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The merge comparison photos are the work of John Kendrick and reproduced with his kind permission.
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Based upon the pictures below, I can only point out the features that cause me to say on the one hand, "no way," and on the other hand, "well he might just have been."
The problems with comparing photographs, in this instance, is the time lapse between photos. Secondly, a whole lot of things impact upon likeness, angles, light, the colours a person wears, the clothing one wears ie hats. But beside various photographs are my thoughts on the features in each one that I think impact upon a yes he was or no he wasn't answer, you decide for yourself. Me? I still honestly don't know. Remember, here we are only dealing with photographs, for a comprehensive write up on the story behind Heino Tammet please go to the link below.
If someone had asked me straight up four weeks ago if I thought Heino Tammet could possibly have been Alexei Romanov, I would have answered with a resounding definite no doubt about it, "no way!"
Four weeks later I can only give a confused, "I don't honestly know."
The nose on Alexei and the nose on Heino are quite different here. Alexei's nostrils are able to be seen, Heino's are not. Is this merely due to the angle of the pictures?
J. Kendrick
Alexei Heino
There is a likeness between the two here, yet one feature does not add up. I will go into that further in the following photographs.
J.Kendrick
J. Kendrick
Were Heino Tammet & Alexei Romanov the same person
Again, the nostrils on Alexei are obvious, yet are not in Heino, but Heino does have his head slightly tilted down.
Again, there is a likeness in these two photos but the finer details seem to dispute these two people being one in the same. Look at the rim at the top of the ear on Heino and then the rim at the top of the ear of Alexei. Alexei's is clearly quite different to Heino's. No, they are not the same ear in that Heino's is on one side, the ear of Alexei is from the other side. But ear rims tend to be reasonably similar on both of any given human's ears and these do not change with age. In the picture below, J. Kendrick has merged the two pics together and the ear difference is even more apparent.
?
Here is a view of Alexei's ear on the same side of the body as can be seen in Heino's photograph. Alexei's ears are clearly approximately the same shape. The rim on his ear on this side of his head looks to be a thick rim, Heino's is not. Again, these things tend not to change with age. One can not put the discrepencies down to age or angle in these photographs. So why is it clearly different?
The reason I am concentrating on ears is because years ago I saw this documentary on twins and triplets and they were trying to work out whether triplets were fraternal or maternal. In some instances the only way they could tell was from the shape of the ear, more accurately, the ridge at the top of the ear. By comparing these, they were able to tell the twinset of triplets and the singleton apart, of course that was in the instances where triplets had been made up of identical twins and a fraternal twin. The one thing they stated was that the ear ridge was a reliable comparison as it does not change due to age. What your ear ridge shape was when you were 14, it will still be at age 90, excluding accidents to the ear of course.
From the photograph to your left, it is clearly evident that Alexei's ears are shaped pretty much like Nicholas' ears, even the inner shape appears nearly the same. If the son has the ears of the father, could one conclude that genetically he takes more after the father than the mother? If so, could one further conclude that later in his life, his hair loss would have followed a similar pattern to his father?
Alex R 2 Alex R 3 Nicky R Tammet Nicky R
These photos are of Alexander 2, Alexander 3 and Nicholas 2. All three, Alex 2, Alex 3 & Nicky 2 are afflicted with the same type of pattern baldness. I do not think it is unreasonable to assume that when Alexei reached maturation that he would have been hit with almost the same type of balding pattern. Heino Tammet does not appear to have been hit with the same balding pattern.
Grand Duke Nikolai and even King George and Louis Mountbatten, all male cousins were hit with the same balding patterns, therefore the genetic inheritance of baldness is obviously very strong in this family line, so why would it skip Heino, but even hit Prince Charles, Prince Edward and even Prince Andrew of the British royal line, all are direct descendants of the same line that Nicholas came from.
Alex R 2 Alex R 3 Alex R 2 Tammet Alex R 3 Mountbatten Michael R
Heino Tammet's balding pattern looks quite different to me when compared with direct Romanov males and cousins. You can see very clearly in Alex 2, Alex 3 and Nicholas, (Grandfather, father & son) how markedly the balding pattern chews right back into their temples. This is not the case in Heino Tammet, I am not a geneticist, but I find it odd that his balding pattern is quite different, yet as the generations move on to Charles & Co, Heino's seems to match.
