List of monarchs III
- Thread starter Shiva
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So if it was just specifying the gender of the successor, I say swap out
for "Upon his death, he was succeeded by _____________" and just keep going. Can't do much about @सार्थक (Sārthākā) gender specification now. But with this:
I'm not really sure what to do. The marriage is ASB, so it'd be kinda hard for the next person to deal with. Maybe swap that out for "At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, a Serbian/Greek/Bulgarian princess"?
Anyone have a strong opinion?
As ASB as it is, I think we have to stick with the marriage. But the thread might need to consider what the implications are of it.
POD: Fyodor Godunov successfully beats the agents of False Dmitry sent to kill him.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that atracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was suceeded by ______________.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly german, swedish and danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of _____.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly german, swedish and danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of _____.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that atracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was suceeded by ______________.
POD: Süleyman Pasha (son of Orhan) does not die in a hunting accident and becomes the Third Ottoman Sultan
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
---
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor __________.
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
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A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor __________.
POD: Fyodor Godunov successfully beats the agents of False Dmitry sent to kill him.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1785, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his _________, ______________.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly german, swedish and danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that atracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was suceeded by his eldest son, Peter.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly german, swedish and danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that atracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was suceeded by his eldest son, Peter.
[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1785, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his _________, ______________.
Yeah, I knew this pairing was ASB but thought it'd be cool to expand upon 🤪
In the future try and remember the rules:
ASB marriages definitely fall under not logical or realistic.
Also;
Since you’ve had trouble with the rules, maybe reread them?
POD: Fyodor Godunov successfully beats the agents of False Dmitry sent to kill him.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
1762-1766: Aleksey I (House of Godunov) [6]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly German, Swedish and Danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that attracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter.
View attachment 706178
[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1685, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his son, Aleksey.
[6] Aleksey was born 1709, the third son of his parents. Unfortunately, his older brother, Peter died childless in 1726 of typhoid fever. His second brother, Boris would marry Peter's widow, Christina of Denmark. They would not have any living children. Boris would die conquering Dzungar in 1733, leaving Aleksey as the next in line to the throne.
As he had been the third son, no one had paid much attention to him, even when Peter died. He had married Anna Romanov, a childhood friend of his. While Aleksey was mild mannered and had not a drop of ambition in him, his wife was known as a great political mind of her time. When Emperor Peter sent his son to rule Khiva in his name, it was an open secret that Aleksey made no decision without consulting his wife first.
Aleksey and Anna would continue to have a loving marriage. Sadly, their happiness would be destroyed when in 1738, after giving birth to her fifth child, Anna would die of childbed fever, devastating her husband and her children. Alexsey would continue to remain devoted to his wife's memory, even setting up the Order of Saint Anna in her honor. When asked if he would marry again, he flatly refused, saying he would only have one wife and one empress.
Afterwards, he would fall into a deep depression, and began to drink heavily.
In 1762, Aleksey would become Emperor of Russia. He would last only four years before he died of liver failure, leaving his crown in the more capable hands of_____
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
1762-1766: Aleksey I (House of Godunov) [6]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly German, Swedish and Danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
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A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that attracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter.
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[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1685, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his son, Aleksey.
[6] Aleksey was born 1709, the third son of his parents. Unfortunately, his older brother, Peter died childless in 1726 of typhoid fever. His second brother, Boris would marry Peter's widow, Christina of Denmark. They would not have any living children. Boris would die conquering Dzungar in 1733, leaving Aleksey as the next in line to the throne.
As he had been the third son, no one had paid much attention to him, even when Peter died. He had married Anna Romanov, a childhood friend of his. While Aleksey was mild mannered and had not a drop of ambition in him, his wife was known as a great political mind of her time. When Emperor Peter sent his son to rule Khiva in his name, it was an open secret that Aleksey made no decision without consulting his wife first.
Aleksey and Anna would continue to have a loving marriage. Sadly, their happiness would be destroyed when in 1738, after giving birth to her fifth child, Anna would die of childbed fever, devastating her husband and her children. Alexsey would continue to remain devoted to his wife's memory, even setting up the Order of Saint Anna in her honor. When asked if he would marry again, he flatly refused, saying he would only have one wife and one empress.
Afterwards, he would fall into a deep depression, and began to drink heavily.
In 1762, Aleksey would become Emperor of Russia. He would last only four years before he died of liver failure, leaving his crown in the more capable hands of_____
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POD: Süleyman Pasha (son of Orhan) does not die in a hunting accident and becomes the Third Ottoman Sultan
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
1439 - 1450: Murad II "The Bloody" (House of Osman) [4]
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
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An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor her son, Murad.
[4] When his mother died, Murad was in his late twenties when his mother died, having been born early in his parents' marriage. Murad was a man with a vision. He dreamt of being a great conqueror. It was noted that Murad seemed to care only for the glory of war, leaving statecraft to his advisors while he marched his armies to endless wars though Europe. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to his downfall.
Not long after his mother's death, Murad chose to invade Romania, not satisfied with the princes only paying tribute, feeling that the entire country should be his. The Princes of Romania were supported by the Holy Roman Emperor who happened to be the King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Kings of Poland and Scandinavia were also eager to help.
In 1448, Murad would attack Wallachia. However he was betrayed by his generals who were sick of the constant battles and handed over to Prince Vlad. Popular legend had that either Vlad or his son, who would go on to have the moniker the Impaler, tortured Murad for every day he had been destroying their country. (In the book Dracula, the vampire mentions the first time he feasted on human flesh was of a man who was drenched in the blood of his [Dracula's] countrymen. This is long suspected to have been Emperor Murad).
Two years later, his buctured body would be sent to his successor____.
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
1439 - 1450: Murad II "The Bloody" (House of Osman) [4]
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
View attachment 706182
An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor her son, Murad.
[4] When his mother died, Murad was in his late twenties when his mother died, having been born early in his parents' marriage. Murad was a man with a vision. He dreamt of being a great conqueror. It was noted that Murad seemed to care only for the glory of war, leaving statecraft to his advisors while he marched his armies to endless wars though Europe. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to his downfall.
Not long after his mother's death, Murad chose to invade Romania, not satisfied with the princes only paying tribute, feeling that the entire country should be his. The Princes of Romania were supported by the Holy Roman Emperor who happened to be the King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Kings of Poland and Scandinavia were also eager to help.
In 1448, Murad would attack Wallachia. However he was betrayed by his generals who were sick of the constant battles and handed over to Prince Vlad. Popular legend had that either Vlad or his son, who would go on to have the moniker the Impaler, tortured Murad for every day he had been destroying their country. (In the book Dracula, the vampire mentions the first time he feasted on human flesh was of a man who was drenched in the blood of his [Dracula's] countrymen. This is long suspected to have been Emperor Murad).
Two years later, his buctured body would be sent to his successor____.
POD: Fyodor Godunov successfully beats the agents of False Dmitry sent to kill him.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
1762-1766: Aleksey I (House of Godunov) [6]
1766-1803: Michael I (House of Godunov) [7]
Michael I of Russia[7] Michael was born in 1731 as the second child but first son of future Russian Emperor Aleksey I and his wife Anna Romanov. He and his older sister Anna (b. 1730) loved their mother very much and so were saddened when she died in 1738, and were sent with their three siblings to be taken care of by their grandfather Peter II once Aleksey started drinking.
Michael wed Princess Sophia Louise of Prussia (daughter of King Albert II) in 1750 in a marriage arranged by his grandfather to help improve relations with Prussia, which deteriorated after they had supported Fyodor III in the Fyodorian Wars. The couple went on to have four children, with Michael naming one of his daughters Anna in memory of his mother.
He became Emperor of Russia in 1766, although he was already governing as he acted as regent for his father for most of his reign (due to him being drunk). One of the first major events of Michael's reign was the War of the Polish Succession, which started when Augustus "the Weak" died without any heirs. Russia and it's allies would win the war and placed a member of the noble Borkowski family on the throne. Courland also became a vassel of Russia with Friedrich III of Courland marrying one of Michael's daughters.
