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(crosspost)
Sep. 29th, 2018 08:00 am (responding to this prokopetz post about the False Dmitries)
This is called the Time of Troubles, and it was a catastrophe.
The thing is, after Ivan the Terrible and his elder son Feodor both died, there was no one left with a reasonable claim to the throne. Literally no one. Feodor’s brother-in-law, Boris Godunov was crowned Tsar, largely because he was already the power behind the throne under Feodor, and it was relatively easy for him to seize power.
Dmitry died in 1591, when Feodor was still alive. The investigation into his death found that it was an accident, that he was playing with a knife and had an epileptic seizure; the accepted narrative for centuries was that Godunov had him murdered and covered it up; these days, we have no idea, both narratives sound plausible.
Unfortunately for Godunov, False Dmitry I was super convincing. He managed to convince a whole army, and when Boris Godunov suddenly died mid-war, he took Moscow, killed Godunov’s wife and son, raped his daughter, and crowned himself Tsar.
After which he was promptly deposed by Vasily Shuisky, a prominent nobleman descended from Grand Princes of Moscow before they were Tsars; Shuisky was in turn deposed by a coalition known as the Seven Boyars, who looked at False Dmitry II and at the Polish army that was, by now, outside their doorstep and agreed to crown the Polish Prince Władysław; the Polish army tried to forcibly convert the whole country to Catholicism, the country rose in revolt in response, Sweden invaded, False Dmitry III declared himself, was captured and killed, and eventually the resistance kicked the Poles out of Moscow.
Once the Poles retreated, the nobles decided to crown one of their own - Mikhail Romanov. He was the great-nephew of Ivan the Terrible’s first wife, but more importantly, he came from a reasonably prominent noble family, he was Russian, and he was young and easy to influence. Which is how the Romanov dynasty first came to power.
By the time things settled down, a third of the population was dead, Moscow was in ruins, and a bunch of land had been annexed by various neighbors.
Like I said. Catastrophe.
