A 12toKNOW Guide · Russian History
Nicholas II, eight generations back — and further on a few lines. Every wedge is one ancestor, colored by house. Notice how few colors are Russian.
The Romanovs ruled Russia for 304 years, but by the time of Nicholas II the family was almost entirely foreign: Danish, Hessian, Prussian, Württemberger, with British blood one step to the side. Read the chart from the center outward. The father's line runs down the right half, the mother's line down the left. Tap any wedge for the person; wedges outlined in gold are ancestors who appear more than once — the same person reached by different roads.
Each ring is one generation back. Hatched wedges are gaps: Wikipedia lists no parents there, so the chart stops rather than guesses.
Slots are the places an ancestor could sit (2, 4, 8 …). “Filled” counts the slots Wikipedia documents. “Distinct” counts different people — the gap between the two is pedigree collapse.
Pick an ancestor and see the shortest chain from Nicholas II to them, generation by generation. These lines run past the fan, back into the 1500s.
Ancestors who fill more than one slot in the first eight generations, closest first.
Where the data comes from. Each person's parents are the father and mother fields of their English Wikipedia infobox, read in September 2026; every wedge links to its page. The walk runs eight generations from Nicholas II, then a further four along selected lines (Romanov, Stuart, Vasa, Oldenburg, Hohenzollern).
What it can't tell you. A gap means undocumented there, not unknown to history, so deeper rings understate the real pedigree and the repeat counts are floors. Some entries are houses or families rather than individuals (drawn as gaps). Marie of Hesse, Alexander II's wife, is entered as Louis II's daughter as officially recognised; contemporary gossip named another father, and the chart follows the official line.
How to read “Russian.” By birth house, the chart counts a wedge Russian only where the person belongs to a Russian family (the Romanovs, Naryshkins, Streshnevs, Volkonskys). The tsars from Peter III on are colored Russian as Romanov sovereigns, although by descent they were Holstein-Gottorp and German; Catherine the Great, born at Anhalt-Zerbst, is colored “other.”
Read more. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra; Clay, King, Kaiser, Tsar; Rappaport, The Race to Save the Romanovs (the cousins, in action); Montefiore, The Romanovs. See also the companion page on the 1914 cousins.
Part of the Russian History guide. Built the same way as everything else at 12toKNOW: in the open, and for the love of it.