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Origins

The Romanovs share their origin with two dozen other Russian noble families. Their earliest common ancestor is one Andrei Kobyla, attested as a boyar in the service of Semyon I of Moscow. Later generations assigned to Kobyla the most illustrious pedigrees. At first it was claimed that he came to Moscow from Prussia in 1341, where his father had been a famous rebel. In the late 17th century, a fictional line of his descent from Julius Caesar was published.

It's likely that Kobyla's origins were less spectacular. Not only is Kobyla Russian for mare, but his relatives were also nicknamed after horses and other house animals, thus suggesting descent from one of the royal equerries. One of Kobyla's sons, Fyodor, a boyar in the boyar duma of Dmitri Donskoi, was nicknamed Koshka (cat). His descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to Zakharin, which family later split into two branches: Zakharin-Yakovlev and Zakharin-Yuriev. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the former family became known as Yakovlev (Alexander Herzen being the most illustrious of them), whereas grandchildren of Roman Zakharin-Yuriev changed their name to Romanov.

Rise to power

The family fortunes soared when Roman's daughter, Anastasia Zakharyina, married the young Ivan IV of Muscovy in February 1547. When her husband assumed the title of tsar, she was crowned the very first tsaritsa. Their marriage was an exceedingly happy one, but her untimely and mysterious death in 1560 changed Ivan's character for the worse. Suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, the tsar started the reign of terror against them. Among his children by Anastasia, the elder (Ivan) was murdered by the tsar in a quarrel; the younger Fyodor, a pious and lethargic prince, inherited the throne upon his father's death.

Throughout Fyodor's reign, the Russian government was contested between his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, and his Romanov cousins. Upon the death of childless Fyodor, the 700-year-old line of Moscow Rurikids came to an end. After a long struggle, the party of Boris Godunov prevailed over the Romanovs, and the former was elected new tsar. Godunov's revenge to the Romanovs was terrible: all the family and its relatives were deported to remote corners of the Russian North and Ural, where most of them died of hunger or in chains. The family's leader, Feodor Nikitich, was exiled to the Antoniev Siysky Monastery and forced to take monastic vows with the name Filaret.

The Romanovs' fortunes again changed drastically with the fall of the Godunov dynasty in 1606. As a former leader of the anti-Godunov party and cousin of the last legitimate tsar, Filaret Romanov was valued by several impostors who attempted to claim the Rurikid legacy and throne during the Time of Troubles. False Dmitriy I made him a metropolitan, and False Dmitriy II raised him to the dignity of patriarch. Upon expulsion of Poles from Moscow in 1612, the Assembly of the Land offered the Russian crown to several Rurikid and Gediminid princes, but all of them declined the honour of it.

On being offered the Russian crown, Filaret's 17-year-old son Mikhail Romanov, then living at the Ipatiev Monastery of Kostroma, burst into tears of fear and despair. He was finally persuaded to accept the throne by his mother Kseniya Ivanovna Shestova, who blessed him with the holy image of Our Lady of St Fyodor. Feeling how insecure his throne was, Mikhail attempted to stress his ties with the last Rurikid tsars and sought advice from the Assembly of the Land on every important issue. This strategy proved successful. The early Romanovs were generally loved by the population as in-laws of Ivan the Terrible and innocent martyrs of Godunov's wrath.

The era of dynastic crises

Mikhail was succeeded by his only son Alexei, who steered the country quietly through numerous troubles. Upon his death, there was a period of dynastic struggles between his children by his first wife (Feodor III, Sofia Alexeevna, Ivan V) and his son by his second wife, Nataliya Kyrillovna Naryshkina, the future Peter the Great. New dynastic struggles followed the death of Peter, who had his only son Alexei executed and never named another heir. The Romanov male line actually expired in 1730, with the death of Peter II on the very day of his projected wedding. The last female Romanovs were his aunts, Empresses Anna Ioannovna (1693-1740) and Elizabeth Petrovna (1709-1762).

