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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm to blameache our reporting and I'm fair a dowdy,

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Speaker 1: and the subject of royal pretenders is one that just

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Speaker 1: really continues to fascinate and intrigue the both of us.

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Speaker 1: In March, we covered Lambert Simnel, who was pretender to

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Speaker 1: the English throne at the young age of ten. But

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Speaker 1: here's the thing. While he and his supporters may have

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Speaker 1: given Henry the seventh cause for concern, Simnel never actually

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Speaker 1: became king. But for the royal pretender we're gonna look

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Speaker 1: at here, it was a really different story. Czar Dmitri,

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Speaker 1: who's commonly known as False Dmitri the First. Not only

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Speaker 1: you searched the Russian throne in sixteen o five, he

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Speaker 1: also gained the widespread support of people across all classes

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Speaker 1: in Russia while pretending to be the son of none

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Speaker 1: other than Ivan the Terrible. So he did it. He's

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Speaker 1: not just a pretender. He really made it happen. But

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be calling him false to me Tree the first.

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Speaker 1: But just so we can avoid any confusion right off

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Speaker 1: the bat, there were actually two other false Dmitris who

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Speaker 1: weren't quite as successful as this first one, and we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about both of them too, But first,

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Speaker 1: before things get too complicated, we need to set up

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Speaker 1: this story a little bit and talk about who the

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Speaker 1: real Dmitri was, leaving those other three false guys out

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Speaker 1: of the picture for the moment, and also try to

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Speaker 1: figure out why somebody would try to pretend to be

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Speaker 1: him in the first place before we take a look

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Speaker 1: at those questions. So we've really got to take a

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Speaker 1: look at sixteenth century Russia, or the end of the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth century, at least as the sixteenth century was drawing

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Speaker 1: to a close, the old dynasty of the Grand Princes

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Speaker 1: of Moscow, or the Ruric dynasty was coming to an end.

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Speaker 1: Sorr Ivan, better known as Ivan the Terrible, died in

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Speaker 1: four and though he'd had a number of wives, countless lovers,

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Speaker 1: and many many children, he really didn't have that many

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Speaker 1: options for an air partly his own fault to right,

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Speaker 1: so this is what happened. Many of the legitimate children

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Speaker 1: that he had turned out to be sickly and they

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Speaker 1: didn't survive Ivan. As for the illegitimate ones, it said

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Speaker 1: that Ivan would actually suffocate them with his own hands

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Speaker 1: to make sure there wasn't a power struggle after he died. Ironically,

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Speaker 1: a power struggle does still develop. That's very true. There

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Speaker 1: were two sons left after Ivan died, Fyodor and Dmitri.

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Speaker 1: Fyodor was the older one, and he actually became czar

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Speaker 1: after Ivan's death. He wasn't a very effective czar, though

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Speaker 1: some sources suggest that he may have actually had some

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Speaker 1: sort of mental disability or the very least was ill

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Speaker 1: suited to ruling the country. So somebody else had to

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Speaker 1: step in. His wife's brother, Boris Godonoff, who basically governed

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Speaker 1: for him, and before his death, Ivan even named golden

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Speaker 1: Off as Fyodor's guardian. So it's the start of trouble

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Speaker 1: raising this this man to a very high, very powerful position,

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Speaker 1: because Godanov had a lot of power now and it

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Speaker 1: seemed like maybe he would be the next in line

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Speaker 1: for the he own. And there was still that other

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Speaker 1: son though, so this is where things get complicated. Dmitri

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Speaker 1: Ivan's other legitimate child, but at this point he was

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Speaker 1: just a little boy, so he didn't seem to be

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Speaker 1: a real contender here as a successor to Feodor. Yeah, also,

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Speaker 1: it might have been tough to prove Dmitri's legitimacy because

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Speaker 1: he was the son of Ivan's seventh or maybe eighth wife,

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Speaker 1: depending on what source you look at, and I think

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Speaker 1: something like after the third wife, the kids weren't really

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Speaker 1: considered legitimate, so that caused a problem anyway, but he