Edward W George W(cousin) Nikolai R(cousin) Tammet
Mountbatten Andrew W Charles W
I guess the one thing that troubles me is how Heino Tammet's hair line goes into a distinctive V shape at the front, none of the others appear to do this, except for in the case of Nikolai, but he has his hair parted in the middle, so it is hard to know if it is an angle difference or whether it does indeed progress into a V shape on Nickolai. Certainly in all the other photographs (and I deliberately got them all at different ages) you can see the balding pattern chewing away at the temples either side of their foreheads. Admittedly, Heino Tammet's does too, yet it appears to be proceeding differently to all the others when I look closely.
Neither Alex 2, Alex 3 or Nicky had sticky out ears. Further to this, neither did, Michael (brother to Nicky), nor did Nikolai, George or Louis (cousins). In some photos it appears that Alexei's ears stick out a little, but I think this may be explained by light and angle as opposed to him actually having sticky out ears. In most of his photos his ears are sat nicly against his head. Heino Tammet clearly has sticky out ears, I would go as far as to say obviously sticky out ears. I did question John Kendrick on this and he said that his ears sticking out happened because of frost in the Siberian cold. I googled effects of cold on ears, it could cause frostbite, but it won't make your ears suddenly stick out, neither over a short or long period of time. So why do Heino's ear stick out when it is clearly not a Romanov genetic predisposition within the males or females in his line? None of Alexei's sisters had ears that stick out either, and none of the close male relatives did, so if Heino was Alexei, where did he get the ears?
Even in the photographs where Alexei's ears do appear to stick out, they merely draw more attention to the ridge shape difference between the Alexei ears and Heino ears, in that they make the differences stand out even more. Maybe we are dealing with two separate individuals in this instance?
Yet, between these two photos, Alexei with his dad on the left and Heino Tammet on the right hand side of Alexei to the right hand side of the screen, I can see a likeness between Heino and Alexei. I don't know what it is, but it is there. Again, this could be due to light, Alexei to the left looks as though he has fair hair, but the photo was taken in what appears to be bright sunlight.
I see a likeness here too between Heino on the left, and Alexei on the right with his dad. Even the ridge at the top of Alexei's ear looks thin like the ridge in the other photo of Heino.
In these four photographs (Alexei hard left and right, Heino both middle photos) I see nothing at all that convinces me that these are all the same person, there just isn't any likeness in these ones that I personally can see. Alexei is a very different looking boy to the man Heino Tammet, is that due to age difference between the photos, or is it because it simply is not the same person?
The ears, again, still look different and even the distance between the eye brow and the eyelid seems to be different, the lips of the subjects seem different, Alexei's seem fuller in comparison to Heino's, and there even seems to be discrepencies between even the basic shape of the mouth and the eyes in each photo. Again is this due to age, light, facial expression, and/or age difference between the subjects of the photos?
If Heino Tammet's life or future had depended upon me personally believing him to be Alexei or not, then I would have had to say that I did not know.
Being that no one's future depends upon what I think, even with the historical story that accompanies these photos, I have to say, on the one hand, that there is not enough proof to make me say that I think for certain that he was Alexei Romanov. On the other hand, there is too much evidence for me to say that I definitely think he wasn't.
What I am certain of is that Heino Tammet did honestly believe himself to be Alexei Romanov, and certainly, the historical account given of Heino Tammet's life does have certain points of merit, to my mind, in that it lines up historically and makes a reasonable amount of sense. The problem I have is that some of the sense it makes, upon further investigation, requires an amount of pure belief on the part of the person without historical documents to back it up. His foster siblings knew nothing of whom he was, no one left any historical documents to attest to who he supposedly was. Why save the Russian Tsarevich only to bury it in history? Makes no sense, why go to all that trouble only to hide it and make it so that no claim he ever made to the Russian throne could be proved?
Some of the whys of the story don't add up, and even some of the ones that do add up seem to have no point to them. A few of the points I picked up on, others have also picked up on. Yet other points seem so stunningly believable that I can't help but see that the author has a credible point. So it is not that I want to disbelieve Heino Tammet's claims, quite the opposite, I would like nothing more than to be able to believe them. Yet again, this is not about what I believe, I am trying to just present my observations and you can make of it what you will.
However, I do think it is a case that should be pursued to a definitive answer, which would be really easily done if the Russians would just do the darn DNA test, then we could all, well, I don't know, but ya know?
To read John Kendrick's article go to the link at the top of the page, but also be sure to read critical analysis of the article, it provides balance to the compelling nature to either side of the mystery. Make up your own mind what you believe.
Below are links to a few critical analysis of the John Kendrick article, of course the authors have their bias also, as do we all.
