The Romanovichi ruled the southwestern territories, which were unified by Roman the Great and his son Daniel, who was in 1253 crowned by Pope Innocent IV as the king of Ruthenia.

The northern and northeastern territories were unified by the Daniilovichi of Moscow;[6] by the 15th century, Ivan III threw off the control of the Golden Horde and assumed the title of sovereign of all Russia.

[13] As a ruling house, the Rurikids held their own for a total of 21 generations in male-line succession, from Rurik (d. 879) to Feodor I of Russia (d. 1598), a period of more than 700 years.

[b] Nicholas V. Riasanovsky (1947) stated: '...no Kievan sources anterior to the Primary Chronicle (early twelfth century), knew of Riurik.

[25] It was not until the 16th century that Rus' churchmen developed an explicit tradition,[24] described in the 1560 Book of Royal Degrees by Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow, according to which the reigning Danilovichi house of the Grand Duchy of Moscow (Muscovy) was part of a "Rurikid dynasty", which not only traced back all the way to the legendary Rurik, but was purportedly descended from a certain Prus, a supposed kinsman of Augustus Caesar.

[29][30][31] According to the prevalent theory, the name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times.

[38] A genetic study on the origins of Rurikids (Zhur et al. 2023) analysed "for the first time", remains belonging to Prince Dmitry Alexandrovich.

The study found that Dmitry Alexandrovich and most of the "medieval and modern Rurikids", starting with Prince Yaroslav the Wise, belong to paternal haplogroup N-M231 (N1a).

The house underwent a major schism after the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054, dividing into three branches on the basis of descent from three successive ruling Grand Princes: Iziaslav (1024–1078), Sviatoslav (1027–1076), and Vsevolod (1030–1093).

In the 10th century the Council of Liubech made some amendments to a succession rule and divided Ruthenia into several autonomous principalities that had equal rights to obtain the Kievan throne.

[citation needed] According to Jaroslaw Pelenski, The 'Riurikide' dynasty and the ruling elite ... attempted to impose on their highly diverse polity the integrative concept of russkaia zemlia ('the Rus' land') and the unifying notion of a 'Rus' people'. ...

It was a loosely bound, ill-defined, and heterogeneous conglomeration of lands and cities inhabited by tribes and population groups whose loyalties were primarily territorial.

Most notably, the Ostrogski family held the title of Grand Hetman of Lithuania and strove to preserve the Ruthenian language and Eastern Orthodoxy in this part of Europe.

[citation needed] The Shakhovskoys were founded by Konstantin "Shakh" Glebovich, Prince of Yaroslavl, and traces its lineage to Rostislav I of Kiev through his son Davyd Rostislavich.

This branch also descends cognatically of Ivan I of Moscow, through the latter's daughter Evdokia Ivanovna Moskovskaya (1314–1342),[43][full citation needed] who married Vasili Mikhailovich [ru], Prince of Yaroslavl (died 1345).

Yuri's son Vsevolod the Big Nest was Prince of Vladimir-Suzdal, a precursor state to the Grand Principality of Moscow and thus of the Russian Empire.

Volodimerovichi, grand princes of Kiev Russian and Ukrainian historians have debated for many years about the legacy of the Rurikid dynasty.

The Russian view sees the Principality of Moscow ruled by the Rurikid dynasty as the sole heir to the Kievan Rus' civilisation, this view is "resting largely on religious-ecclesiastical and historical claims" because Eastern Russian lands managed to establish themself as independent state that was ruled by the Rurikid dynasty until 16th century.

[49] At the same time Ukrainian view of sole succession is based on continuity from the Kievan Rus and its subsequent Kingdom of Ruthenia, Lithuania-Ruthenia, Cossack Hetmanate.

[51] Following downfall of Galicia-Volhynia, monarchs of Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia and then Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth claimed sole succession as well, which in turn was supported by Ruthenian population and historians at the time.