Another important event during Michael's reign was the colonizing of the west coast of North America, which started with the founding of New Moscow (OTL Astoria, OR) in 1792. By the time Michael died in 1803 several more settlements were created not only along the area surrounding New Moscow, but also up in Alaska.
In 1798 the Austrian Revolution happened, with resulted in the execution of the Holy Roman Emperor and the end of HRE. Michael, worried by what effects the new Republic of the Danube would have on Europe, worked with his advisers on making a constitution. He sadly didn't to see it implemented as he died in 1803 weeks before it was signed. He was succeeded by his _____________.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
1762-1766: Aleksey I (House of Godunov) [6]
1766-1803: Michael I (House of Godunov) [7]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly German, Swedish and Danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that attracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter.
View attachment 706178
[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1685, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children.
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his son, Aleksey.
[6] Aleksey was born 1709, the third son of his parents. Unfortunately, his older brother, Peter died childless in 1726 of typhoid fever. His second brother, Boris would marry Peter's widow, Christina of Denmark. They would not have any living children. Boris would die conquering Dzungar in 1733, leaving Aleksey as the next in line to the throne.
As he had been the third son, no one had paid much attention to him, even when Peter died. He had married Anna Romanov, a childhood friend of his. While Aleksey was mild mannered and had not a drop of ambition in him, his wife was known as a great political mind of her time. When Emperor Peter sent his son to rule Khiva in his name, it was an open secret that Aleksey made no decision without consulting his wife first.
Aleksey and Anna would continue to have a loving marriage. Sadly, their happiness would be destroyed when in 1738, after giving birth to her fifth child, Anna would die of childbed fever, devastating her husband and her children. Alexsey would continue to remain devoted to his wife's memory, even setting up the Order of Saint Anna in her honor. When asked if he would marry again, he flatly refused, saying he would only have one wife and one empress.
Afterwards, he would fall into a deep depression, and began to drink heavily.
In 1762, Aleksey would become Emperor of Russia. He would last only four years before he died of liver failure, leaving his crown in the more capable hands of his son Michael.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly German, Swedish and Danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
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A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that attracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter.
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[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1685, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children.
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his son, Aleksey.
[6] Aleksey was born 1709, the third son of his parents. Unfortunately, his older brother, Peter died childless in 1726 of typhoid fever. His second brother, Boris would marry Peter's widow, Christina of Denmark. They would not have any living children. Boris would die conquering Dzungar in 1733, leaving Aleksey as the next in line to the throne.
As he had been the third son, no one had paid much attention to him, even when Peter died. He had married Anna Romanov, a childhood friend of his. While Aleksey was mild mannered and had not a drop of ambition in him, his wife was known as a great political mind of her time. When Emperor Peter sent his son to rule Khiva in his name, it was an open secret that Aleksey made no decision without consulting his wife first.
Aleksey and Anna would continue to have a loving marriage. Sadly, their happiness would be destroyed when in 1738, after giving birth to her fifth child, Anna would die of childbed fever, devastating her husband and her children. Alexsey would continue to remain devoted to his wife's memory, even setting up the Order of Saint Anna in her honor. When asked if he would marry again, he flatly refused, saying he would only have one wife and one empress.
Afterwards, he would fall into a deep depression, and began to drink heavily.
In 1762, Aleksey would become Emperor of Russia. He would last only four years before he died of liver failure, leaving his crown in the more capable hands of his son Michael.
Michael I of Russia
Michael wed Princess Sophia Louise of Prussia (daughter of King Albert II) in 1750 in a marriage arranged by his grandfather to help improve relations with Prussia, which deteriorated after they had supported Fyodor III in the Fyodorian Wars. The couple went on to have four children, with Michael naming one of his daughters Anna in memory of his mother.
He became Emperor of Russia in 1766, although he was already governing as he acted as regent for his father for most of his reign (due to him being drunk). One of the first major events of Michael's reign was the War of the Polish Succession, which started when Augustus "the Weak" died without any heirs. Russia and it's allies would win the war and placed a member of the noble Borkowski family on the throne. Courland also became a vassel of Russia with Friedrich III of Courland marrying one of Michael's daughters.
Another important event during Michael's reign was the colonizing of the west coast of North America, which started with the founding of New Moscow (OTL Astoria, OR) in 1792. By the time Michael died in 1803 several more settlements were created not only along the area surrounding New Moscow, but also up in Alaska.
In 1798 the Austrian Revolution happened, with resulted in the execution of the Holy Roman Emperor and the end of HRE. Michael, worried by what effects the new Republic of the Danube would have on Europe, worked with his advisers on making a constitution. He sadly didn't to see it implemented as he died in 1803 weeks before it was signed. He was succeeded by his _____________.
POD: Süleyman Pasha (son of Orhan) does not die in a hunting accident and becomes the Third Ottoman Sultan
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
1439 - 1450: Murad I "The Bloody" (House of Osman) [4]
1450 - 1483: Orhan II 'The Nature-Lover' (House of Osman) [5]
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
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An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor her son, Murad.
[4] When his mother died, Murad was in his late twenties when his mother died, having been born early in his parents' marriage. Murad was a man with a vision. He dreamt of being a great conqueror. It was noted that Murad seemed to care only for the glory of war, leaving statecraft to his advisors while he marched his armies to endless wars though Europe. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to his downfall.
Not long after his mother's death, Murad chose to invade Romania, not satisfied with the princes only paying tribute, feeling that the entire country should be his. The Princes of Romania were supported by the Holy Roman Emperor who happened to be the King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Kings of Poland and Scandinavia were also eager to help.
In 1448, Murad would attack Wallachia. However he was betrayed by his generals who were sick of the constant battles and handed over to Prince Vlad. Popular legend had that either Vlad or his son, who would go on to have the moniker the Impaler, tortured Murad for every day he had been destroying their country. (In the book Dracula, the vampire mentions the first time he feasted on human flesh was of a man who was drenched in the blood of his [Dracula's] countrymen. This is long suspected to have been Emperor Murad).
Two years later, his buctured body would be sent to his successor____.
A painting of Orhan II
[5] Only in his late teens when he rose to power as the eldest son of Murad I, Orhan II's reign began with a bang as the cause of his father's death became known. Vowing revenge, Orhan II gathered a massive army and invaded Wallachia and Moldavia, which after a two-year-long war surrendered. Wallachia was annexed completely whilst Moldavia was turned into a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. Prince Vlad was forced into the mountains and hills where he conducted another two-year-long guerilla war of resistance before he was caught by Ottoman sentries and then executed gruesomely as revenge for Murad I. Orhan II was also involved in building up his realm and consolidating its power. He consolidated Ottoman hold over Albania, defeating the local revolts with the help of Iskender Bey (Skanderbeg in Albanian), with whom he struck up a good relationship by appointing Iskender Bey as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Orhan II also completed the final conquests of Anatolia as the entire region of Anatolia was consolidated under his reign. In 1452 he married Khawand Fatima, the daughter of Sultan Sayf ad-Din Inal of the Mamluk Sultanate as his primary wife, and used said marriage to gain key trading contracts with the Mamluks into the Red Sea, enlarging the Ottoman economic sphere.
Orhan II's reign saw no further expansion (other than few border skirmishes and border forts changing hands at times) as Orhan II was more interested in the consolidation of his large realm. The Blood Tax on the Christian minorities were abolished, and instead the Janissaries were created into a true professional standing force (the first in the entire world) under Orhan II's reign by picking the best troops from the normal army. The abolition of the Blood Tax earned him the loyalty of the Christian populace, and Orhan II's devout religiosity earned him the loyalty of the Islamic populace as well. Orhan II's opening of the Ottoman Empire to fleeing Sephardic Jews from Iberia during the Reconquista also earned him the loyalty of the Jewish populace. In the end, Orhan II's reign marked a reign of inter-religious harmony that was not seen throughout the entirety of the world at the time. This inter-religious harmony allowed for economics to flow, and the Ottomans, already controlling the Aegean and Black Sea's entrance, became even more rich and prosperous as a result. Orhan II saw himself as more of a 'money-giver' than a conqueror, as he uplifted the nation economically. By the end of his reign, only the rich city states of Italy and Germany would be more rich than the Ottoman Empire on a per capita basis. Orhan II was also an avid lover of all things nature. During his time, he converted many forests, mountain ranges and hilly valleys into royal areas, protected by the law, and all animals in said royal forests found protection, food and shelter. His palace was also famously called by western europeans to be the 'palace of animals' as exotic animals from the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, Caucasus and the Balkans found home in his palace.
