Tsarina

Marfa Apraxina of Russia, wife of Tsar Feodor III and Peter the Great

Tsarina or tsaritsa (also spelled csarina or csaricsa, tzarina or tzaritza, or czarina or czaricza; Bulgarian: царица, romanized: tsaritsa; Serbian: царица / carica; Russian: царица, romanized: tsaritsa) is the title of a female autocratic ruler (monarch) of Bulgaria, Serbia or Russia, or the title of a tsar's wife. The English spelling is derived from the German czarin or zarin, in the same way as the French tsarine / czarine, and the Spanish and Italian czarina / zarina.^[1] (A tsar's daughter is a tsarevna.)

"Tsarina" or "tsaritsa" was the title of the female supreme ruler in the following states:

Bulgaria: in 913–1018, in 1185–1422 and in 1908–1946
Serbia: in 1346–1371
Russia: officially from about 1547 until 1721, unofficially in 1721–1917 (officially "Empresses").

Russia

Since 1721, the official titles of the Russian male and female monarchs were

Nicholas II of Russia

, was the last Russian empress.

Eudoxia Lopukhina was sent to a monastery in 1698 (which was the usual way the emperor "divorced" his wife), and she died in 1731. In 1712 Peter married in church

Catherine the Great, the most popular empress.) For a list of Russian empresses in the 18th and 19th centuries, see empress of Russia

.

Marina Mnishek also became tsarina of Russia by her marriage to the impostor False Dmitry I and later to False Dmitry II

.
Many wives were chosen by
Mnishek) was Maria Temryukovna
, a Circassian princess, who converted to Orthodoxy.

Bulgaria

The first Bulgarian ruler to use the title tsar was Simeon I of Bulgaria, and his consort (her name is uncertain, reportedly Maria Sursuvul) used the title tsarina. The title was used by subsequent Bulgarian consorts until the end of the First Bulgarian Empire in 1018. The last royal spouse to use the title was Maria, the wife of Ivan Vladislav of Bulgaria.
When the Second Bulgarian Empire was created in 1185 the rulers again adopted the title tsar and their consorts were therefore called tsarinas.
In the
Simeon II of Bulgaria
, is also sometimes referred as a tsaritsa.

Serbia

The first Serbian tsarina was
Stephen Uroš V of Serbia
, sometime in the 1350s, and ruled until the Serbian empire's demise in 1371.

See also

Tsarevna, a tsar's daughter

List of Russian consorts

List of Serbian consorts

List of Bulgarian consorts

Further reading

Zabelin, Ivan. (1872). The Domestic Life of Russian Tsarinas.

References

^ "tsarina", Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), 1989

Catherine the Great
(1762–96).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tsarinas.

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[1] "tsarina", Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.), 1989

[2] Catherine the Great
(1762–96).

[1]