The Romanovs ruled Russia for three centuries and ended in a cellar in Yekaterinburg. This family tree centers on the last generation: Nicholas II (1868–1918), who inherited the throne unprepared when his father Alexander III died young of kidney disease, and Alexandra (1872–1918) — born Princess Alix of Hesse, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and the carrier who threaded hemophilia into the imperial line.
That inheritance shaped everything. Their only son and heir, Tsarevich Alexei (1904–1918), suffered severe hemophilia B passed down through Victoria's descendants. Alexandra's desperate search for a healer drew the family to Grigori Rasputin (1869–1916), the Siberian mystic whose grip on the Empress corroded the court's legitimacy until nobles murdered him in December 1916. The four grand duchesses — Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia — and Alexei were executed with their parents by Bolsheviks in July 1918. Anastasia, the youngest daughter, gave rise to decades of impostor legends before DNA finally confirmed the family's fate.
As a genogram, the Romanovs are a striking study in inherited illness, arranged royal alliance, and the way a single medical condition — traced across a marriage tie back to Queen Victoria — can bear down on the fate of an entire dynasty.
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