Line of succession to the former Russian throne

The Monarchy of Russia was abolished in 1917 following the February Revolution, which forced Emperor Nicholas II (1868-1918) to abdicate. Claims made on behalf of different persons to be the rightful current pretender continue to be debated.
Since 1992, the most widely acknowledged pretender is Maria Vladimirovna, Grand Duchess of Russia, a great-great-granddaughter in the male-line of Emperor Alexander II of Russia, having proclaimed herself the head of the imperial house upon her father's death. She also declared her son George Mikhailovich (born 1981) to be the heir-apparent.
Many of the individuals on this list died without legitimate issue; some were killed during the Russian Revolution.
*15px Emperor Nicholas I (1796-1855)
**15px Emperor Alexander II (1818-1881) (1)
***15px Emperor Alexander III (1845-1894) (1.2)
****15px Emperor Nicholas II (born 1868) (1.2.1) (killed on 17 July 1918)
***** (1) Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (b. 1904) (1.2.1.1) (killed on 17 July 1918)
**** (2) Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich (b. 1878) (1.2.4) (killed on 12 June 1918)
***** George Mikhailovich, Count Brasov (b. 1910)
*** Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847-1909) (1.3)
**** (3) Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (b. 1876) (1.3.2)
**** (4) Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich (b. 1877) (1.3.3)
**** (5) Grand Duke Andrew Vladimirovich (b. 1879) (1.3.4)
***** Prince Vladimir Romanovsky-Krasinsky (b. 1902)
*** (6) Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich (b. 1860) (1.6) (killed on 28 January 1919)
**** (7) Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (b. 1891) (1.6.1)
** Grand Duke Constantine Nikolaevich (1827-1892) (2)
*** (8) Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich (b. 1850) (2.1) (officially declared insane and exiled in 1874 after theft accusation)
*** Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia (1858-1915) (2.2)
**** (9) Prince John Konstantinovich (b. 1886) (2.2.1) (killed on 18 July 1918)
***** (10) Prince Vsevolod Ivanovich (b. 1914) (2.2.1.1)
**** (11) Prince Gabriel Konstantinovich (b. 1887) (2.2.2)
**** (12) Prince Constantine Konstantinovich (b. 1891) (2.2.3) (killed on 18 July 1918)
**** (13) Prince Igor Konstantinovich (b. 1894) (2.2.5) (killed on 18 July 1918)
**** (14) Prince George Konstantinovich (b. 1903) (2.2.6)
*** (15) Grand Duke Dmitri Konstantinovich (b. 1860) (2.3) (killed on 28 January 1919)
** Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (1831-1891) (3)
*** (16) Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (b. 1856) (3.1)
*** (17) Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich (b. 1864) (3.2)
**** (18) Prince Roman Petrovich (b. 1896) (3.2.1)
** Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich (1832-1909) (4)
*** (19) Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich (b. 1859) (4.1) (killed on 28 January 1919)
*** (20) Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich (b. 1861) (4.2) (morganatic marriage on 26 February 1891)
*** (21) Grand Duke George Mikhailovich (b. 1863) (4.3) (killed on 28 January 1919)
*** (22) Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (b. 1866) (4.4)
**** (23) Prince Andrew Alexandrovich (b. 1897) (4.4.1)
**** (24) Prince Feodor Alexandrovich (b. 1898) (4.4.2)
**** (25) Prince Nikita Alexandrovich (b. 1900) (4.4.3)
**** (26) Prince Dmitri Alexandrovich (b. 1901) (4.4.4)
**** (27) Prince Rostislav Alexandrovich (b. 1902) (4.4.5)
**** (28) Prince Vasili Alexandrovich (b. 1907) (4.4.6)
*** (29) Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich (b. 1869) (4.5) (killed on 18 July 1918)
Claims since 1917
Michael Alexandrovich (1917-1918)
Brother of Nicholas II, who deferred the throne in 1917.
Nicholas Nikolaevich (1922-1929)
Grandson of Nicholas I. Proclaimed Tsar of Russia by the Provisional Priamurye Government, which controlled portions of the Russian Far East. He neither accepted nor refused this election and remained in exile. He was without issue on his death in 1929 at the age of 72.
Kirillovichi branch (1924-present)
Kirill Vladimirovich (1924-1938)
At first, many members of the Imperial House either did not believe or were wary of acting on news of the demise of the immediate imperial family. However, camps started to be formed in the monarchist movement, where Paris was a focal location. Several monarchists grouped around Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, who was first in the line of succession by male primogeniture after the execution of Alexei Nikolaevich and Michael Alexandrovich. Many of Kirill's opponents grouped around a young grand duke, Dmitri Pavlovich, who was next in the line of succession if Kirill and his brothers, the Vladimirovichi, were ineligible (Paul Alexandrovich, who had been ahead of Dmitri, had been killed in 1919), though Dimitri himself refused these advances, supporting instead Grand Duke Kirill as emperor. Several grouped around the old Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, appreciating his career as general and former commander-in-chief, or his position as the oldest member of the imperial dynasty. On August 8, 1922, Nicholas was proclaimed as the emperor of all Russia by the Zemsky Sobor of the Priamursk region, convened in Vladivostok by General Mikhail Diterikhs. At the time, Grand Duke Nicholas was already living abroad and consequently was not present at the Sobor. Two months later, the Priamursk region fell to the Bolsheviks.
