THE LA ST CHAPTER of this book ends with a story about the complicated relations of Rurik, Vsevolod, and Roman. Their social status is described in English as “princes,” the term that, as argued in Chapter 1, serves as a conventional label for the upper social stratum of Rus, which consisted of royalty and aristocracy. We followed a break-up and subsequent repair of the bond of artificial kinship between Rurik and Roman, for which Rusian chroniclers use the terms “father” and “son,” and which this book presented as analogous to lordship of high medieval Western sources. Soon after Rurik and Roman restored their “father”– “son” relations, they fell out again. We did not discuss this new development, because not much is known about it.

The thriller about fighting and peace-making, cunning machinations and faithfulness, sworn and broken oaths, and multiple transfers of the rights to Torchesk breaks off shortly before the end of the Kievan Chronicle, where it is found in the entries for the 1190s. Like the majority of Rusian chronicles, these entries are in the vernacular East Slavonic and often use direct speech— in short, they are written in what may be deemed the “Conventum Hugonis style.” This style changes suddenly in the entry for 1198/ 9, which includes a Church Slavonic eulogy to Rurik, probably composed as a separate text and at some point interpolated into the chronicle. This is the same Rurik who had difficulties with Vsevolod and Roman, but one hardly recognizes the figure from the accounts of princely wars, negotiations, and agreements, in which we have seen Rurik so actively involved. The Rurik of the entry for 1198/ 99 is a majestic monarch, belonging to the long line of the “autocrats holding the throne of Kiev” and ruling over what looks like a “normal” European kingdom.

This is not how Rurik's country is usually viewed. Rus of scholarly literature, with some exceptions discussed above, is not a kingdom, does not belong to Europe, and follows a “special path” of social and political development. The contention of this book is that this view is largely a product of the nature of available sources and of differences in historiographical traditions.