In the modern Russian Federation, it is full of highly educated people who do not need to explain that the prince is primarily a man who, after the death of his father, the emperor, will inherit the throne. We are writing an article for students.
How and when did this title appear
Peter the Great, making his wife Empress, gave the title of crown prince to his daughters Anna, Elizabeth and Natalia in 1721, but did not make them his heirs.
As you know, before death he never transferred power to anyone. I could not find a person worthy of this honor who would continue his work.
For the Empress, this title sounded at that time as a Cesarean, and her daughters were accordingly Crown.
For the imperial son
Tsesarevich is the title of heir to the throne. It appeared in 1762, when the boy Pavel Petrovich was eight years old.
In principle, the tsarevich and tsesarevich are quite adequate words that come from the same Latin root as “caesar” or “caesar”, that is, the emperor. And the prince is one who has not yet reached the throne. Moreover, if the power is usurped, as was the case with Ekaterina Alekseevna, then the heir can wear this title for a very long time. The usurpers who got to power do not voluntarily want to part with it, and so they often get it after the crime.
Tsesarevich is, by our standards (except that Great Britain is not an empire), the Prince of Wales, who lived his whole heir, but his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is a long-lived woman and lawfully rules the country successfully. And her son is already pretty old. Not only children have grown up with him, but his grandchildren are growing up. This is how things sometimes happen to the heirs to the throne.
We will now return to the times distant from us.
Poor paul
For ten years, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna expected that the royal couple Peter and Catherine would give birth to her grandson. After the birth in 1764, rumors spread that the baby was not Peter's son: they either replaced the child, or he was the son of Count Saltykov. But this or that, is unknown.
Nevertheless, Peter recognized the child, and Empress Elizabeth took the baby from her parents. She wished that his upbringing go under her supervision. After her death, Catherine made a coup with the guards and became empress. She did not love her child, kept away from herself, but gave him a wonderful education.
She did not even celebrate his coming of age. Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich was not allowed to state affairs. Having married him, Catherine took away his two elder sons, Alexander and Konstantin, and raised them, as she considered it right, allowing her parents to meet with them occasionally. So Pavel Petrovich lived in Gatchina with his family, fearing that his mother’s guards would come and arrest him. Over the years, he became suspicious, gloomy, incredulous and enthusiastically occupied only with his regiment.
The title of heir to the throne in the Russian Empire Pavel Petrovich wore thirty-four years. He knew that his mother, bypassing him, would transfer the throne to his beloved grandson Alexander. Therefore, upon learning of her death, he quickly destroyed all the papers relating to this issue, and finally became emperor.
He ruled briefly (a little over four years) and died after a palace plot. In Russian memory, he remained in jokes, in ridiculous laws, which he often established, and was forgotten as a man who introduced order to the succession to the imperial house, weakened the position of the nobility, improved the life of peasants, resolved the issue of religious freedom, introduced new military regulations, which strengthened the army.
In exile
After the bloody and inhuman reprisals against the imperial family, the Romanovs did not have direct male heirs. In exile, the monarchists argue who deserves to be called a prince. They don’t come to a common opinion, and Georgy Mikhailovich so-called himself, who has a kinship with the Romanovs on the maternal side.