In 1483, Orhan II died of severe fever, sparking a year long mourning process throughout the realm, Muslim and non-muslim alike, and he was succeeded by_______
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
1439 - 1450: Murad I "The Bloody" (House of Osman) [4]
1450 - 1483: Orhan II 'The Nature-Lover' (House of Osman) [5]
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
View attachment 706182
An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor her son, Murad.
[4] When his mother died, Murad was in his late twenties when his mother died, having been born early in his parents' marriage. Murad was a man with a vision. He dreamt of being a great conqueror. It was noted that Murad seemed to care only for the glory of war, leaving statecraft to his advisors while he marched his armies to endless wars though Europe. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to his downfall.
Not long after his mother's death, Murad chose to invade Romania, not satisfied with the princes only paying tribute, feeling that the entire country should be his. The Princes of Romania were supported by the Holy Roman Emperor who happened to be the King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Kings of Poland and Scandinavia were also eager to help.
In 1448, Murad would attack Wallachia. However he was betrayed by his generals who were sick of the constant battles and handed over to Prince Vlad. Popular legend had that either Vlad or his son, who would go on to have the moniker the Impaler, tortured Murad for every day he had been destroying their country. (In the book Dracula, the vampire mentions the first time he feasted on human flesh was of a man who was drenched in the blood of his [Dracula's] countrymen. This is long suspected to have been Emperor Murad).
Two years later, his buctured body would be sent to his successor____.
A painting of Orhan II
Orhan II's reign saw no further expansion (other than few border skirmishes and border forts changing hands at times) as Orhan II was more interested in the consolidation of his large realm. The Blood Tax on the Christian minorities were abolished, and instead the Janissaries were created into a true professional standing force (the first in the entire world) under Orhan II's reign by picking the best troops from the normal army. The abolition of the Blood Tax earned him the loyalty of the Christian populace, and Orhan II's devout religiosity earned him the loyalty of the Islamic populace as well. Orhan II's opening of the Ottoman Empire to fleeing Sephardic Jews from Iberia during the Reconquista also earned him the loyalty of the Jewish populace. In the end, Orhan II's reign marked a reign of inter-religious harmony that was not seen throughout the entirety of the world at the time. This inter-religious harmony allowed for economics to flow, and the Ottomans, already controlling the Aegean and Black Sea's entrance, became even more rich and prosperous as a result. Orhan II saw himself as more of a 'money-giver' than a conqueror, as he uplifted the nation economically. By the end of his reign, only the rich city states of Italy and Germany would be more rich than the Ottoman Empire on a per capita basis. Orhan II was also an avid lover of all things nature. During his time, he converted many forests, mountain ranges and hilly valleys into royal areas, protected by the law, and all animals in said royal forests found protection, food and shelter. His palace was also famously called by western europeans to be the 'palace of animals' as exotic animals from the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, Caucasus and the Balkans found home in his palace.
In 1483, Orhan II died of severe fever, sparking a year long mourning process throughout the realm, Muslim and non-muslim alike, and he was succeeded by_______
POD: Süleyman Pasha (son of Orhan) does not die in a hunting accident and becomes the Third Ottoman Sultan
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
1439 - 1450: Murad I "The Bloody" (House of Osman) [4]
1450 - 1483: Orhan II 'The Nature-Lover' (House of Osman) [5]
1483 - 1506: Iskender I (House of Osman) [6]
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
View attachment 706182
An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor her son, Murad.
[4] When his mother died, Murad was in his late twenties when his mother died, having been born early in his parents' marriage. Murad was a man with a vision. He dreamt of being a great conqueror. It was noted that Murad seemed to care only for the glory of war, leaving statecraft to his advisors while he marched his armies to endless wars though Europe. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to his downfall.
Not long after his mother's death, Murad chose to invade Romania, not satisfied with the princes only paying tribute, feeling that the entire country should be his. The Princes of Romania were supported by the Holy Roman Emperor who happened to be the King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Kings of Poland and Scandinavia were also eager to help.
In 1448, Murad would attack Wallachia. However he was betrayed by his generals who were sick of the constant battles and handed over to Prince Vlad. Popular legend had that either Vlad or his son, who would go on to have the moniker the Impaler, tortured Murad for every day he had been destroying their country. (In the book Dracula, the vampire mentions the first time he feasted on human flesh was of a man who was drenched in the blood of his [Dracula's] countrymen. This is long suspected to have been Emperor Murad).
Two years later, his buctured body would be sent to his successor____.
Orhan II's reign saw no further expansion (other than few border skirmishes and border forts changing hands at times) as Orhan II was more interested in the consolidation of his large realm. The Blood Tax on the Christian minorities were abolished, and instead the Janissaries were created into a true professional standing force (the first in the entire world) under Orhan II's reign by picking the best troops from the normal army. The abolition of the Blood Tax earned him the loyalty of the Christian populace, and Orhan II's devout religiosity earned him the loyalty of the Islamic populace as well. Orhan II's opening of the Ottoman Empire to fleeing Sephardic Jews from Iberia during the Reconquista also earned him the loyalty of the Jewish populace. In the end, Orhan II's reign marked a reign of inter-religious harmony that was not seen throughout the entirety of the world at the time. This inter-religious harmony allowed for economics to flow, and the Ottomans, already controlling the Aegean and Black Sea's entrance, became even more rich and prosperous as a result. Orhan II saw himself as more of a 'money-giver' than a conqueror, as he uplifted the nation economically. By the end of his reign, only the rich city states of Italy and Germany would be more rich than the Ottoman Empire on a per capita basis. Orhan II was also an avid lover of all things nature. During his time, he converted many forests, mountain ranges and hilly valleys into royal areas, protected by the law, and all animals in said royal forests found protection, food and shelter. His palace was also famously called by western europeans to be the 'palace of animals' as exotic animals from the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, Caucasus and the Balkans found home in his palace.
In 1483, Orhan II died of severe fever, sparking a year long mourning process throughout the realm, Muslim and non-muslim alike, and he was succeeded by_______
[6] Iskender was born in 1454 as the oldest son of Orhan II, being raised from birth to be the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Kayser-i-Rum with Iskender being known from a young age for his love of Greek/Rhomaic culture with many more traditional-minded members of the court not being fond of being ruled by someone who was more Rhoman than Turk in his ways and attitudes, even if he was a fairly faithful Muslim.
As Sultan, his 23-year long reign would be marked by a "Hellenization" of the Ottoman court as a result of his fondness of Greek/Rhomaic ways. As such, his main powerbase would not be from the old Turkish nobles but from those elements of the Rhoman aristocracy who had adopted Islam over the past few decades after the fall of Constantinople. As a result of this, his reign would be marked by a renewed prominence of Greek culture in the Empire, especially as Greek-speaking Muslims would gain positions of power and prominence within his Empire with the Empire increasingly seeing itself as a "Roman" Empire as Greek increasingly was the "prestige" language of the court, replacing Persian in the role. Outside of the court and the emphasis on Greek culture, Iskender's reign would be marked by a renewed era of economic growth and prosperity along with the consolidation of Ottoman rule over Anatolia and the Balkans with Serbia, the Morea, and Rhodes conquered and the last independent beyliks in Anatolia snuffed out.
Iskender would marry Anastasia Komnene, daughter of the Emperor of Trebizond, in 1477 with the two having seven children. Iskender would die in 1506 from a stroke (even if some suspected he was poisoned by traditionalists within the court) with _________ the new Kayser.
