ABSTRACT
In the main, the struggle which ensued was to be fought out, as it had been throughout much of the second half of the twelfth century, between the Ros tislavichi and the Ol'govichi. Most of the time a state of simmering, some times open, warfare existed between them. Occasionally the two families would form an ephemeral alliance, but only with the aim of combating a common enemy in the shape of whoever controlled the west-Russian lands. In the back ground to this conflict were the rulers of Vladimir In the north-west, Vsevolod 111 and his sons, sometimes aloof, but always watchful, ready to intervene if the balance of power in the south needed redressing, and aware of their over all military and economic superiority. From the great Kievan chronicle1 — in its latter stages, the family chronicle of Ryurik Rostislavich — it is clear that Ryurik recognized this authority and was ready to acknowledge the suzerainty of Vsevolod 111: in the delicate territorial negotiations with Roman Mstislavich and Vsevolod in 1195, negotiations which tottered on the brink of open war, Ryurik told Roman: ‘We cannot exist without Vsevolod; we have placed in him the seniority amongst all [our] cousins in the tribe of Vladimir {MonomakhJ2;
and to Vsevolod he declared: ‘You, brother, are senior to us all in the tribe of Vladimir/3 Maybe this was nothing more than the language of diplomacy, but the Suzdalian (the so-called Lavrent'evskiy) Chronicle - biased though it may have been - points out that it was Vsevolod III who in fact ‘sent his men to Kiev’ when Svyastoslav died in 1194 ‘and put Ryurik Rostislavichi on the throne of K iev.4 In 1203 the same chronicle has Roman of Galicia talk of Vsevolod as 'my father and master (ptets i gm podin f.5
