Ruler Roulette

The name Kyivan Rus cannot fail to bring to mind two associations. The first is the capital of Ukraine, and the second is the first and last syllable, respectively, of Russia and Belarus. Cutting across ever more divergent entities, the name thus speaks to just one of the numerous ways that the medieval state of Rus left its impact on eastern Europe. The Ruling Families of Rus, a new book by Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski, examines the history of Rus’s people and their land through a unique lens: dynastic succession. The authors look almost exclusively at the ruling families of the kingdom of Kyivan Rus and the areas these families influenced, but the reader will see that when it comes to an early medieval state like Rus this approach isn’t always fruitful.