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.
But Prince Alexei Nikolayevich and 19-year-old Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna were not among those remains.
