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The House of Romanov (Рома́нов) was the second and last imperial dynasty to rule over Russia, reigning from 1613 until the 1917 overthrow of the monarchy during the March Revolution. The later history of the Imperial House is sometimes referred to informally as the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov.
The Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, who was himself a member of a cadet branch of the Oldenburgs, married into the Romanov family early in the 18th century; all Romanov Tsars from the middle of that century to the revolution of 1917 were descended from that marriage. Though officially known as the House of Romanov, these descendants of the Romanov and Oldenburg Houses are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov.
On July 18, 1918, the day after the killing at Yekaterinburg of the last Tsar, Nicholas II and family, members of the extended Russian royal family, the Romanovs, including a nun, and servants met a brutal death by being killed near Alapayevsk by Bolsheviks. They included: Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia, Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia, Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, Prince Igor Konstantinovich of Russia and Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley, Grand Duke Sergei's secretary Varvara Yakovleva, and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Grand Duchess Elizabeth had departed her family after the death of her husband in 1905 and donated all her wealth to the poor and became a nun, but was nonetheless killed. In January 1919 revolutionary authorities executed Prince Dmitriy Konstantinovich, Prince Nikolai Mikhailovich, Prince Pavel Aleksandrovich, and Prince Georgiy Mikhailovich who had been held in the prison of Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd.