Grand Prince of Kiev
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The Grand Prince of Kiev (sometimes also Grand Duke) was the title of the monarch of Kievan Rus', residing in Kiev (modern Kyiv) from the 10th to 13th centuries. In the 13th century, Kiev became an appanage principality, first of the grand prince of Vladimir and the Mongol Golden Horde governors, and was later taken over by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Rus' chronicles such as the Primary Chronicle are inconsistent in applying the title "grand prince" to various princes of Kievan Rus'. Although most sources consistently attribute it to the prince of Kiev, there is no agreement which princes were also "grand prince", and scholars have thus come up with different lists of grand princes of Kiev.
Background
Origins
According to a founding myth in the Primary Chronicle, Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv and their sister Lybid co-founded the city of Kiev (Kyiv), and the oldest brother Kyi was "chief of his kin" (Old East Slavic: кнѧжаше в родѣ, romanized: knyazhashe v rodie). Some western historians (i.e., Kevin Alan Brook) suppose that Kiev was founded by the Khazars or Magyars. Kiev is a Turkic place name (Küi = riverbank + ev = settlement). At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire (a hill-fortress, called Sambat, "high place" in Old Turkic). According to Omeljan Pritsak, Constantine Zuckerman and other scholars, Khazars lost Kiev at the beginning of the 10th century.
At some point, Rurik, a Varangian prince, is alleged to have founded the "Rurik dynasty" (named after him in the 16th century) in 862 through the "calling of the Varangians", but some scholars consider this to be a mythical or legendary event.
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