This article provides a brief analysis of the status and history of the Imperial House of Romanovs in exile after the Revolution of 1917. Specifically, it examines the relations between the Heads of the dynasty and the hierarchies of three jurisdictions of the Russian Orthodox Church in emigration, as well as the hierarchies of other local Orthodox Churches. The article also surveys the present relationship between the dynasty and the Church, offers a descriptive overview of the sources for the history of the Church preserved in the archives of the Russian Imperial House, and explores the issue of their introduction into the scientific circulation. The substance of the article was delivered as a talk in December 2015 at the international conference “Archival Studies in Russia and Abroad in the 18th - 21st Centuries: The Current State of the Question and Future Prospects”, which took place at the History and Archives Institute of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, which was held to mark the 80th anniversary of the birth of the great Russian archivist, Evgenii Vasil’evich Starostin (1935-2011).