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Speaker 1: still would have had a claim, So that's probably why

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Speaker 1: Dmitri and his mother were exiled to oogly each after

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Speaker 1: Ivan's death. But the boy died there in fifteen nine,

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Speaker 1: around age eight or ten, and of course there are

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Speaker 1: mysterious circumstances involved. It wouldn't be a good pretender story

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Speaker 1: unless there were some mysterious circumstances, just a Russian royal

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Speaker 1: childhood story. So some people said that the death was natural,

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Speaker 1: although natural doesn't even really sound very good. He supposedly

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Speaker 1: stabbed himself during an epileptic siege. Yeah, you have to

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Speaker 1: wonder why an eight to ten year old boys holding

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Speaker 1: a knife anyway, Yeah, that was my first question, and

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Speaker 1: how he managed to stab himself with it, But there

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Speaker 1: you go. That's the one potentially natural solution. However, though

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Speaker 1: there was also a rumor that it was Godenov who

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Speaker 1: had had the child, murdered, which seems kind of likely

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Speaker 1: to this this power hungry guy who does step in

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Speaker 1: after this kid is out of the way. But regardless

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Speaker 1: of what the truth was here, Dmitri was now out

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Speaker 1: of the picture. And since Fyodor had a wife and

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Speaker 1: only one daughter, Fiodoja, who died as an infant, this

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Speaker 1: really left the door wide open for Godonov to step

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Speaker 1: up and take the throne himself. And incidentally, some suspected

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Speaker 1: godenovil involvement in Fyodojia's death too, so we should mention that.

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Speaker 1: But sure enough, after Fyodora's death in fift Godenov was

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Speaker 1: elected to the throne by popular assembly. But czar Boris,

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Speaker 1: as he's often known, didn't have an easy go of

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Speaker 1: it at all. We shouldn't make it seem entirely like

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Speaker 1: he just came in there and claimed the throne for

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Speaker 1: himself too. He was elected to his position, but not

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Speaker 1: everyone was a fan of the news are Boris, in

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Speaker 1: particular the Bowyers, who are basically old aristocratic family's upper nobility.

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Speaker 1: They were specifically opposed to him, and out of all

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Speaker 1: of these old families, the Romanovs especially really didn't like

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Speaker 1: czar Boris. And part of that is because they thought

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Speaker 1: they had a better claim to the throne is our

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Speaker 1: Feodor's mother Ivan the terribles first wife, Anastasia, had been

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Speaker 1: a Romanov, so the family thought that through through her

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Speaker 1: and through their relation to the latest are, they had

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Speaker 1: a pretty good claim. So zar Boris needed a way

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Speaker 1: to deal with these rivals of his and what he

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Speaker 1: did is in sixteen hundred he sent them all. He

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Speaker 1: arrested them, He arrested all the Romanov brothers and sent

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Speaker 1: them all out of Moscow. That wasn't the end of

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Speaker 1: zar boris troubles though, either, as soon other social classes

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Speaker 1: weren't really happy with him. Though some sources referred as

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Speaker 1: zar Boris as an intelligent and capable ruler who did

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Speaker 1: things like reforming the judicial system and sending students to

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Speaker 1: be educated in Western Europe, he also had the misfortune

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Speaker 1: of being on the throne during a terrible famine that

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Speaker 1: lasted from about sixteen o one to sixteen oh three.

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Speaker 1: The harvest failed all those summers, three successive summers, and

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Speaker 1: czar Boris really didn't deal with us effectively at all.

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Speaker 1: It hurt his reputation and destabilized his regime. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: there was this idea floating around that Czar Boris wasn't

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Speaker 1: a true czar at all. These economic problems, these social

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Speaker 1: conflicts that were all coming to ahead, even the famine,

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Speaker 1: it was all kind of his fault. And this, combined

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Speaker 1: with Dmitri's premature death, opened the door for pretenders, so

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Speaker 1: new guys could come in and and the stage was

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Speaker 1: set for for some kind of revolution it was. And

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Speaker 1: then in sixteen o three, at the height of this

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Speaker 1: crisis in Russia, a young man appeared in Poland Lithuania

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Speaker 1: and presented himself to Prince Adam and other nobles there

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Speaker 1: as the Tsarevich Dmitri, the youngest son of Ivan a

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Speaker 1: Terrible and the true heir to the Russian throne. Wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, yeah, what's going on here? Supposed to be dead,

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Speaker 1: He's supposed to be dead. So here's how Dmitri explained himself.

