The first Russian monarch to be crowned as tsar was Ivan IV, who had held the title of sovereign and grand prince.

[5] Following the expansion of his realm, the grand prince Ivan III (r. 1462–1505) took the title of sovereign of all Russia and claimed inheritance to all the former territories of Kievan Rus', including those under Lithuanian control.

[6] The unification of the Russian principalities fostered a sense of an imperial role of the grand prince of Moscow as the independent ruler of all Russia.

[7] Following his marriage to Sophia Palaiologina, a niece of the last Byzantine emperor, Ivan began to intermittently use the title of tsar from 1473.

[11] At the beginning of the 1490s, he also had the following title: Ivan, by the Grace of God, Sovereign of All Russia and Grand Prince of Vladimir, and Moscow, and Novgorod, and Pskov, and Tver, and Yugorsk, and Perm, and Bulgar, and others.

[14] In the Tale of the Princes of Vladimir, dating from the early 16th century, the Rurikid rulers of Moscow are alleged to have descended from not only Rurik, but also a brother of Augustus Caesar.

[15] It is difficult to determine how genuinely the Russian tsars believed in their Roman ancestry, but it was used to support the claim of imperial descent going back to Rome.

[15] After 1514, the full title used by Vasily III was: By the Grace of God, the Tsar and Sovereign of All Russia and the Grand Prince of Vladimir, Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, Yugorsk, Perm, Vyatka and Bulgar, and others, the Sovereign and Grand Prince of Novgorod of the Lower Land, and Chernigov, and Ryazan, Volotsk, Rzhev, Belyov, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Beloozero, Udoria, Obdoria and Kondia.

On 16 January 1547, Ivan IV was the first to be crowned tsar, at the age of 16; his ceremony drew upon Byzantine precedents deliberately.

In 1561, the patriarch referred to Ivan IV as "tsar and sovereign of Orthodox Christians of the whole universe", likening him to a Byzantine emperor.

[18][19] In exchange for acceptance of the title of tsar, the papacy hoped to gain recognition of Roman supremacy; one letter written by the pope and drafted for delivery in 1550 addressed Ivan IV as Universorum Ruthenorum imperator, but Polish obstruction prevented any papal mission from occurring.

[21] The childless death of Feodor I in 1598 marked the end of the Rurik dynasty and the beginning of the Time of Troubles, a period of political chaos and foreign intervention.

[37] According to Isabel de Madariaga: "But if Peter was indeed asserting the right of the ruler of Russia to be regarded as the heir of the Orthodox empire of Byzantium, he dressed up his claim in western clothes, and gave it a classical Roman ancestry".

[37] Boris Uspenskij and Viktor Zhivov noted that Byzantinization cohabited easily with Westernization, while it increased throughout the 18th century as a result of the sacralization of the monarch.