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 imposters lay claim to the Russian throne during the Polish-Lithuanian occupation.

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.

December 1761], the monarchs of the Russian Empire claimed the throne as relatives of Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia (1708–1728), who had married Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp.

Among his children by Anastasia, the eldest, Ivan, was murdered by the tsar in a quarrel; the younger Feodor, a pious but lethargic prince, inherited the throne upon his father's death in 1584.

As a former leader of the anti-Godunov party and cousin of the last legitimate tsar, Filaret Romanov's recognition was sought by several impostors who attempted to claim the Rurikid legacy and throne during the Time of Troubles.

Ivan VI was only a one-year-old infant at the time of his succession to the throne, and his parents, Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldovna and Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick, the ruling regent, were detested for their German counselors and relations.

As a consequence, shortly after Empress Anna's death, Elizabeth Petrovna, a legitimized daughter of Peter I, managed to gain the favor of the populace and dethroned Ivan VI in a coup d'état, supported by the Preobrazhensky Regiment and the ambassadors of France and Sweden.

[7] In 1762, shortly after the death of Empress Elizabeth, Sophia, who had taken the Russian name Catherine upon her marriage, overthrew her unpopular husband, with the aid of her lover, Grigory Orlov.

Later, Alexander I, responding to the 1820 morganatic marriage of his brother and heir,[7] added the requirement that consorts of all Russian dynasts in the male line had to be of equal birth (i.e., born to a royal or sovereign dynasty).

The succession was far from smooth, however, as hundreds of troops took the oath of allegiance to Nicholas's elder brother, Constantine Pavlovich who, unbeknownst to them, had renounced his claim to the throne in 1822, following his marriage.

For her part the shy Alix, who took the name Alexandra Feodorovna, became a devout convert to Orthodoxy as well as a devoted wife to Nicholas and mother to their five children, yet avoided many of the social duties traditional for Russia's tsarinas.

[7] When, in September 1915, Nicholas took command of the army at the front lines during World War I, Alexandra sought to influence him toward an authoritarian approach in government affairs even more than she had done during peacetime.

His well-known devotion to her injured both his and the dynasty's reputation during World War I, due to both her German origin and her unique relationship with Rasputin, whose role in the life of her only son was not widely known.

[7] Her son, Alexei, the long-awaited heir to the throne, inherited the disease and suffered agonizing bouts of protracted bleeding, the pain of which was sometimes partially alleviated by Rasputin's ministrations.

[11] Constantine Pavlovich and Michael Alexandrovich, both morganatically married, are occasionally counted among Russia's emperors by historians who observe that the Russian monarchy did not legally permit interregnums.

[7] The latter declined to accept imperial authority save to delegate it to the Provisional Government pending a future democratic referendum, effectively terminating the Romanov dynasty's rule over Russia.

Here, on the night of 16–17 July 1918, the entire Russian Imperial Romanov family, along with several of their retainers, were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries, most likely on the orders of Vladimir Lenin.

The bodies of the Romanovs were then hidden and moved several times before being interred in an unmarked pit where they remained until the summer of 1979 when amateur enthusiasts disinterred and re-buried some of them, and then decided to conceal the find until the fall of communism.

In 1991 the grave site was excavated and the bodies were given a state funeral under the nascent democracy of post-Soviet Russia, and several years later DNA and other forensic evidence was used by Russian and international scientists to make accurate identifications.

[21] The area where the remains were found was near the old Koptyaki Road, under what appeared to be double bonfire sites about 70 meters (230 ft) from the mass grave in Pigs Meadow near Yekaterinburg.

The excavation uncovered the following items in the two pits which formed a "T": Geneticists used a combination of autosomal STR and mtDNA sequencing to detect relationships between the family members' remains.

[23] However, "conspiracy theories"[24] persisted throughout the 20th century, with some authors still contending that "somehow the real Anastasia, Maria, or perhaps Aleksei, might have survived the Russian Revolution"[25] even after the discovery of the bodies and the confirmation of their identities was made public.

Additionally, despite their discovery in 2007, the remains of the two bodies found in the separate grave did not "receive a proper burial due to the Russian Orthodox Church's unsubstantiated doubts about their authenticity.

Following the 1905 assassination of her husband, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Elisabeth Feodorovna had ceased living as a member of the Imperial family and took up life as a serving nun, but was nonetheless arrested and slated for death with other Romanovs.

The four Grand Dukes were buried in a mass grave in the fortress, though Dmitry Konstantinovich's body was collected by his former adjutant, rolled up in a rug and taken away for a private burial in the garden of a house in Petrograd, where he remains to this day.

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a cousin of Nicholas II, had been exiled to the Caucasus in 1916 for his part in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, and managed to escape Russia.

There have been numerous post-Revolution reports of Romanov survivors and unsubstantiated claims by individuals to be members of the deposed Tsar Nicholas II's family, the best known of whom was Anna Anderson.

[39] Since then, her son George Mikhailovich has contracted a morganatic marriage with the Italian citizen Rebecca Bettarini,[40][41] leaving him and his mother as the last remaining members the Imperial House (according to their claims).

[57] The centerpiece is the coat of arms of Moscow that contains the iconic Saint George the Dragon-slayer with a blue cape (cloak) attacking golden serpent on red field.