Nicholas and Dmitri never publicly proclaimed themselves pretenders, but Kirill Vladimirovich assumed on 8 August 1922 the position of curator of the throne. On 31 August 1924 he proclaimed himself Kirill I, Emperor of all the Russias. With the assumption of the Imperial title his children were elevated to the title and styles of Grand Duke and Grand Duchesses of Russia according to the Statutes of the Imperial Family and the Laws of the Russian Empire. Grand Duke Kirill's role as head of the House was recognised, and the oath of loyalty signed by every male dynast of the House of Romanov, except Grand Duke Nicholas, his brother Grand Duke Peter, and the latter's son, Prince Roman Petrovich. Nicholas, one of the other monarchist alternatives, died in 1929. Kirill held his court-in-exile in France, erecting a secretariat for the monarchist movement.
Vladimir Kirillovich (1938-1992)
Kirill died in 1938, and was succeeded as pretender by his only son Vladimir Kirillovich, who chose to assume the title of Grand Duke rather than that of Emperor.
The Kirillovichi supporters claim that Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich was the sole male dynast of the Imperial House to enter into an equal marriage after 1917. Opponents refute the equality of this marriage. In 1946, responding to a question from the Spanish Royal House on whether the House of Bagration-Moukhrani could now, after the dissolution of the Russian Empire, be considered of royal (i.e. equal) rank, the Grand Duke issued a statement confirming the formerly sovereign status and royal titulature of the senior branch (i.e., Moukhransky) of the Royal House of Georgia. On August 13, 1948, he married Princess Leonida Bagration-Moukransky. The Grand Duke's marriage to Princess Leonida is controversial; some consider it to be morganatic (although the princess belonged to a dynasty that had ruled as kings in Armenia and Georgia since the early Middle Ages until 1810, the family had been reduced to the status of Russian nobility for over a century prior to the Russian Revolution — Leonida's branch had not been regnant in the male line as kings of Georgia since 1505). The Romanov Family Association, whose bylaws prohibit support of anyone for Russia's defunct throne, recognised neither Vladimir Kirillovich nor his daughter Maria Vladimirovna as rightful claimants.
However, having recognised the Moukhransky branch of the House of Bagration as a former royal dynasty in 1946 in his claimed capacity as head of the (likewise deposed) House of Romanov, he declared his 1948 marriage to Princess Leonida to be dynastic, notwithstanding her family's status as Russian subjects at the end of the monarchy. From the time of their marriage in 1948 she assumed her husband's rank, bearing the title Grand Duchess of Russia and the style Her Imperial Highness.
In 1969 Vladimir, expressing his opinion that the House of Romanov faced almost inevitable extinction in the dynastic male line, proclaimed his daughter Maria Vladimirovna the future curatrix of the throne, implying that she would ultimately succeed. That act angered other dynasts and groups in monarchist circles. Three Romanov dynasts, Princes Vsevold, Andrei and Roman wrote to Vladimir, addressing him as "Prince" rather than "Grand Duke", asserting that Maria Vladimirovna's mother was of no higher status than the wife of any other dynastic Romanov prince. They also said that they did not recognise Maria Vladimirovna as a grand duchess and that his proclamation declaring her the dynasty's future curatrix was illegal.
In 1989, when Prince Vasili Alexandrovich of Russia (who was also the President of the Romanov Family Association, see discussion of succession controversy below), died, Vladimir immediately proclaimed his daughter as the dynasty's heiress, as Prince Vasili was the last male Romanov other than himself whom, having been born of an equal marriage, Vladimir recognised as a dynast.
Maria Vladimirovna (1992-present)
When Vladimir Kirillovich died in 1992, Maria Vladimirovna proclaimed herself the new Head of the Imperial House, Following the death of Vladimir Kirillovich in April 1992, Nicholas took "H.H. Prince of Russia" as his title of pretension.
Dimitri Romanov (2014-2016)
After Nicholas' death in 2014, his brother Prince Dimitri Romanov took up the claim. Dimitri had affirmed in July 2009 that his brother Nicholas, and not Maria Vladimirovna, was the Head of the Imperial Family, simultaneously declaring, however, that pursuant to a 1992 family meeting he attended in Paris, all of the then living senior male descendants of the House of Romanov agreed not to put forward any claim. Prince Dimitri died childless in 2016, extinguishing the asserted claims of the Romanovs of the Nikolayevich branch with the death of the last male of that line.