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Speaker 1: He told people that Gonov had sent hired assassins to

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Speaker 1: kill him and Ogleach back in fift So what was

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Speaker 1: rumored to have happened did happen. Gonov had tried to

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Speaker 1: have him killed, but his tutor had saved him, or

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Speaker 1: so Dmitri claimed. By cleverly substituting another boy for Dmitri,

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Speaker 1: and that boy was killed instead of him. So sounds

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Speaker 1: like a pretty interesting story. And according to an article

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Speaker 1: in History Today by Marine Perry, this new Dmitri, who

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Speaker 1: did receive an audience with the Polish king in sixteen

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Speaker 1: o four, had some pet some proof for all of

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Speaker 1: these tall claims. For one, he was recognized supposedly by

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Speaker 1: Russian exiles who claimed to have known the boy. You know,

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Speaker 1: that's not it's not too hard to believe. There are

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Speaker 1: some people would have definitely been familiar with his face,

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Speaker 1: might have been able to recognize him. They also displayed

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Speaker 1: so called royal birthmarks, and we're not quite what that means.

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Speaker 1: We're trying to figure out what that meant. What what

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Speaker 1: makes a royal birthmark? Or I don't know, is it

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Speaker 1: especially large or like shaped like a crown, or is

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Speaker 1: it just as simple as maybe they knew Dmitri had

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Speaker 1: some specific birthmark and look, there it is. But or

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Speaker 1: maybe the family all had the same birthmark something. Anyways,

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Speaker 1: he has the royal birthmark, so he's good there. And

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Speaker 1: then he also had a jeweled cross that was allegedly

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Speaker 1: given to him by his Godfather. So the Polish are

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Speaker 1: sold on this, and they have pretty good reason to

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Speaker 1: to be sold. After Dimitri even converted to Catholicism in Krakow,

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Speaker 1: so now he's sort of entering their fold and they're

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Speaker 1: getting their new friend Dimitri or hoping to get their

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Speaker 1: new friend to meet Tree on the Russian throne, which

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Speaker 1: offered some really exciting possibilities for the expansion of Poland's

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Speaker 1: influence into Um into Russia and the Vatican's reach as well. So,

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Speaker 1: backed by these Lithuanian and Polish nobles and some Jesuits too,

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Speaker 1: and with a newly gathered army of Cossacks and adventurers,

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Speaker 1: this False Dmitri invaded Russia in October sixteen o four,

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Speaker 1: and he had some initial victories. He did all right

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Speaker 1: at first. He attracted followers, especially in southern Russia, and

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Speaker 1: he won some towns in that region in which the

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Speaker 1: townspeople overthrew their governors in favor of him, and most

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Speaker 1: of his supporters were Cossacks, townspeople, peasants, and bondsmen in general.

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Speaker 1: Though False Dmitri was defeated militarily until Czar Boris suddenly

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Speaker 1: dies in April of sixteen o five, Then the government

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Speaker 1: army shifted its support to Dmitri. Game changer it was

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Speaker 1: they didn't want to swear allegiance to Zar Boris's son Theodore.

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Speaker 1: So after the army has switched to lead and says,

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Speaker 1: then there's a popular uprising against the Godenovs that leads

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Speaker 1: the boyers to also think, hey, we want to switch

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Speaker 1: over to so they murder Boris's son and his wife

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Speaker 1: and false Dmitri arrived triumphantly in Moscow in June six

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Speaker 1: oh five and is proclaimed Tsar with all the support

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Speaker 1: of all sections of Russian society. So he made it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know we already told you he would

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Speaker 1: in the introduction, but I still feel like you sort

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Speaker 1: of don't see that coming. He actually he's a pretender

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Speaker 1: who makes it happen. So Zar Dmitri is on the throne.

