tsarArticle Free Pass tsar, also spelled tzar, or czar, English
feminine tsarina, tzarina, or czarina, title associated
primarily with rulers of Russia. The term tsar, a form of the
ancient Roman imperial title caesar, generated a series of
derivatives in Russian: tsaritsa, a tsar’s wife, or tsarina;
tsarevich, his son; tsarevna, his daughter; and tsesarevich, his
eldest son and heir apparent (a 19th-century term). In medieval
Russia the title tsar referred to a supreme ruler, particularly
the Byzantine emperor, who was considered the head of the
Orthodox Christian world. But the fall of the Byzantine Empire
in 1453 and the Ottoman Turks’ conquest of the Balkans left the
grand princes of Moscow as the only remaining Orthodox monarchs
in the world, and the Russian Orthodox clergy naturally began to
look to them as the defenders and possible supreme heads of
Orthodox Christianity. Claims were put forth that Moscow would
become the “third Rome” in succession to Constantinople (now
Istanbul) and Rome itself. In 1