The saddest case of this must be that of Nicholas II, last of the Romanovs. He never asked or wanted to be tsar of Russia ... with Nicholas’s cousin George V in Britain. It was not to be.

In 2008, scientists used bone and tooth fragments to identify the remains as those of the two missing children of Czar Nicholas II: 13-year-old Crown Prince Alexei, the emperor's only son and heir ...