Ottoman Sultans/Sultanas/Emperors/Empresses
1299 - 1324: Osman I (House of Osman)
1324 - 1362: Orhan I (House of Osman)
1362 - 1387: Süleyman I (House of Osman) [1]
1387 - 1405: Süleyman II (House of Osman) [2]
1405 - 1439: Jihan I 'The Conqueress' (House of Osman) [3]
1439 - 1450: Murad I "The Bloody" (House of Osman) [4]
1450 - 1483: Orhan II 'The Nature-Lover' (House of Osman) [5]
1483 - 1506: Iskender I (House of Osman) [6]
A portrait of Süleyman I
[1] Süleyman I's exact date of birth is unknown, but it is estimated that the man was born in the mid to late 1310s as the son of Orhan's earliest wives. Süleyman I ascended to the Ottoman Throne after his father's glorious reign, which saw the Ottomans set foot in Europe for the first time. Süleyman himself had been a key military architect to Ottoman expansion under the reign of his father.
As Süleyman I was already quite old when he took the throne (for the time), he took a more measured approach to governmental policy, in comparison to his warlike predecessors. He compiled and created a book of laws for his medium-sized realm, and improved the administration of the realm by purging corrupt governors and increasing efficiency through rewards for good works done. A caring man by nature, he was struck by the fact that his brothers were all illiterates, and he created the first public schools (in reading, writing, Islamic classics, and Islamic theology) for education. It was initially started by him to teach his brothers, but it was soon allowed to admit children of the Ottoman nobility as well. Süleyman I abolished the system of brother on brother fighting for the succession to the throne, deeming it too destabilizing, and it had only been the fact that his brothers respected him enough to stand aside that a civil war hadn't erupted when their father had died. Instead Süleyman I established the Ottoman Succession System in which the previous Sultan would appoint their successors, and in the event that the Sultan died before appointing an heir, then their eldest male descendant would succeed, as long as they remained in the House of Osman. Diplomatically, he secured a key alliance with Trebizond, when he married Eudokia Komnenos, the 22 year old niece of Manuel III of Trebizond in 1363.
Despite his more peaceful leanings, he did expand the Ottoman State. He annexed the small emirates and beyliks on the Aegean Coast, and after the epic Siege of Smyrna in 1367-68, his forces entered the historic city and captured it for their own. Expansion into Europe at the expense of the Byzantine Empire continued and the Ottomans managed to conquer Adrianople, Manastir and Filibe in Europe under the steady gaze and leadership of Süleyman I. Despite his best wishes for peace in Anatolia after the 1370s, when he became older, he was drawn into conflict with the Karamanids which saw the Ottoman annex most of western Karamanid territories in Anatolia.
Despite the fact that he had children from his previous wives, Süleyman I had grown fond of his Trapuzentine wife and his children by them and in 1384, he appointed his eldest son from Eudokia to be his heir. 3 years later, the old and aged Süleyman I died due to a brain tumor (though it was not identified as such at the time).
[2] Süleyman II grew up doted upon by his parents and siblings due to his kind-hearted and helpful nature. Unfortunately this was abused by his nobility who all fought each other for power and control of the sultan. He was even more of a peace-maker than his father and made many alliances through the marriages of his fourteen children, though his mother often tried to placate the insubordinate nobility on his behalf. At the age of sixteen, he married Maria, the daughter of Frederick III/IV of Sicily and his first wife Constance of Aragon. The couple were madly in love with each other and it is known that Süleyman II even allowed his wife to hand-pick the women of his harem. At the helm of an expanding empire, he personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation and criminal law. This harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law: sultanic (Kanun) and religious (Sharia), though he personally was not at all devout. He was a distinguished poet and goldsmith; he also became a great patron of culture, overseeing what is now seen as the golden age of the Ottoman Empire in its artistic, literary and architectural development. Upon his death, he was succeeded by his chosen successor: his second-youngest daughter.
View attachment 706182
An Italian portrait of Sultana Jihan
Born in 1384, Jihan Sultan, as she was known before her ascension was an unlikely and unpopular choice to become the successor to the prosperous Ottoman Empire. Her mother Maria had been practically disowned in European genealogies due to her marriage to Jihan's Mohammaden father and Sicily had fallen into anarchy due to rivaling claims between Martin I and his dynastic enemies. The rest of Europe looked on aghast on what they deemed to be a pair made in hell. Ironically, this attitude was shared by most Islamic nobles in the Ottoman Empire, as many thought that the great line of Ertugul was being too diluted by Christian blood. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims were common in Anatolia and the Balkans, but extremely rare outside of it. Pope Urban VI had gone as far as to excommunicate Maria, ending her ties to the Catholic Christian world.
Ascending to the throne in 1405 and knowing very well of her insecure position as Sultana, she married her second cousin, Sehzade Abdullah to placate the Islamic nobility and to maintain the lineage of the House of Osman. Though she had secured her legitimacy from the marriage, many still believed that Sultana Jihan was incapable of ruling as properly as a male, a reflection of the patriarchal society of the times. Jihan proved to be much more different than her otherwise peaceful predecessors. Immediately on taking the throne, she ordered the invasion of the Karamanid Remnants in Anatolia, intending to consolidate Ottoman control over the region. This order brought the Ottomans into direct conflict with the infamous Tamerlane as the old wily conqueror was consolidating his own rule over eastern Anatolia. The Ottomans and the Timurids were on a collision course with one another. Fortunately for the Ottomans, Timur died of camp fever in early 1405 and was replaced by his grandson, Pir Muhammad, who tried to fight the Ottomans as well. Without a capable leader such as Timur, the Ottomans managed to win the infamous Battle of Sivas in mid-1405, which allowed the Ottomans to annex all of central Anatolia and pushed the Ottoman borders into eastern Anatolia.
But whilst the consolidation of Anatolia had been the first step, Jihan I proved to be much more ambitious than her predecessors as her eyes finally turned to the prize that had eluded the Ottomans for over a century - Constantinople and the ailing Roman (Byzantine) Empire. But whilst her predecessors had only been fixated on the city itself, Jihan I was fixated on the entire Roman Empire. Her title was Sultana, a title that was lower than Emperor/Empress, and she intended to change that. Beginning in 1407, preparations began throughout the Ottoman Empire to capture Constantinople. Knowing the city's history of being able to hold out long and arduous sieges, Jihan I spared no expenses, and modern siege engines from throughout the best of the Mediterranean World was purchased by her government. Siege engineers and siege troops were trained regularly and in 1410, the massive Ottoman Army was starting to move. Under the command of her able general, Imamazade Kandarli Pasha, Constantinople was besieged on the 12th of February, 1410 by 110,000 troops of the Ottoman Empire, alongside over 100 naval vessels.
The Siege lasted for over four months, and took the lives of Emperor Manuel II and his heir apparent, Prince John, allowing for the 14 year old Theodore II to ascend as the Roman Emperor. On May 28, 1410, the city's defenses crumpled at last as a massive hole was created in the northern walls, allowing the jannissaries to enter the city. Jihan I ordered that the Imperial Family be spared - she was distantly related to them through her grandmother - and as was typical of Islamic armies of the time, a time period of 2 days was given to the soldiers to sack the city. On the 30th, the young and impressionable Theodore II was brought to Jihan I's camp, where he abdicated all Roman titles from himself and his line to Jihan I, who became Empress Regnant of Rome. Most of the Byzantine nobility, seeing the writing on the wall, accepted her new title, in return for them being able to keep their land and estate privileges.
Reorganizing the still mostly nameless state (the name Ottomans did not arise until the late 1400s after Osman I), she dubbed her realm to be the Empire of Rûm or the Rûmanian Empire (يمپيريوف رومي). This was immediately followed up by propaganda efforts to make sure her claim was legitimized to the general populace. Her distant blood lineage from the old Byzantine Emperors (mostly the Komnenos Line of her grandmother, the closest relation) and the abdication of Theodore II's titles were used to solidify her new Imperial title. This created a diplomatic crisis in Europe, as many Europeans refused to acknowledge the Islamic Ottoman Dynasty as the new Emperors of Eastern Rome, and symbolically restarted the Two Emperor's Dispute as the Holy Roman Empire, backed by the Papacy and Hungary, refused to acknowledge the claims of the Ottoman Dynasty led by Jihan I.
