The Russian Imperial Family.
It acted when it did as White Russian forces were advancing in the area at the time and it was feared that they would liberate the former Czar.
No matter what a person thinks of the Romanov's, and opinions do vary, their murder was barbaric, if wholly consistent with the Communist ethos. It's amazing, in retrospect, that the Imperial Family remained alive at this point in 1918 and its frankly almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which they would have been allowed to remain alive by the Soviets. It is possible to imagine the deposed Czar and Czarina being put on trial in a show trial, which of course did not occur. And I suppose it's possible, if you imagine that, to imagine the daughters being allowed to live either in internal exile or as external exiles, although the degree to which the Soviets were willing to track down their enemies makes that iffy.
At any rate, they were gunned down, which was the most likely end for them in any fashion. And hence the Russian monarchy concluded with a horrific personal tragedy.
Because of the tragic nature of their end, and because it occurred in wartime conditions in a remote region, speculation on that end and what it meant has never really ended. And of course it was longed a myth that perhaps Anastasia had survived, a myth aided by pretenders to that claim. Nobody survived and the details of the murder are now well known.
Among those who have never forgotten them is the Russian Orthodox Church. The family was canonized in the Orthodox context in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and by the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia in 2000. A shrine has been built by the church at the location of their execution in the form of the Church On The Blood in Yekaterinburg, the site of their execution.
Russian Orthodox Icon of the Russian Imperial Family. By Aliksandar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45616224
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