Vladimir II Monomakh

Vladimir II Monomakh (; Christian name: Vasily; 26 May 1053 – 19 May 1125) was Grand Prince of Kiev from 1113 to 1125. He is considered a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and is celebrated on May 6. Family background In 1046, to seal an armistice in the Rus'–Byzantine War, the future father of Vladimir Monomakh, Vsevolod Yaroslavich (born ), then a junior member of the princely Rurikids of Kievan Rus', contracted a diplomatic marriage with a relative of the reigning Byzantine emperor Constantine IX Monomachos, from whom Vladimir (born in 1053) inherited his sobriquet, Monomakh. Contemporary Byzantine naming-practice allowed the adoption of a maternal surname if convention regarded the mother's family as of a more exalted origin than the father's. Vsevolod Yaroslavich, the fifth son of the Grand Prince of Kiev Yaroslav I the Wise, himself ruled as Grand Prince of Kiev from 1078 to 1093. Reign