Sigismund of Hungary, who also held the title of King of Germany and de-facto Holy Roman Emperor (though de-jure the post had been empty since Charles IV), persuaded Pope Gregory XII to call for a final new crusade to restore Christian Eastern Rome. Gregory XII answered this call, partially to gain political advantage over his Avignon and Pisan rival claimants, and called for the Catholic world for a final crusade against Jihan I's claim to being the Rûmanian Empress. Jihan I quickly moved against such ideas of crusade by pre-empting the Hungarians by asking for support with the Serbs, under their magnanimous leader, Stefan Lazarevic. Lazarevic was more wary of the growing Hungarian and Wallachian raids into his country and less the Ottomans, who had been at peace with the Serbs for over two generations at that point. Lazarevic agreed, and the Serbs sided with Jihan, with Lazarevic acknowledging Jihan I's title as Roman Empress, on the condition she restored the deposed Patriarchate of Constantinople with significant autonomies, which she did. In 1412, a coalition of Hungarians, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards led what has been dubbed to be the Crusade of Sofia.
Lazarevic alone, despite his military prowess, was unable to come out victorious against the combined crusading force led by Sigismund, and retreated into Ottoman territory. Jihan I sent her husband in command of a large force of 40,000 soldiers to meet the crusading army after linking up with the Serbians. The Serbs and Ottomans linked up on the southern outskirts of Sofia, which had been occupied by the Crusaders, and Lazarevic and Sehzade Abdullah attacked the city and its Crusading defenders. The Battle of Sofia would end in decisive, if pyrrhic, Ottoman victory, leading to the Crusaders to retreat back into Hungary broken as a fighting force. Exhausted, the Ottomans allowed them to retreat, unable to stop them due to their own relative large losses as Lazarevic liberated Serbia and annexed Petervard (Novi Sad) from the Hungarians. The Crsuade of Sofia ended the Age of Crusading, and the Ottoman claim of being Eastern Rûm were consolidated.
In the aftermath of the conflict, Jihan I's insatiable lust for conquest was only added by the conquest of the small squabbling Epirot despotates and the annexation of Thessalonika and Euboea. Jihan I also oversaw the repopulation and reconstruction of Constantinople, her new capital, and the city was rebuilt in a weird and fascinating mix of Turkic Islamic architecture and Byzantine Greek architecture, reflecting the Turkic nature of the Ottoman Dynasty and the Byzantine Greek heritage of the title they now claimed. Hagia Sofia was left untouched, but a even greater temple of worship, the Blue Mosque was built right next to it as a testament in favor of Islam, which the Ottomans still followed religiously and zealously. After the crusade and the consolidation of her conquests, Jihan I became involved in restoring the grandeur of Constantinople, the city was renovated, reconstruction, repopulated and regrown from a grassroots level. By the time of her death, Constantinople was once again the largest city in Europe, and probably its grandest, and reflected its old Christian past and Islamic future.
Throughout the rest of her reign, Jihan I oversaw the conquest of Athens and the Peloponesse into the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire, and extended the borders of the realm to include Van as well, which was wrested away from the Iranians. After the Conquest of the Peloponnese in 1421, she ended her life of conquest and settled down to become a more cultural monarch. A Patron of the Rennaissance in the Orthodox World, she became renowned in her later years for opening the Ottoman Rûmanian Empire to foreigners to visit and bring new cultures in. Her Empire during her last years became exceedingly polygot as Persian, Arabian, Berber, Turkic, Georgian, Armenian, Crimean, Bulgarian, Greek, Italian, Serbian, Romanian painters, dancers, performers, writers came to meet with the magnanimous Islamic Empress of Eastern Rûm.
In 1439, she died of heart disease, leaving behind an ascendant Empire which she had ruled for over three decades and was succeeded by her appointed successor her son, Murad.
[4] When his mother died, Murad was in his late twenties when his mother died, having been born early in his parents' marriage. Murad was a man with a vision. He dreamt of being a great conqueror. It was noted that Murad seemed to care only for the glory of war, leaving statecraft to his advisors while he marched his armies to endless wars though Europe. Unsurprisingly, this would lead to his downfall.
Not long after his mother's death, Murad chose to invade Romania, not satisfied with the princes only paying tribute, feeling that the entire country should be his. The Princes of Romania were supported by the Holy Roman Emperor who happened to be the King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Kings of Poland and Scandinavia were also eager to help.
In 1448, Murad would attack Wallachia. However he was betrayed by his generals who were sick of the constant battles and handed over to Prince Vlad. Popular legend had that either Vlad or his son, who would go on to have the moniker the Impaler, tortured Murad for every day he had been destroying their country. (In the book Dracula, the vampire mentions the first time he feasted on human flesh was of a man who was drenched in the blood of his [Dracula's] countrymen. This is long suspected to have been Emperor Murad).
Two years later, his buctured body would be sent to his successor____.
View attachment 706865
A painting of Orhan II
[5] Only in his late teens when he rose to power as the eldest son of Murad I, Orhan II's reign began with a bang as the cause of his father's death became known. Vowing revenge, Orhan II gathered a massive army and invaded Wallachia and Moldavia, which after a two-year-long war surrendered. Wallachia was annexed completely whilst Moldavia was turned into a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. Prince Vlad was forced into the mountains and hills where he conducted another two-year-long guerilla war of resistance before he was caught by Ottoman sentries and then executed gruesomely as revenge for Murad I. Orhan II was also involved in building up his realm and consolidating its power. He consolidated Ottoman hold over Albania, defeating the local revolts with the help of Iskender Bey (Skanderbeg in Albanian), with whom he struck up a good relationship by appointing Iskender Bey as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. Orhan II also completed the final conquests of Anatolia as the entire region of Anatolia was consolidated under his reign. In 1452 he married Khawand Fatima, the daughter of Sultan Sayf ad-Din Inal of the Mamluk Sultanate as his primary wife, and used said marriage to gain key trading contracts with the Mamluks into the Red Sea, enlarging the Ottoman economic sphere. A painting of Orhan II
Orhan II's reign saw no further expansion (other than few border skirmishes and border forts changing hands at times) as Orhan II was more interested in the consolidation of his large realm. The Blood Tax on the Christian minorities were abolished, and instead the Janissaries were created into a true professional standing force (the first in the entire world) under Orhan II's reign by picking the best troops from the normal army. The abolition of the Blood Tax earned him the loyalty of the Christian populace, and Orhan II's devout religiosity earned him the loyalty of the Islamic populace as well. Orhan II's opening of the Ottoman Empire to fleeing Sephardic Jews from Iberia during the Reconquista also earned him the loyalty of the Jewish populace. In the end, Orhan II's reign marked a reign of inter-religious harmony that was not seen throughout the entirety of the world at the time. This inter-religious harmony allowed for economics to flow, and the Ottomans, already controlling the Aegean and Black Sea's entrance, became even more rich and prosperous as a result. Orhan II saw himself as more of a 'money-giver' than a conqueror, as he uplifted the nation economically. By the end of his reign, only the rich city states of Italy and Germany would be more rich than the Ottoman Empire on a per capita basis. Orhan II was also an avid lover of all things nature. During his time, he converted many forests, mountain ranges and hilly valleys into royal areas, protected by the law, and all animals in said royal forests found protection, food and shelter. His palace was also famously called by western europeans to be the 'palace of animals' as exotic animals from the Middle East, North Africa, Persia, Caucasus and the Balkans found home in his palace.
In 1483, Orhan II died of severe fever, sparking a year long mourning process throughout the realm, Muslim and non-muslim alike, and he was succeeded by_______
[6] Iskender was born in 1454 as the oldest son of Orhan II, being raised from birth to be the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Kayser-i-Rum with Iskender being known from a young age for his love of Greek/Rhomaic culture with many more traditional-minded members of the court not being fond of being ruled by someone who was more Rhoman than Turk in his ways and attitudes, even if he was a fairly faithful Muslim.
