Paul I was Emperor of Russia from 1796 until his 1801 assassination. Paul remained overshadowed by his mother for most of his life. He adopted the laws of succession to the Russian throne—rules that lasted until the end of the Romanov dynasty and of the Russian Empire. He also intervened in the French Revolutionary Wars and toward the end of his reign, added Kartli and Kakheti in Eastern Georgia into the empire, which was confirmed by his son and successor Alexander I.

The emperor and autocrat of all Russia, also translated as emperor and autocrat of all the Russias, was the official title of the Russian monarch from 1721 to 1917.