Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

If you think your family is overrun with eccentric, controlling lunatics, please let me introduce

you to the Romanovs. For 304 years, the Romanovs ruled roughly one-fifth of the entire planet.

They were both capable and insane, as one historian put it,

and made up of characters who were fascinating and charismatic, odd and odious.

That might be a monumental understatement. We are speaking of this Russian band

of autocratic misfits now, 100 years after the Bolsheviks executed the remaining members,

because Matthew Weiner, the creator of the hit TV show Madman, has returned to the small

screen with a new series called The Romanovs.

This show is a drama about present-day characters who hope and believe they are descendants

of the Romanovs, which is a somewhat curious thing to aspire to considering all of the

collective evidence about this monarchy's legacy.

Simon Sabag Montefiorei in his book,

The Romanov's 1613 to 1918,

called it a world of family rivalry,

imperial ambition,

lurid grammar,

sexual excess,

and depraved sadism.

Yikes!

There isn't enough time to completely examine the lives of each Romanov individually, and completely.

But here's a Cliff Notes version.

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