Romanov

The House of Romanov (also transliterated as Romanoff. Russian: Романовы, romanized: Romanovy, IPA: [rɐˈmanəvɨ]) is a royal house which was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after Anastasia Romanovna married Ivan the Terrible, the first crowned tsar of all Russia. Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, and his immediate family were executed in 1918, but there are still living descendants of other members of the imperial house. The house consisted of boyars in Russia (the highest rank in the Russian nobility at the time) under the reigning Rurik dynasty, which became extinct upon the death of Feodor I in 1598. The Time of Troubles, caused by the resulting succession crisis, saw several pretenders and impostors lay claim to the Russian throne during the Polish–Lithuanian occupation. On 21 February 1613, the Zemsky Sobor elected Michael Romanov as tsar, establishing the Romanovs as Russia's second reigning dynasty. Michael's grandson, Peter I, who took the title of emperor and proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721, transformed the country into a great power through a series of wars and reforms. The direct male line of the Romanovs ended when Elizabeth died childless in 1762. As a result, her nephew Peter III, an agnatic member of the House of Holstein-Gottorp (a cadet branch of the German House of Oldenburg), ascended to the throne and adopted his Romanov mother's house name. Officially known as members of the House of Romanov, descendants after Elizabeth are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. Paul I became the first heir to the throne, having the title tsesarevich, which was subsequently used for all main heirs. The abdication of Nicholas II on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917 as a result of the February Revolution ended 304 years of Romanov rule and led to the establishment of the Russian Republic under the Russian Provisional Government in the lead-up to the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. In 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas II and his family. Of the House of Romanov's 65 members, 47 survivors went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the senior surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture, claimed the headship of the defunct Imperial House of Russia.