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Speaker 1: But we still have no idea who this guy really is.

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Speaker 1: Our Boris had accused him of being one grigory A Trepev,

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Speaker 1: who was a member of the gentry who was linked

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Speaker 1: to the house of the Romanovs and later became a

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Speaker 1: monk and what was pretty much the most prestigious monastery

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Speaker 1: in Moscow at the time, but Boris had accused a

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Speaker 1: trepiv of being a renegade type of monk who dabbled

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Speaker 1: in things like sorcery and was league with Satan, never

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Speaker 1: a good thing, for that's about the worst thing that

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Speaker 1: you can do. And um, other accounts though, sort of

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Speaker 1: painted a different picture. They had him standing in in

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Speaker 1: good standing at the monastery, and um he rose in

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Speaker 1: the ranks remarkably quickly there and and just sort of

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Speaker 1: had a good reputation. So it's interesting is that many

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Speaker 1: historians also think that false Dmitri was a treep of

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Speaker 1: and this is probably the most prevalent theory that's out

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Speaker 1: there right now. But some people think that there are

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Speaker 1: some some critics of this theory, I should say, think

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Speaker 1: that there are some timing issues with this. That's one

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Speaker 1: criticism that they have that throw it into question. For example,

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Speaker 1: the monk might have actually been too old to pass

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Speaker 1: for Dmitri. We don't actually have any birth records of him,

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Speaker 1: so although people say that they were around the same age,

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Speaker 1: we don't actually know that that's true. So there are

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Speaker 1: some flaws in this theory. And according to a piece

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Speaker 1: by Chester Dunning and the Slavic Review, one thing that

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Speaker 1: many scholars agree on is that whoever false Dmitri really was,

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Speaker 1: he must have been raised from childhood to believe that

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Speaker 1: he was really Dmitri because he played the role so convincingly.

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Speaker 1: So I find that really interesting because you think about pretenders,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know, I think I often assume that

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Speaker 1: it's just like a decision they make and then the

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Speaker 1: next year they're pretending to be this person. Political decision

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Speaker 1: or a decision of ambition. Almost right, But this might

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Speaker 1: have been more of a long term plan. It's the

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Speaker 1: ambition of somebody else, presumably some older person who's who's

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Speaker 1: grooming this young man or young boy even to to

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Speaker 1: eventually take a place it. It reminded me again of

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Speaker 1: the Lambert Simnal episode exactly. Although what's interesting in Dmitri's

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Speaker 1: case is that there there have been a small number

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Speaker 1: of researchers over the years who have pursued the possibility

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Speaker 1: that Tsarevich Dmitri really did survive as a young child,

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Speaker 1: and that maybe this was the real Dimitri. Demitri is

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Speaker 1: the real Dmitri? Yeah, I mean there were some things

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Speaker 1: that they point to, like irregularities with a child's burial.

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Speaker 1: They waited for a long time to bury him, so

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Speaker 1: maybe the bodies were swapped or something like that. So

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Speaker 1: who knows a good one, But in general most people

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Speaker 1: believed that he was in fact an impostor, but he

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Speaker 1: didn't act like one when he got on the throne.

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Speaker 1: Well in that would also explained being raised from a

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Speaker 1: very young age to to truly believe that he was

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Speaker 1: the the Tsarevich. But although some consider him to be

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Speaker 1: the puppet of Polish nobles who supported him, several sources

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Speaker 1: really paint false Dmitri as a quote extremely intelligent and

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Speaker 1: resourceful leader, or a well educated for a Russian czar,

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Speaker 1: or well versed in statecraft, advanced in his thinking and

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Speaker 1: reform minded, and even possessing a quote lively even passionate temperament.