Mikhailovichi branch (2016-present)
Andrew Romanov (2016-present)
This claim then passed on to the line of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, in the person of Andrew Andreevich, Prince of Russia.
House of Leiningen
Nikolai Kirillovich (2013-present)
Prince Karl Emich of Leiningen (born 1952), converted to the Eastern Orthodox faith in 2013, in order to pretend the Russian throne under the name of Prince Nikolai Kirillovich of Leiningen-Romanov. He is the grandson of Grand Duchess Maria Kirillovna of Russia (sister of Vladimir, and aunt of Maria Vladimirovna) and great-grandson of Kirill Vladimirovich, Grand Duke of Russia. The Monarchist Party of Russia supports Prince Nikolai as the heir of the Russian throne, since they are of the opinion that neither Maria Vladimirovna Romanova nor Nicholas Romanov qualified as dynasts.
Karl Emich was disinherited and gave up use of the Leiningen Fürstliche title because of his parents' disapproval of his second (and morganatic) marriage to a commoner. His younger brother Andreas became the Prince of Leiningen.
* The main objection raised to this argument is that Maria's mother, Princess Leonida Bagration-Mukhransky, was not a member of a royal or sovereign house, and that Maria's parents' marriage was therefore morganatic. The House of Mukhrani (Bagration-Mukhransky) was originally a cadet branch of the Bagrationi dynasty which ruled the Georgian medieval Kingdom of Kartli and reigned in the Kingdom of Imereti until 1810. After Georgia's annexation by the Russian Empire, they had been regarded as nobility, rather than royalty, by the Russian court. Genealogically the eldest surviving Bagratid branch, the Mukranskys claimed to represent the deposed royal dynasty during their years of European exile from Georgia. However the patrilineal descendants of the last king of Georgia - the Bagration-Gruzinskys - remained in Georgia throughout the era of the Soviet Empire, and since its fall and the revival of a monarchist movement they actively contest the Mukhranskys' claim.
* Maria and her defenders argue that the Bagration-Mukhranskys were indeed royal, and that the marriage was thus between equals. Juan, Count of Barcelona, then Head of the Royal House of Spain, considered the issue of Princess Maria de las Mercedes' marriage to be disqualified from the Spanish succession. The only son of this marriage was sponsored at his baptism by the Count of Barcelona but the latter's refusal to recognize his god-son as a Spanish dynast led to the Bagrations' alienation from the Spanish Royal Family, according to Guy Stair Sainty. Even Tatiana Konstantinovna's marriage was legally a morganatic marriage. It was, in fact, the first marriage in the dynasty conducted in compliance with the Emperor’s formal decision not to accept as dynastic the marriages of even the most junior Romanovs — those that bore only the title of prince/princess — with non-royal partners.
* Princess Victoria had previously been married to Grand Duke Ernest Louis of Hesse. Supporters of Maria respond that the laws governing the Russian succession do not forbid marriage to divorcées. In the 1942 edition when the publication of the Gotha was under the control of the Third Reich, the Almanach de Gotha makes no mention that the marriage of the parents of Prince Nicholas is morganatic or that it does not comply with the house laws: both Nicholas and his brother Dimitri appear for the first time as members of the Imperial House. However, the last edition of the Almanach de Gotha published by Justus Perthes, in 1944, returned to the previous accepted understanding that the marriage of Nicholas's parents was "not in conformity with the laws of the house." It has been suggested by scholars that during the Nazi period the editors of the Gotha were influenced by the Queen of Italy, Elena of Montenegro, who was the aunt of Nicholas and Dimitri Romanov.
Other issues
* Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna and Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich did not acknowledge the legitimacy of Kirill Vladimirovich's claim during the 1920s.
* Kirill Vladimirovich was one of the first defectors to abandon the Tsar and join, if not lead, the revolution in St. Petersburg, donning a red armband with the Preobrazhnsky guards. Some argue that as a Russian, a soldier, a grand duke, and a Romanov, this was an act of treason, which calls into question the legitimacy of his and his descendants' claim to the throne. Alternatively, although Kirill is often alleged to have abandoned his post by leading his troops into town to place them at the disposal of the revolutionary Petrograd Soviet which had occupied the Duma's Tauride Palace, he maintained that he responded to the call of the functioning remnant of the Duma, the Provisional Committee, (which was also holed up at the Tauride while vying for power with the Soviet): it was to this latter body that Kirill and his regiment actually reported for military duty that day. most societies of Russian nobles — including the Assembly of the Russian Nobility, The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad has also recognised Maria Vladimirovna as Head of the Russian Imperial House.
The Romanov Family Association (RFA) has as members most of the morganatic descendants of the dynasty.<ref name = "flight"/> Its president was acknowledged as the foremost family representative when Nicholas II and his family's remains were interred in St. Petersburg in July 1998, and at several other government-sponsored memorial occasions. By contrast, Maria Vladimirovna has, at those same events, generally been acknowledged as occupying the foremost position in church-organised solemnities, such as masses for relic veneration.

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