Romanos dies in June 948, and is buried, like the other members of his family, in the church of Myrelaion.

Constantine VII, having lived long under constant threat of deposition—or worse—by the Lekapenoi family, is extremely resentful of them.

In his De Administrando Imperio, a manual written for his son and successor, Romanus II, he minces no words about his late father-in-law: "the lord Romanus the Emperor was an idiot and an illiterate man, neither bred in the high imperial manner, nor following Roman custom from the beginning, nor of imperial or noble descent, and therefore the more rude and authoritarian in doing most things ... for his beliefs were uncouth, obstinate, ignorant of what is good, and unwilling to adhere to what is right and proper.” (Jonathan Shepard (ed.). The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 39.)