A flawed belt begins the armoured-cruiser lineage

General-Admiral possessed the defining belt but was not consciously designed around the later armoured-cruiser concept. Her designers wanted additional protection, yet the relatively thin, low belt often sat beneath the waterline and did not function as effectively as intended. Later armoured cruisers adopted belt armour deliberately because it promised greater survivability rather than arriving at the feature through an ironclad-derived layout. In that qualified sense, the Russian class began a development line that eventually reached battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, Alaska-class large cruisers, and German Panzerschiffe.