As neither Anna nor Elizabeth produced a male heir, the succession could devolve either on a Brunswick nephew of Anna (Ivan VI of Russia) or on a Holstein nephew of Elizabeth (Peter III of Russia), who was also an heir presumptive to the thrones of Sweden and Holstein. Elizabeth naturally favoured her own nephew, although he was sexually impotent and of petulant character. With the accession of Peter III in 1762 the new reigning dynasty of Holstein-Gottorp, or Oldenburg-Romanov, began.

The Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov Dynasty

The Holstein-Gottorps of Russia, however, kept the surname Romanov and sought to emphasise their female-line descent from Peter the Great. Paul I was particularly proud to be great-grandson of the illustrious Russian monarch, although his German-born mother, Catherine II (of the House of Anhalt-Zerbst), insinuated in her memoirs that Paul's real father had been her lover Serge Saltykov. Disapproving of morganatic alliances, Paul established the house law of the Romanovs, one of the strictest in Europe. The consorts of Russian dynasts had to be of equal birth (i.e., born to a sovereign house of Europe) and of the Orthodox faith. Otherwise their children forfeited all rights to the throne.

Paul I was murdered in his palace in Saint Petersburg. Alexander I succeeded him on the throne. He died without having left a male heir. Nicholas I, a brother of the latter monarch, was surprised to find himself on the throne. His era, like the one of Paul I, was marked by enormous attention to the army. Nonetheless, Russia lost the Crimean War, although it had some brilliant admirals on its side, including Pavel Nakhimov. Nicholas I fathered four sons, all of whom, he thought, could one day face the challenge of ruling Russia. Trying to prepare all the boys for the future, he provided an excellent education, especially a military one, for all of them.

Alexander II became the next Russian emperor. Alexander was an educated, intelligent man, who held that his task was to keep peace in Europe and Russia. However, he believed only a country with a strong army could do keep the peace. By paying attention to the army, giving much freedom to Finland, and freeing the serfs in 1861, he gained much support (Finns still dearly remember him). His family life was not so happy- his beloved wife Maria Alexandrovna had serious problems with her lungs, which led to her death and to the dissolution of the close-knit family. On March 13, 1881, Alexander was killed after returning from a military parade. His carriage was struck by a hand-made bomb, luckily sparing the Tsar's life. However, he exited the carriage to examine what had happened, and was struck by a second bomb, this time resulting in his death. His assassin Ignacy Hryniewiecki was also mortally wounded.

Alexander II was succeeded by his son Alexander III of Russia. A gigantic and imposing, if somewhat dull man, with great stamina and poor manners, Alexander, fearful of the fate which had befallen his father, strengthened autocratic rule in Russia. Many of the reforms the more liberal Alexander II had pushed through were reversed. Alexander, at his brother's death, not only inherited a throne, but a wife- Princess Dagmar of Denmark (Maria Fyodorovna). Despite contrasting natures and size, the pair got on famously, and produced five children.

The eldest, Nicholas, became Tsar upon his father's sudden death (due to kidney disease) at age 49. Unready to inherit the throne, Nicholas himself said, "I am not ready, I do not want it. I am not a Tsar." Though an intelligent and kind-hearted man, the hopelessly inept Nicholas was a failure in government- choosing to continue with his father's outdated, oppression-minded laws and running from responsibility at the slightest chance. His Tsarina, the emotionally fragile German princess Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse, was also a liability. While the Tsar bustled about on the front lines during World War I, the stubborn, traditionalist Tsarina held sway in court and in government.

Constantine Pavlovich and Michael Alexandrovich, although sometimes counted among Russian monarchs, were not crowned and never reigned. They both married morganatically, as did Alexander II. Six crowned representatives of the Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov line include: Paul (1796-1801), Alexander I (1801-1826), Nicholas I (1826-56), Alexander II (1856-81), Alexander III (1881-94), and Nicholas II (1894-1917).

Downfall

All these emperors (except Alexander III) had German-born consorts, a circumstance that cost the Romanovs their popularity during World War I. Nicholas's wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, although devoutly Orthodox, was particularly hated by the populace.

