The 18th century in the Romanian lands was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, which decided not to allow Romanian rulers in Wallachia and Moldavia and ruled, instead, through Greek merchants of Istanbul, called phanariotes.

Michael's victory resulted in the first instance when the principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania were united under a Romanian ruler.

Novelist Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula in 1897, based his creepy main character on a real-life, 15th-century Romanian ruler who came to be called Vlad the Impaler on account of how he liked to impale people.

Radu Negru, a legendary Romanian ruler also known as Negru Vodă ("Black Prince")

Ioan was one of the last medieval Romanian rulers to battle the Turks.

The author said he had taken a dislike to Ceausescu in 1960, fully five years before he became the Romanian ruler, after hearing him address a meeting of students and professors of arts and medicine in Cluj.

But two documents written to the citizens of Sibiu in Transylvania show the signature of that Romanian ruler clearly as Ladislaus (or Vlad) Dracula.

Romanian (Wallachian) rulers built churches in northeastern Serbia in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Alexander I Aldea (1431-1436) was the first Romanian ruler to be forced to render military service to the Ottomans.

The Romanian rulers chose the Byzantine model of government, and Wallachia was from the start an absolute monarchy.