Illumination from 1673 representing a crowd at the Ipatiev Monastery imploring Michael Romanov’s reluctant mother to let him go to Moscow and become their Tsar (public domain).

Every Romanov Tsar Ranked

Ranking the rulers of 300+ years of the Russian Empire dynasty

These rankings lists seem popular, don’t they? So why not do something entirely arbitrary and apply a ranking system based on extremely loose criteria to a family of Russian autocrats ranging from 1613 to 1917?

Why not, indeed.

The Romanov dynasty was established when a noble boy was plucked out of exile, and ran until his ancestors were executed as the Soviet era began. Although the laws changed over 304 years, a dynastic system like this is essentially playing the game of genetic lottery, producing wildly differing results, whether that be a political genius (there were two), or an incompetent moron (there were many).

This being a list of Tsars (or Emperors — the terms are used interchangeably throughout) we are not including regents who, although technically ruled in the stead of a child Tsar, were not officially rulers in their own right.

Romanov family tree, not showing are Constantine and Michael II as neither rule was formalised (Wikimedia commons)

These exclusions leave us with 20 to rank. Let’s see how they size up:

20) Michael II — 15th March 1917 to 16th March 1917