As Sultan, his 23-year long reign would be marked by a "Hellenization" of the Ottoman court as a result of his fondness of Greek/Rhomaic ways. As such, his main powerbase would not be from the old Turkish nobles but from those elements of the Rhoman aristocracy who had adopted Islam over the past few decades after the fall of Constantinople. As a result of this, his reign would be marked by a renewed prominence of Greek culture in the Empire, especially as Greek-speaking Muslims would gain positions of power and prominence within his Empire with the Empire increasingly seeing itself as a "Roman" Empire as Greek increasingly was the "prestige" language of the court, replacing Persian in the role. Outside of the court and the emphasis on Greek culture, Iskender's reign would be marked by a renewed era of economic growth and prosperity along with the consolidation of Ottoman rule over Anatolia and the Balkans with Serbia, the Morea, and Rhodes conquered and the last independent beyliks in Anatolia snuffed out.
Iskender would marry Anastasia Komnene, daughter of the Emperor of Trebizond, in 1477 with the two having seven children. Iskender would die in 1506 from a stroke (even if some suspected he was poisoned by traditionalists within the court) with _________ the new Kayser.
POD: Fyodor Godunov successfully beats the agents of False Dmitry sent to kill him.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor & Empress of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
1762-1766: Aleksey I (House of Godunov) [6]
1766-1803: Michael I (House of Godunov) [7]
1803-1849: Anastasia I "The Ice Empress" (House of Godunov) [8]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly German, Swedish and Danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that attracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter.
View attachment 706178
[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1685, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children.
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his son, Aleksey.
[6] Aleksey was born 1709, the third son of his parents. Unfortunately, his older brother, Peter died childless in 1726 of typhoid fever. His second brother, Boris would marry Peter's widow, Christina of Denmark. They would not have any living children. Boris would die conquering Dzungar in 1733, leaving Aleksey as the next in line to the throne.
As he had been the third son, no one had paid much attention to him, even when Peter died. He had married Anna Romanov, a childhood friend of his. While Aleksey was mild mannered and had not a drop of ambition in him, his wife was known as a great political mind of her time. When Emperor Peter sent his son to rule Khiva in his name, it was an open secret that Aleksey made no decision without consulting his wife first.
Aleksey and Anna would continue to have a loving marriage. Sadly, their happiness would be destroyed when in 1738, after giving birth to her fifth child, Anna would die of childbed fever, devastating her husband and her children. Alexsey would continue to remain devoted to his wife's memory, even setting up the Order of Saint Anna in her honor. When asked if he would marry again, he flatly refused, saying he would only have one wife and one empress.
Afterwards, he would fall into a deep depression, and began to drink heavily.
In 1762, Aleksey would become Emperor of Russia. He would last only four years before he died of liver failure, leaving his crown in the more capable hands of his son Michael.
Michael I of Russia
[7] Michael was born in 1731 as the second child but first son of future Russian Emperor Aleksey I and his wife Anna Romanov. He and his older sister Anna (b. 1730) loved their mother very much and so were saddened when she died in 1738, and were sent with their three siblings to be taken care of by their grandfather Peter II once Aleksey started drinking.
Michael wed Princess Sophia Louise of Prussia (daughter of King Albert II) in 1750 in a marriage arranged by his grandfather to help improve relations with Prussia, which deteriorated after they had supported Fyodor III in the Fyodorian Wars. The couple went on to have four children, with Michael naming one of his daughters Anna in memory of his mother.
He became Emperor of Russia in 1766, although he was already governing as he acted as regent for his father for most of his reign (due to him being drunk). One of the first major events of Michael's reign was the War of the Polish Succession, which started when Augustus "the Weak" died without any heirs. Russia and it's allies would win the war and placed a member of the noble Borkowski family on the throne. Courland also became a vassal of Russia with Friedrich III of Courland marrying one of Michael's daughters.
Another important event during Michael's reign was the colonizing of the west coast of North America, which started with the founding of New Moscow (OTL Astoria, OR) in 1792. By the time Michael died in 1803 several more settlements were created not only along the area surrounding New Moscow, but also up in Alaska.
In 1798 the Austrian Revolution happened, with resulted in the execution of the Holy Roman Emperor and the end of HRE. Michael, worried by what effects the new Republic of the Danube would have on Europe, worked with his advisers on making a constitution. He sadly didn't to see it implemented as he died in 1803 weeks before it was signed. He was succeeded by his granddaughter, Anastasia.
[8] Michael had two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Peter, had only Anastasia with Sophie of Hanover before he died of food poisoning. Much to his son, Vasily's anger Michael choose to make Anastasia (born in 1780) his heir. Much like her paternal grandmother and namesake, Ana proved to be most adpt in politics, proving herself to be shrewd and diligent. She was blunt (sometimes too brutally honest) and stoic. There were jokes that the cold winds of Siberia had frozen her into a human shaped block of ice.
She was close to her grandfather with Michael allowing her to choose her own husband. She received several offers over the years, but she chose none of them, instead keeping them guessing much like Elizabeth of England. There were rumors circulating that her taste was for the fairer sex as she was always seen in the company of a Lady Polina, the wife of one of her advisors. If the two women were lovers, it did not seem to affect their relationship with the husband, Lord Arseny, in fact Polina and Arseny's children were allowed to call Anastasia aunt when in private.
In 1813, her uncle Vasily tried to overthrow her in a coup, bringing a group of conspirators to storm her bedchambers. Unfortunately for them, Anaastasia slept with a pistol under her pillow and she was a very good shot. Movies and television will often have her attackers fleeing and her running after them in her nightgown like a recluse with a shotgun wanting people to get off his land with even more foul curses. It is reported that was one of the only times Anastasia lost control of her emotions, enraged at the kidnapping attempt.
It is surprising that she only exiled her uncle (who popular legend has it begged to be arrested as he cowered in front of his still armed furious niece), instead of cutting off his head.
In politics, Ana would continue her grandfather's work in making Danube a constitution. She made sure to strengthen Russia's bound with other nations by making alliances with Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, She arranged a marriage between one of her cousins and the Duke of Kent.
As for more internal ventures, she founded the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in hopes of pushing Russia into a great future.
As the years went on, the famous ice empress began to thaw, becoming more open with her affection (to her family at least). She doted on her younger cousins constantly, even taking insist in their education.
Unfortunetly, at fifty she fell sick with a fever and although she would live, her health never recover. In 1849, Empress Anasastia passed away in her sleep, leaving____to ascend to the throne.
Tsars of Russia
1598-1605: Boris I (House of Godunov)
1605-1611: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
Emperor & Empress of Russia
1611-1654: Fyodor II (House of Godunov) [1]
1654-1673: Boris II (House of Godunov) [2]
1673-1675: Fyodor III (House of Godunov) [3]
1675-1701: Peter I (House of Godunov) [4]
1701-1762: Peter II (House of Godunov) [5]
1762-1766: Aleksey I (House of Godunov) [6]
1766-1803: Michael I (House of Godunov) [7]
1803-1849: Anastasia I "The Ice Empress" (House of Godunov) [8]
[1] Fyodor Borisovich Godunov was born in 1589, the first son of then regent and in the future Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov, a cunning man who had managed to rise through the ranks of Russia's court through great achievements, cunning plots and devious political maneuvers, had secured his election as Tsar of Russia after the death of the last Rurikid. He curried favor amongst the service and lower nobilities, mainly, alienating the powerful boyars. This would lead to the time of troubles, as discontent continued to grow against the reign of his father. The appearance of False Dmitry in the southern borders with the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth resulted in many Russian boyars denying their loyalties to Moscow, and even after the victory of the Russian army, the death of Tsar Boris made the army defect to False Dmitry.
In Moscow, the resident boyars took the opportunity caused by the death of Boris to invade the palace and assassinate his son and heir, Fyodor. After a brief scuffle, the brawny 16 year old Fyodor survived, protecting both his sister and his mother in the process. Running away from the city with many of his supporters, Fyodor went North to the city of Novgorod, where he and many of his father's supporters got around to building an army, and most importantly, establishing connections with Sweden and other European states, attempting to get foreign support. This went on, with many of Dmitry's boyars in Moscow panicking at the survival and growing strength of Fyodor. False Dmitry's death in 1606 saw the Shuisky family, one of Godunov's hated enemies, take the throne under Vasily IV.
