Explore More - 2017

MIKHAIL FEODOROVICH

MIKHAIL FEODOROVICH 1596—1645 R 1613—1645 As well as pushing her passion for French Enlightenment thinkers, Catherine’s administration conducted several successful military campaigns that expanded the Russian Empire by annexing territories, including parts of the Crimea, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine. Following the despotic blip of the reign of Catherine’s son Paul I, Alexander I, an accomplished and intelligent leader, came to power. His reign was marked by a glamorous victory over Napoleon’s troops in 1812. His successor, Nicholas I, is mostly remembered for the absolutist nature of his regime, punctuated by a series of repressions, while Alexander II, who followed him, granted the long-awaited freedom to serfs. Though a popular reform, it was perhaps too little too late because the revolutionary group the Narodniki assassinated him in 1881. Unsurprisingly, Alexander III began his reign with the implementation of a strict policy banning any potentially threatening intellectual activities. Reversing the liberal reforms of his predecessor, the tsar sought to consolidate a strong monarchy, but sadly all of this would be in vain given that the next in line to the throne was his son Nicholas II. Nicholas certainly faced great difficulties on his accession—popular discontent was rising and defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 aggravated the situation. But it was his ill-advised decisions that generated such anger toward the Romanov Dynasty and his family was kidnapped and murdered by the Bolsheviks in July 1918. Perhaps the worst of these decisions was his approval nicholas’s biggest error was aproving grigori rasputin MARIA MILOSLAVSKAYA 1626—1669 FEODOR ALEKSEEVICH 1661—1682 R 1676—1682 ANNA LEOPOLDOVNA 1 7 1 8—1 7 4 6 R 1740—1741 SOPHIA ALEKSEEVNA 1657—1704 R 1682—1689 ALEKSEY MIKHAILOVICH 1629—1676 R 1645—1676 IOANN V ALEKSEEVICH 1666—1696 R 1682—1696 ANNA IOANOVNA 1 6 9 3—1 7 4 0 R 1730—1740 of faith healer Grigori Rasputin. Nicholas II’s son, Alexei, was a frail child born with hemophilia, which his family kept secret for fear of exposing the weakness of the imperial family; it was his mother’s reliance on Rasputin’s power to treat the disease that brought the dynasty to its knees. His influence upon the tsar and the tsarina, and the rumors of sexual scandal and occult happenings at the royal palace, were the fatal embrace that suffocated the monarchy. IOANN V1 1740—1764 R 1740–1741 116 VIKINGCRUISES.COM | EXPLORE MORE 2017

THE ROMANOVS NATALYA NARYSHKINA 1651—1694 THE ROMANOV Family Tree EVDOKIA LOPUKHINA 1669—1731 EKATERINA 1 1684—1727 R 1725—1727 ALEKSEY PETROVICH 1690—1718 PETER 1 (THE GREAT) 1672—1725 R 1682—1725 ANNA PETROVNA 1708—1728 ELIZAVETA 1709—1761 R 1741—1761 PETER 11 1715—1730 R 1727—1730 PETER 111 1728—1762 R 1761—1762 PAUL 1 1754—1801 R 1796—1801 CATHERINE 11 1729—1796 R 1762—1796 ALEXANDER 1 1777—1825 R 1801—1825 NICHOLAS 1 1796—1855 R 1825—1855 ALEXANDER 11 1818—1881 R 1855—1881 ALEXANDER 111 1845—1894 R 1881—1894 NICHOLAS 11 1868—1918 R 1894—1917