The leading successor principality of northeast Rus' after Kievan Rus' fragmentation, founded when Yury Dolgoruky moved his capital to Suzdal in 1125; his son Andrey Bogolyubsky relocated the capital to Vladimir in 1157 and sacked Kiev in 1169, shifting the political center of gravity from the Dnieper to the Klyazma/Volga forest zone. Ruled through the Mongol conquest (1237-38) as a leading Golden Horde vassal; Alexander Nevsky was the last prince to reign directly at Vladimir. By 1389 the grand-princely title was permanently united with Moscow.
The grand-princely title became a hereditary possession of the princes of Moscow from 1331 and was permanently fused with Moscow by 1389, its original territory forming the core of the emerging centralized Russian state.
The standard scholarly survey of medieval Rus' political history, covering the rise of Vladimir-Suzdal after the fragmentation of Kievan Rus' and its role as the nucleus of the future Muscovite state.