In 1608, Fyodor had entered an official alliance with Sweden, his sister Xenia marrying the Duke of Ostergotland and governor of Swedish Finland, Johan Vasa while Fyodor himself was promised Maria Elisabeth of Sweden when she came of age. With Sweden reinforcing his army, Fyodor marched south and decisively defeated the Shuisky army in the battle of Pestovo, but Fyodor's hatred against the nobility hindered a march on Moscow - Fyodor purged most of the treasonours boyars of their land, sometimes leaving whole great families dispossessed of everything they had, and distributing it to either lower gentry and nobility or to his commoner officers, peasants, soldiers and his mercenaries, mainly German, Swedish and Danish. This would be the start of a process that would see most of the very powerful Russian nobility purged during the reign of Fyodor.
Finally, Fyodor would take Moscow in 1609, purging the Shuisky family and continuing to re-conquer the rest of Russia, defeating two men claiming to be the false Dmitries in 1610, the year which is considered the end of the time of troubles. During this time, Fyodor had surrounded himself with many foreigners and Russians fascinated with the West, which made Fyodor in his mind that the Westernization of the Russian state would be the mark that would cement the Godunov family as rulers of Russia and his own personal legacy. Thus, when his coronation eventually came, Fyodor claimed the title of Caesar and renamed the Tsardom as the Empire of All the Russias, with an unusual readiness. Claiming Russia as the Third Rome, it set him on a path of eventual conflict with the Ottomans that would mark most of his reign.
View attachment 705045
A painting of Tsar Fyodor at his coronation.
The new Tsar delved deep into reforming the state - serfdom was liberalized, as the lack of land-owners due to Fyodor's various purges saw much of the land be divided in rental property to the Emperor, or be allocated to soldiers, mercenaries and officials. Thus, many peasants now had properties of their own and/or employment, but many of them found themselves without any land. Thus, the new Imperial government encouraged the immigration of many of these peasants southwards, usually towards the Don and Volga basins, where there were many open plots of land, or towards the Tatar Khanate or the lands of the Nogai. This new demographic impetus saw the start of the Russo-Turkish war of 1624-1627, as Russian Cossacks sneaked in and raised the banner of Fyodor in the city. Ottoman demands to leave the city were refused, and Fyodor massed his well-trained armies of the fashion of the Netherlands, the French and new modern Russian strategy southwards, defeating the Ottomans Giray vassals and managing to break into Crimea in the first semester of 1625. The Ottomans, seeing the Russians so close to conquering all of Crimea, sent two more armies northwards to defeat the Russians, but Fyodor's commanders defeated both armies in detail, handing the Ottomans one of the worst defeats of their history. The annexation of the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman territories on the Northern shore of the Black greatly increased the size of the Russian Empire, and the new territories were organized into Novorossiya territory and the Crimea territory, both of which would see influx of Russian settlers, most of them Great Russians, Ukrainians, Cossacks, Karelians, Germans, Swedes, Finns and Greeks. Sevastopol, the great port city of Crimea built by Fyodor, was designed with classical greek architecture in mind.
His wars with Poland, as vengeance for Polish interference in the Time of Troubles, would see much of the central Kievan Rus liberated by Russia, with Kiev becoming the second city of the Russian Empire in 1634. Fyodor and his wife, Maria Borisovna, originally Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, would spend the winter of 1635 in the city, where their eight and last child was born. Fyodor, however, did not move against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth again. Fyodor's brother-in-law, the Great Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, had invaded Poland-Lithuania shortly after the Kievan war and decimated the Polish armies, securing Sweden's possessions in Estonia, and conquering for himself Livonia and Courland, which had permitted the Elector-Duke of Brandenburg-Prussia to take West Prussia for himself, liberating his Prussians domains from Polish rule. This created a new balance of power in the region, and put northern Russian cities such as Pskov and Novgorod as easy preys for an expansionist Sweden. Thus, the Russo-Swedish alliance, that had so characterized Fyodor's reign, started to break down piece by piece.
Thus, Fyodor "The Invincible", as he came to be known, spent the last years of his reigns with an eye on both Sweden and Poland, which re-organized itself after the various defeats it had suffered. An alliance was created with Brandenburg-Prussia, as the German polity was rightfully afraid of Poland attempting to force it to its knees again and a wish to take Swedish possessions in Pomerania. A treaty was signed in which the Tsar's heir would marry one of the daughters of the Elector. This alliance with Brandenburg-Prussia would serve as a way-point to invite many displaced Germans from the thirty years war to Russia, with many of them settling in South Russia, the Urals or even beyond in Siberia. The city of Orenburg, below the Urals, was founded around this time. Many Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks also moved eastwards, mainly into Siberia. The rapid settlement of Siberia would see the port-city of Okhotsk founded as the first Russian settlement in the Pacific.
On a visit to the recently annexed province of Kuban, Fyodor managed to secure the allegiance of various Christian Circassian tribes in conflict with their muslim neighbours. Thus, the Tsar died in Rostov-on-don, a growing city at the mouth of the Don river, while planning an invasion of the western Caucasus to provide relief to his Circassian vassals. He died while walking the docks of the city, having a stroke and falling into the cold water. His wife, Maria Elisabeth of Sweden would become insane after the death of her husband. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Boris II.
[2] Boris was the eldest son of Fyodor II and his wife Maria Elisabeth of Sweden, and he was named in honor of his Grandfather, Boris I. He would grow up primarily in Moscow and would rarely see his father as he was often off on various military campaigns. He would mostly be raised by his overprotective mother and he eventually would grow to resent her due to her violent outbursts, caused by what historians suspect to be severe bipolar disorder. In 1636, he married the young noblewoman Eudoxia Streshneva. Their marriage would be fairly happy, as he would never take a mistress and the two would have thirteen healthy children together over the span of two decades (four sons and nine daughters). After his father’s death, he would ascend to the throne and would force his mother into a monastery due to her deteriorating mental state, where she would die a few years later.
His reign would see the continuation of his father’s legacy of suppressing corrupt boyars, which greatly increased the standard of life and productivity of the lower classes. Thanks to these reforms, Russia would start to experience immense growth and its own renaissance. He would often invite many Greek and other Orthodox Christians intellectuals fleeing persecution from the incessantly intolerant Ottoman State, which would lead to great cultural and artistic growth within Russia. In order to not completely lose trust of the nobility to the point of it causing another rebellion, he would compensate some prominent families for their loss in influence with new lands to settle in Siberia that had been added to the empire with the aid of the Cossack. However, they would still be forced to uphold the laws that forbid overexploiting the mostly Turkic and Uralic peasantry in the new territories, although due to the isolation of some of these areas these laws would be poorly enforced. He would also pass reforms to empower the merchant class in order to help Russia become more interconnected to European trade.
In 1666 another war would break out between Poland-Lithuania which would end in a narrow Russian victory, although little territory was annexed. Most of the territorial expansion that occurred during his reign was focused on defeating the remaining Siberian tribes and minor Khanates. This expansion would ultimately culminate with the signing of the Treaty of Chita in 1671, establishing a clearly defined border between the Russian and Qing Empires. After years of prosperity, he would die at the age of 68 in his sleep and would be succeeded by his son Fyodor.
Fyodor III of Russia
[3] Ascending the throne at the age of 34, Fyodor (named for his grandfather) didn't had much happen during his reign. He is mostly known for how it ended as in 1675, his brother, Pyotr overthrew him and Proclaimed him/herself as Russian Emperor/Empress. Fyodor, with the support of Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia, would make several attempts to take back his throne in what were called the "Fyodorian Wars". He died in 1682 when he was shot in the back while fighting the forces of his younger brother, Pyotr.
[4] Pyotr Borisovich was the younger brother of Fyodor the III, whose rivalry with his older brother was legendary. Fyodor, a stern tradionalist, clashed with the western-educated Grand Duke Peter at everyturn. Most of the Godunov military was an inheritor of the Godunov westernized ideals of the start of the century, and Peter found amidst them fervent support. He launched a coup, claiming his older brother was infertile and thus, unable to hold the Russian throne, and thus, he quickly became Tsar Peter the I.