Alexandra Fyodorovna brought to the Romanov family a mutated gene of her grandmother, Queen Victoria, which was responsible for her son's (the long-awaited heir to the throne, Alexei) hemophilia. Nicholas and Alexandra had 4 daughters (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia).

When the Romanov family celebrated the tercentenary of its rule, in 1913, the solemnities were clouded by numerous bad omens. Our Lady of St Feodor, a patron icon of the family, blackened so badly that the image has been hardly visible ever since. Grigory Rasputin proclaimed that the Romanovs' power wouldn't last for a year after his death, and he was murdered by one of the Romanov Grand Dukes several months before the February Revolution of 1917, which actually dethroned Nicholas II.

Bolshevik authorities butchered and murdered the last Romanov monarch, Nicholas II of Russia, and his immediate family in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on July 17, 1918 (although some accounts suggested only Nicholas had been shot). Ironically, the Ipatiev House has the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, where Mikhail Romanov had been offered the Russian crown in 1613. The spot where the Ipatiev House once stood has recently been commemorated by a magnificent cathedral "on the blood". After years of controversy, Nikolai II and his family were proclaimed saints by the Russian Orthodox church in 2000.

In 1991, the bodies of Nicholas II and his wife, along with three of their five children as well as four of their servants, were exhumed from their graves of over 70 years (although some will always question the authenticity of these bones, despite DNA testing). The fact that two bodies were not there leads many people to believe two Romanov children escaped the killings. Ever since there has been great debate as to which two children's bodies are missing. A Russian scientist made photographic superimpositions and determined that Maria and Alexei weren't accounted for. Later, an American scientist determined from dental, vertebral, and other remnants that it was Anastasia and Alexei that were missing. A great mystery surrounds Anastasia, and several films have even been made, including a 1997 full length animated feature by Twentieth Century Fox, suggesting that she lived.

After the bodies were exhumed in June, 1991, they sat in laboratories for years while Russians fought over where they should be buried, Yekaterinburg or St. Petersburg. A Russian commission eventually chose St. Petersburg and the last known direct Romanovs were buried alongside their ancestors.

Contemporary Romanovs

The Romanov family continues to exist today. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia has the strongest claim to the Russian throne. However, despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and campaigns by her supporters for recognition as the constitutional monarch, it seems unlikely that she will ever gain the throne. The Russian people have so far evidenced little popular support for the resurrection of a Russian monarchy, even on a constitutional basis.

Maria Vladimirovna's father, Vladimir Cyrillovitch, was the last male dynast of the Romanov Family. The basis of which is the contention that all other males descended from Emperor Nicholas I of Russia married in violation of the House Laws with the result that their offspring did not possess any inheritance rights to the Russian throne. Under the Semi-Salic succession promulgated by Emperor Paul I of Russia, when the last male Romanov dynast died, the succession would pass to his closest female relative with valid succession rights. Contending that he was the last male Romanov dynast, Vladimir Cyrillovitch declared that his daughter would succeed as his closest female relation. Accordingly, when her father died in 1992, Maria succeeded as the Head of the Imperial Family of Russia on the basis of her assertion that she is now the last male-line descendant of any Russian emperor not to be of a morganatic marriage.

Maria Vladimirovna's claim to the throne is contested. One of her critics is the Romanov Family Association which claims as members all male-line descendants of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia. It is unclear how many of the claimed members actually participate in the association's activities. Maria and her late father clearly did not participate but were nevertheless listed as members. Prince Nicholas Romanov (who styles himself His Highness, Prince Nicholas Romanovich, Prince of Russia) is the president of the association. It is sometimes alleged that Prince Nicholas is the senior genealogical male-line descendant of Nicholas I, but it is difficult to see the basis for this claim since there are living male-line descendants of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Prince Nicholas is descended from one of Alexander II's younger brothers.

Further reading

  • Bergamini, John D. The Tragic Dynasty: A History of the Romanovs. Putnam, 1969.
  • Van der Kiste, John. The Romanovs, 1818-1959: Alexander II of Russia and His Family. Sutton Publishing, 1998.

See also

External links

Royal families | Russian royalty | House of Romanov

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