GENERAL NOTES

There are quite many people interested in the Romanov royal family and some of them would like to learn more about the Romanov family history and the genealogy of the Romanovs, too. Who were all those Grand Dukes and Duchesses, whom they married, how are the Romanovs of the past connected with the ruling noble houses of today? This website is trying to give some help in these questions.

There are some large royalty databases available on the net. These are, however, somewhat impractical and sometimes slow to browse. And, as for the Romanovs, none of them is focused exclusively on the Romanov Family. This is why I took up the effort to put together a compact Romanov genealogical database which would be easy to use and browse and which would contain as much information as possible.

The heart of the website will naturally be the collection of the genealogical records. These records will also include pedigree charts and ancestral tables, which I hope will give a more visual idea of the genealogical connections and make the browsing easier. I also hope they will illustrate the complex connections between the noble houses of Europe and give some information for those interested in the question of the royal succession within the Romanov Family. Especially the five-generation descendant chart of Emperor Nikolai I, which will soon be complete, should prove interesting.

The pattern of the genealogical records is the family group sheet system. This style of presenting the records is perhaps more laborious than other possible patterns but it gives quite a lot of information on single persons in a convenient way.

I would like to point out that in order to avoid any misunderstandings I have always used the Gregorian dates. If somebody would like to know some exact Julian date, feel free to email me. I will be grateful for all feedback, especially if somebody can provide me with additional information (dates, birth & death places etc.). If I have made some mistakes, I would like to know about them, too. Please do correct me if you feel I'm wrong in some details.

I have included only short biographical notes in the records - the records are genealogical tables, not biographies. I'm still not sure whether or not I should include pictures in the records.

A couple of words more about the coats of arms. The Romanov double eagle denotes the members of the Romanov Family. Also the Grand Duchesses married into the family will have the noble double eagle. The Romanov descendants from morganatic marriages will, of course, not be entitled to the Romanov coats of arms, as their names have changed, too - Jurievski, Palei, Romanovski etc. After the Revolution, however, it is somewhat difficult to decide, whether a marriage is morganatic or not, when princes, countesses and duchesses get married. As long as the female persons married to the Romanov Family are of noble birth, they will show the Romanov double eagle in their records.

In the future, this genealogical database will have more and more information about other noble houses of Europe, too, especially the royal houses of Denmark, Prussia and Great Britain will be taken into closer consideration.