The last direct descendant of the Romanovs who ruled on the Russian throne was Elizaveta Petrovna. The Great Empress died on January 5, 1762.
First Tsar with German blood
After Elizabeth, Peter III ascended the throne. His birth name sounded like this: Karl Peter Ulrich Holstein-Gottorp. The new autocrat was only 50% Russian. His mother was Anna Petrovna, nee Romanova, and his father was Duke Karl-Friedrich, all with the same German surname Holstein-Gottorp.
Even those Russian 50% can be questioned. Historians are still at a loss to guess who was the nationality of the grandmother of the Russian emperor, Marta Skavronskaya, better known as Catherine I. All threads lead to the Baltic states. Who exactly - Latvian, Estonian or Lithuanian - has not been established for certain.
The tradition of marrying German princesses
Peter III married Sophia Frederica Augusta. She came from an aristocratic but impoverished German family of Anhalt-Zerbst. This young German princess came to Russia in a snowy winter to be anointed to reign and become the great autocrat Catherine II. She had a son, Pavel I. The boy was already 25% Russian.
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Growing up, Pavel also took a German woman with the long name Sofia Maria Dorothea Louise Augusta of Württemberg as his wife to strengthen diplomatic ties and according to the already established tradition. In Russia, she received a more euphonious name for the Russian ear, Maria Feodorovna.
Russian blood is diluted even more
In marriage, Maria Feodorovna gave birth to ten offspring. One of them, Nicholas I, became the progenitor of Nicholas II. Nicholas I was already 12.5% Russian. He again tied the knot with a foreign woman - the daughter of the Prussian king, who after baptism received the name Alexandra Feodorovna.
She gave birth to a boy, the future Emperor Alexander II. This Russian ruler was approximately 6.25% Russian. Alexander was no exception: another German woman, Maximiliana Augusta of Hesse-Darmstadt, became his reigning wife. In Russia, she took the name Maria Alexandrovna and gave birth to the next heir to the throne - Alexander III.
The percentage of "Russianness" of Nicholas II
About 3% of Russian blood flowed in the veins of Alexander III. The king's wife was a princess of Denmark, who was baptized in Russia into Maria Feodorovna (at birth she was named Maria Frederica Sofia Dagmara). It was she who gave birth to the future emperor-martyr Nicholas II. The last Russian emperor was only 1.5% Russian.
By 50% - by his mother - he was Danish. The remaining 48.5% are undoubtedly German-Prussian. Perhaps some hundredths of a percent belong to the Baltic peoples. The emperor received them from the very Martha Skavronskaya, whose nationality has not been established.
And he also married a German woman, giving birth to Prince Alexei, who died along with his family from the bullets of the Bolsheviks. The boy was "Russian" by less than 1%. So it can be assumed that if the revolution had not happened in Russia, the throne would have been firmly entrenched for immigrants from Europe. At the same time, we regard any of the listed autocrats as a real Russian, paying tribute to his deeds and devotion to Russia.