Trubetskoy family


The House of Trubetskoy is a Russian gentry family of Ruthenian stock and Lithuanian origin, like many other princely houses of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, later prominent in Russian history, science, and arts. They are descended from Algirdas's son Demetrius I Starshy. They used the Pogoń Litewska coat of arms and the Trubetsky coat of arms.

Sovereign rule

s Troubetzkoy descend from Demetrius I Starshy, one of Algirdas's sons, who ruled the towns of Bryansk and Starodub. He was killed together with his elder sons in the Battle of the Vorskla River. Demetrius's descendants continued to rule the town of Trubetsk until the 1530s, when they had to convert to Roman Catholicism or leave their patrimony and settle in Moscow. They chose the latter, and were accepted with great ceremony at the court of Vasili III of Russia.

Time of Troubles

Undoubtedly, the most prominent of early Troubetzkoys was Prince Dmitry Timofeievich Troubetzkoy, who helped Prince Dmitry Pozharsky to raise a volunteer army and deliver Moscow from the Poles in 1612. The Time of Troubles over, Dmitry was addressed by people as "Liberator of the Motherland" and asked to accept the Tsar's throne. He contented himself, however, with the governorship of Siberia and the title of the Duke of Shenkursk. Prince Dmitry died on May 24, 1625, and was interred in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.
Quite different was a stance of his first cousin, Prince Wigund-Jeronym Troubetzkoy. He supported the Poles and followed them to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth after the Time of Troubles. Here his descendants were given enviable positions at the court and married into other princely families of Poland. By the 1660s, however, the only Troubetzkoy left, Prince Yuriy Troubetzkoy, returned to Moscow and was given a boyar title by Tsar Alexis of Russia of the House of Romanov. All the branches of the family descend from his marriage to Princess Irina Galitzina.

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