Grand Prince of Vladimir

The Prince of Vladimir, from 1186 Grand Prince of Vladimir (Великий князь Владимирский), also translated as Grand Duke of Vladimir, was the title of the monarch of Vladimir-Suzdal. The title was passed to the prince of Moscow in 1389.

Overview
The monarch of Vladimir-Suzdal's title, veliky knyaz or velikii kniaz (Великий Князь, великꙑи кнѧзь) is variously translated into English as "grand duke" or "grand prince". Consequently, Vladimir-Suzdal has been interchangeably described as a "grand principality" or "grand duchy". Linguist Alan Timberlake (2000) found that the first time the phrase velikȳi knęz' shows up in the Suzdalian Chronicle (in the Laurentian, Radziwiłł and LPS manuscripts) is under the year 1186, where it is applied to Vsevolod Yurievich. In his early reign from 1177 to 1186, he is simply referred to as "prince Vsevolod" (knęz' (zhe) Vsevolod').

From 1157 to 1238, the principality's capital was Vladimir on the Klyazma, which had been founded in 1108. In 1151 Andrey Bogolyubsky secretly left Vyshgorod, the domain of his father in the Principality of Kiev, and migrated to Suzdal. In 1157 he became prince of the principalities of Vladimir, Suzdal and Rostov. He sacked Kiev in 1169, installing his younger brother Gleb as new grand prince of Kiev.

The city of Vladimir was sacked by a Mongol invasion in 1238. The second important city, Suzdal', was also destroyed by Mongols. The entire principality was then overrun in 1242 by the Mongols under Batu Khan, founder of the Golden Horde. The state of Vladimir-Suzdal (formally the grand principality of Vladimir) became dominant among the various petty northeastern Rus' principalities left after the dissolution of the Kievan Rus' state. The title of Grand Prince of Vladimir became one of the three titles (along with Kiev and Novgorod) possessed by the most important rulers among the Rus' nobility. In the forest region, Vladimir enjoyed hegemony for a time, but it too disintegrated into a series of petty states. By the 14th century, Vladimir-Suzdal had splintered into various appanage principalities including Nizhny Novgorod (Novgorod-Suzdal), Tver and Moscow (Muscovy) who all claimed the title of Grand Prince of Vladimir, and sought to gain the favour of the Tatar-Mongol khan of the Golden Horde to secure it. In the early 14th century, the khan awarded the title to Yury of Moscow to counterbalance the strength of Tver; and after the Tver Uprising of 1327, which the Muscovites helped put down, Özbeg Khan named Ivan "Kalita" of Moscow the new grand prince of Vladimir.

By the mid-14th century and especially during the Great Troubles (1359–1382), the khan's alliance with Moscow made the latter militarily and administratively powerful enough to economically and demographically devastate its rivals, notably Tver. The khans therefore started awarding the grand princely title to Moscow's rivals. In 1353, Konstantin Vasilyevich of Nizhny Novgorod-Suzdal unsuccessfully tried to obtain the title of grand prince of Vladimir, and in 1371 it was awarded to Mikhail II of Tver. But by that time it was too late for the Golden Horde to curb the rise of Muscovy. Tokhtamysh allowed Vasily I of Moscow to succeed his father Dmitry Donskoy as grand prince of Vladimir in 1389.