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How Ivan the Terrible chose his wives, and how many of them did the first Russian tsar actually have
How Ivan the Terrible chose his wives, and how many of them did the first Russian tsar actually have

Video: How Ivan the Terrible chose his wives, and how many of them did the first Russian tsar actually have

Video: How Ivan the Terrible chose his wives, and how many of them did the first Russian tsar actually have
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Ivan the Terrible is a person who has left a very noticeable and far from too kind mark in the history of Russia. In addition to state affairs, Ivan IV also had a personal life, however, the women who were next to him changed too often. Until now, historians do not undertake to confidently assert how many times Ivan Vasilyevich was married. According to all the laws of Orthodoxy, he was married only with the first three, while the rest lived with the tsar in a civil marriage or married him without observing the canons.

Anastasia Romanovna Zakharyina-Yurieva

Anastasia Romanova's media figure by artist and historian George S. Stewart
Anastasia Romanova's media figure by artist and historian George S. Stewart

The young tsar chose his first wife at a special review. The girl was very kind and had an unusually gentle character. Historians suggest that Anastasia Romanovna was the only wife of the tsar, whom he truly loved and whose opinion he listened to. And he chose a spouse not by origin, but truly at the behest of his own heart, therefore he was immensely happy on the day of the wedding, which took place on February 3, 1547.

Anastasia Romanovna at the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod
Anastasia Romanovna at the Millennium of Russia monument in Veliky Novgorod

The chroniclers noted the good influence of Anastasia Romanovna on her husband, singing the praises of her wisdom and virtue. Of the six children of Anastasia Romanovna and Ivan IV, only two have reached adulthood: Ivan and Fedor. And in 1560 Anastasia Romanovna also died. At the same time, some sources claim that the reason for this was too frequent childbirth, while others indicate that the queen was poisoned. Ivan the Terrible endured the loss of his beloved wife extremely hard. As historians believe, this event later had a strong impact on the state of mind of the king.

Maria Temryukovna, Princess Cherkasskaya

Maria Temryukovna, Princess Cherkasskaya
Maria Temryukovna, Princess Cherkasskaya

Ivan IV chose his second wife through assistants from the Circassian princes. Princess Kuchenyi, who arrived in Moscow with her brother Saltankul, liked Ivan Vasilyevich, the tsar began to prepare for the wedding, and the daughter of the Kabardian prince Temryuk was baptized into Orthodoxy under the name Maria. She was incredibly beautiful and, unlike the first wife of Ivan the Terrible, the influence on him was not very kind. She learned to turn the king against those who were displeasing to her, and she also got a very strange pleasure watching the executions.

Maria Temryukovna could not make her fall in love, for she had a vindictive character, was evil and cunning. Very soon even the beauty of the young wife ceased to attract the king. When she died in 1569, he did not grieve much, but again suspected that his second wife had been poisoned.

Marfa Vasilievna Sobakina

Marfa Vasilievna Sobakina, sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of S. A. Nikitin
Marfa Vasilievna Sobakina, sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of S. A. Nikitin

The tsar again chose his third wife at a review, having gathered about two thousand beauties in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda. This time he looked not only at the beauty of the applicants, but also demanded a strict examination by grandmothers and doctors in order to make sure that his wife would be completely healthy. The choice fell on Martha Sobakina, and in October 1571 the third wedding of Ivan the Terrible took place.

It is not known how the health of the potential brides of the grandmother and the doctor was assessed, however, immediately after the wedding, Martha fell ill, and died 15 days later. The king saw in the death of his young wife another malicious intent and poisoning, and therefore started an investigation and executed 20 people.

Anna Alekseevna Koltovskaya

Tomb of Tsarina Anna Koltovskaya (nun Daria)
Tomb of Tsarina Anna Koltovskaya (nun Daria)

It is believed that the tsar married Anna Koltovskaya with the permission of the clergy, while he had to prove that Martha Sobakina did not become his wife, having died a girl. According to other sources, Ivan the Terrible forced the priest to perform the wedding ceremony. The young wife was condescending to her husband's weaknesses and never objected to noisy feasts and the numerous sympathies of Ivan IV. However, she also turned out to be objectionable at court. According to some reports, Anna Alekseevna fought against the oprichnina and, through her efforts, the oprichniks were executed. The boyars treated the queen with hostility and were able to turn Ivan the Terrible against her. After only four months with a little, Anna Alekseevna was sent to a monastery, where she took monastic vows. She died in the Tikhvin monastery in August 1626, having managed to accept the schema shortly before her death.

Maria Dolgorukaya

Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible

It still remains unknown whether such a character actually existed and whether Princess Maria Dolgorukaya was in fact the wife of Ivan Vasilyevich. Information about her appeared only in the 19th century, and there was no information about either the wedding or the burial place of the fifth wife of Ivan the Terrible. In any case, there was no question of legal marriage, because the church allows only three weddings. Only a legend has survived, according to which Ivan IV dealt with his young wife the very next day after the wedding in revenge for not being a girl.

Anna G. Vasilchikova

Ivan the Terrible
Ivan the Terrible

The fate of seventeen-year-old Anna Vasilchikova, whom Ivan the Terrible took as his wife, was unenviable, obeying a sudden sympathy for the daughter of Prince Vasilchikov. Three months after the illegal marriage, the young wife of the tsar, who had never complained about her health, suddenly died, allegedly of "chest disease." And her body was taken out of the palace under cover of night and subsequently buried in the Suzdal monastery.

Vasilisa Melentieva

Nikolay Nevrev. "Vasilisa Melentieva"
Nikolay Nevrev. "Vasilisa Melentieva"

There is very little information about Vasilisa Melentieva, and there are some doubts about the reality of her existence. Some sources say that she was the wife of an approximate king. After Ivan the Terrible's visit to his house, the owner suddenly died of an unknown illness, and Vasilisa appeared in the palace just a few days after the funeral. She was loved and treated kindly by Ivan IV, for her sake he allegedly got rid of all his concubines. However, Vasilisa's infidelity made the king very quickly get rid of both his wife and her "dear friend". No one else saw them alive.

Maria Feodorovna Nagaya

"Queen Martha denounces False Dmitry." Colored lithograph after V. Babushkin's sketch
"Queen Martha denounces False Dmitry." Colored lithograph after V. Babushkin's sketch

She became the last sympathy of Ivan the Terrible, but Maria Nagaya herself did not want to marry the ruler and even begged her father not to consent to this marriage. But Fyodor Nagoy did not dare to go against Ivan the Terrible, and Maria moved to the palace. True, the beautiful wife, who gave birth to Ivan IV's son Dmitry Uglitsky, bored the aging tsar. It is not known how the fate of Maria Fedorovna would have developed if it had not been for the sudden death of Ivan the Terrible in March 1584. She herself died in 1611.

In the nineties, Russia became actively interested in its pre-revolutionary past, trying to see how it looks not through the optics of scientific Marxism. It was then that scientists began to study "The Kremlin's female cemetery", an ancient necropolis where women from the families of Moscow princes and tsars were buried. Until then, the historical value of their graves was ignored.

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