Peter I's wars against Sweden and his brother Fyodor lasted for much of his early reign, but Russia's great wealth and martial skill overcame Peter's lack of tact when it came to matters of war. The victories in Ingermaland and the Baltic provinces of Sweden saw Russia take both Ingermaland and increase their lands in Karelia, alongside gaining Swedish Livonia, gaining the great port city of Riga, but was unable to take Swedish Estonia. Peter, looking to increase the importance of Russia in the Baltic, created the city of Petrograd (OTL Saint Petersburg) in Ingermarland, creating a brand new city in French, English and the German style of that epoch that attracted many men and women from all over Europe and Russia.
Peter would focus most of his reign in investing in Russia, creating many industries, roads, forts and easing and clearing land for many new settlements in Russia's newest Siberian and Steppe provinces. Moscow became a fashion hub, and Peter was taken to collect artists, inventors and thinkers in his court.
He would briefly fight a war in the Caucasus against the Ottomans, supporting his local ally in unifying all of Georgia under the Imereti Bagrations. He would marry then Princess Maria of Georgia, gaining a new steadfast vassal and ally in the Caucasus for Russia, alongside the Principality of Circassia northwards of Georgia.
He would have six children with his wife, dying at the turn of the century. He is a very beloved ruler in Russia for his prosperous reign. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter.
View attachment 706178
[5] Peter was the eldest child of Emperor Peter I and Princess Maria of Georgia, born in 1685, a year after his parents marriage.
His father would educate his children in the ideology of Western philosophy, hiring English, French, German and Danish tutors, within the newly built, royal residence of Neva Palace (named after the great river) in Petrograd.
At 15, in 1700, his father arranged the marriage between Peter and Amalie Christina of Denmark (b. 1685), youngest daughter of Christian V of Denmark-Norway and his consort Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel.
The wedding would take place a year later in August, and done as an alliance between the two nations, whom had both fought the Sweden. It was also as a way to launch and advertise the new city to foreign dignitaries and members of court.
Within four months, of marriage, Peter would succeed his father, who died in the winter of 1701.
Peter II would continue his father’s policy of Westernising, the Russian Empire, recruiting military generals and civil engineers from across Europe.
In 1705, he would create the Petrograd Imperial University and the Imperial Military Academy, designed to educate the elite citizens of Russia.
In regards to military, Peter knew that Russia could not defeat the Ottoman Empire on their own, and most of Europe was still dealing with the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1717).
Instead, Peter would concentrate his military in fighting wars against minor nations bordering Russia, including the conquering:
- The Khiva Khanate
- The Crimean Khanate
- The Kazakh Khanate
- The Dzungar Khanate
Each victory gave the army moral boost as well as much needed experience. All men in these lands were killed, Russian soldiers who were unmarried were encouraged to set up roots in these lands, taking locals as their wives, to increase the Russian population and to make the people pro-Russian.
In his personal life, Peter II and his wife would enjoy a fertile love life, producing many children.
By the time of his death in 1762, Peter has been on the throne for 61 years, seeing his empire grow in size, prosperity and standard of living. The Russian navy had bases in the Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, Bering Sea, Black Sea, Sea of Japan, Sea of Okhotsk and White Sea.
He was succeeded by his son, Aleksey.
[6] Aleksey was born 1709, the third son of his parents. Unfortunately, his older brother, Peter died childless in 1726 of typhoid fever. His second brother, Boris would marry Peter's widow, Christina of Denmark. They would not have any living children. Boris would die conquering Dzungar in 1733, leaving Aleksey as the next in line to the throne.
As he had been the third son, no one had paid much attention to him, even when Peter died. He had married Anna Romanov, a childhood friend of his. While Aleksey was mild mannered and had not a drop of ambition in him, his wife was known as a great political mind of her time. When Emperor Peter sent his son to rule Khiva in his name, it was an open secret that Aleksey made no decision without consulting his wife first.
Aleksey and Anna would continue to have a loving marriage. Sadly, their happiness would be destroyed when in 1738, after giving birth to her fifth child, Anna would die of childbed fever, devastating her husband and her children. Alexsey would continue to remain devoted to his wife's memory, even setting up the Order of Saint Anna in her honor. When asked if he would marry again, he flatly refused, saying he would only have one wife and one empress.
Afterwards, he would fall into a deep depression, and began to drink heavily.
In 1762, Aleksey would become Emperor of Russia. He would last only four years before he died of liver failure, leaving his crown in the more capable hands of his son Michael.
Michael I of Russia
[7] Michael was born in 1731 as the second child but first son of future Russian Emperor Aleksey I and his wife Anna Romanov. He and his older sister Anna (b. 1730) loved their mother very much and so were saddened when she died in 1738, and were sent with their three siblings to be taken care of by their grandfather Peter II once Aleksey started drinking.
Michael wed Princess Sophia Louise of Prussia (daughter of King Albert II) in 1750 in a marriage arranged by his grandfather to help improve relations with Prussia, which deteriorated after they had supported Fyodor III in the Fyodorian Wars. The couple went on to have four children, with Michael naming one of his daughters Anna in memory of his mother.
He became Emperor of Russia in 1766, although he was already governing as he acted as regent for his father for most of his reign (due to him being drunk). One of the first major events of Michael's reign was the War of the Polish Succession, which started when Augustus "the Weak" died without any heirs. Russia and it's allies would win the war and placed a member of the noble Borkowski family on the throne. Courland also became a vassal of Russia with Friedrich III of Courland marrying one of Michael's daughters.
Another important event during Michael's reign was the colonizing of the west coast of North America, which started with the founding of New Moscow (OTL Astoria, OR) in 1792. By the time Michael died in 1803 several more settlements were created not only along the area surrounding New Moscow, but also up in Alaska.
In 1798 the Austrian Revolution happened, with resulted in the execution of the Holy Roman Emperor and the end of HRE. Michael, worried by what effects the new Republic of the Danube would have on Europe, worked with his advisers on making a constitution. He sadly didn't to see it implemented as he died in 1803 weeks before it was signed. He was succeeded by his granddaughter, Anastasia.
[8] Michael had two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Peter, had only Anastasia with Sophie of Hanover before he died of food poisoning. Much to his son, Vasily's anger Michael choose to make Anastasia (born in 1780) his heir. Much like her paternal grandmother and namesake, Ana proved to be most adpt in politics, proving herself to be shrewd and diligent. She was blunt (sometimes too brutally honest) and stoic. There were jokes that the cold winds of Siberia had frozen her into a human shaped block of ice.
She was close to her grandfather with Michael allowing her to choose her own husband. She received several offers over the years, but she chose none of them, instead keeping them guessing much like Elizabeth of England. There were rumors circulating that her taste was for the fairer sex as she was always seen in the company of a Lady Polina, the wife of one of her advisors. If the two women were lovers, it did not seem to affect their relationship with the husband, Lord Arseny, in fact Polina and Arseny's children were allowed to call Anastasia aunt when in private.
In 1813, her uncle Vasily tried to overthrow her in a coup, bringing a group of conspirators to storm her bedchambers. Unfortunately for them, Anaastasia slept with a pistol under her pillow and she was a very good shot. Movies and television will often have her attackers fleeing and her running after them in her nightgown like a recluse with a shotgun wanting people to get off his land with even more foul curses. It is reported that was one of the only times Anastasia lost control of her emotions, enraged at the kidnapping attempt.
It is surprising that she only exiled her uncle (who popular legend has it begged to be arrested as he cowered in front of his still armed furious niece), instead of cutting off his head.
In politics, Ana would continue her grandfather's work in making Danube a constitution. She made sure to strengthen Russia's bound with other nations by making alliances with Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, She arranged a marriage between one of her cousins and the Duke of Kent.
As for more internal ventures, she founded the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in hopes of pushing Russia into a great future.
As the years went on, the famous ice empress began to thaw, becoming more open with her affection (to her family at least). She doted on her younger cousins constantly, even taking insist in their education.
Unfortunetly, at fifty she fell sick with a fever and although she would live, her health never recover. In 1849, Empress Anasastia passed away in her sleep, leaving____to ascend to the throne.