Parish registers from the last third of the XVIII – early XX century as a source for the genealogy and biographies of the Romanovs

Introduction. This article analyzes the informative potential of parish registers in the context of the Romanov imperial family from the last third of the XVIII to the early XX century. The main problem in this area of research is the insufficient development of sources, largely due to the erroneous belief that the topic is exhaustive. Using a comparative method, the author notes the informative differentiation of parish registers by the social status of different branches of the family: members of the dynasty and individuals descended from morganatic marriages or extramarital unions. Results. For each of these categories, the author identified key parish registers from the archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The article devotes special attention to the handwritten ‘‘Metric Book of Members of the Russian Imperial Family’’, housed in the Russian State Historical Archive. It represents a little-known, unique, and unparalleled source on the genealogy and biographies of dynastic branches and is characterized by both the informativeness and the reliability of its information. The article highlights the specific features of the excerpts from the registers, as well as their relationship to statistical records published abroad. It is noted that, despite their exceptional information content, the registers are not without their own shortcomings. These include, first and foremost, gaps that hinder a full reconstruction of the history of specific branches. The author concludes that the registers allow not only to construct a chain of family ties but also to reconstruct specific aspects of the family’s history unavailable from other sources, as well as to form a picture of the dynastic, morganatic, and illegitimate branches of the Romanovs as a single lineage.