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Speaker 1: So it sounded like a lot of people were pretty

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Speaker 1: pleased with what they got, even if, even if the

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Speaker 1: circumstances behind this young man coming to the throne were unusual,

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Speaker 1: to say the least, it seemed like he did a

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Speaker 1: pretty good job once he was there, or at least

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Speaker 1: he doesn't seem like a total pepp decent job. Richard

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Speaker 1: Helly even described of Dmitri as quote one of the

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Speaker 1: few really enlightened rulers Russia has ever had, and Dunning

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Speaker 1: notes that some scholars have seen Demitri as a forerunner

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Speaker 1: to Peter the Great. Some of the things that Zar

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Speaker 1: Dmitri accomplished, in case you're interested, He lowered the tax

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Speaker 1: burden and labor demands of the time. He also made

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Speaker 1: plans for promoting education and science and Russia, and he

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Speaker 1: worked to promote the effectiveness of the Russian army. Unfortunately, though,

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Speaker 1: or at least unfortunately for False Dmitri, he didn't have

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Speaker 1: that much time to to accomplish all of these things.

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Speaker 1: Having a mind of his own really turned out to

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Speaker 1: be his detriment, and he anchored a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: especially a lot of these these nobles who weren't too

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Speaker 1: two into it in the first place, you know what

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Speaker 1: I'm saying. So one of the things he did that

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Speaker 1: really angered a lot of people was that early conversion

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Speaker 1: to Catholicism. He also married the daughter of a Polish

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Speaker 1: Catholic nobleman named Marina, which really even further strengthened that connection.

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Speaker 1: But he also did some other things that would have

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Speaker 1: maybe upset the boyars of the time. He disrupted a

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Speaker 1: lot of cultural norms. For example, he dressed and acted

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Speaker 1: in informal or western ways. He didn't attend church services

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Speaker 1: for many hours each day. He did, he did attend

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Speaker 1: church services and go to functions and things like that,

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Speaker 1: but he didn't do it maybe as for as long

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Speaker 1: or he wasn't as involved as people hoped that he

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Speaker 1: would be. He also didn't rest after the midday meal,

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Speaker 1: which was customary, and he also didn't hide his disdain

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Speaker 1: for the low level of education among Boyars. So maybe

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Speaker 1: that's why after just a year as our false Dmitri

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Speaker 1: falls victim to a Boyar plot on May seventeen, sixteen

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Speaker 1: oh six, and after Dmitri's murder, the Boyars put Vassili Showiski,

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Speaker 1: a man from an old Boyar family on the throne,

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Speaker 1: one of their own, one of their own exactly, And

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Speaker 1: this marked the beginning of a period of political crisis

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Speaker 1: known in Russia as the time of Troubles. So we've

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Speaker 1: we've told you in the beginning there were going to

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Speaker 1: be a few of these false Dmitri. So now with

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Speaker 1: this false Dmitri, the first out of the way, opens

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Speaker 1: the door for for some new impostors to come in.

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Speaker 1: Almost Immediately after the nobles pulled off this plot murdering

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Speaker 1: Dmitri the Czar, rumors started circulating that Dmitri had yet

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Speaker 1: again escaped death. Maybe these rumors were started by his wife,

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Speaker 1: maybe some other supporter, and it took a while for

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Speaker 1: for anything to come of that, but eventually the second

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Speaker 1: False Dmitri did show up in July seven. He bore

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Speaker 1: no physical resemblance to the first False Dmitri. He actually

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Speaker 1: gained a following, though that didn't really seem to matter.

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Speaker 1: He gained enough of a following, including Cossacks and Poles

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Speaker 1: and Lithuanians and rebels, to cause the news are some

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Speaker 1: real trouble and um it's it's. It gets even weirder

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Speaker 1: than that, though, when you consider how far the support

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Speaker 1: of this sect a False Dmitri went. He did gain

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Speaker 1: a lot of support. He gained control of Southern Russia

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Speaker 1: and set up headquarters at the village of Tushino, and

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Speaker 1: that's why he's sometimes known as the Thief of Tushino.

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Speaker 1: But the really crazy part here, to me at least,

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Speaker 1: is that Marina False Dmitri, the first wife, recognizes the

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Speaker 1: second false Dmitri as her husband, which gives him credibility.

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Speaker 1: I mean, people think, obviously, if this woman says this

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Speaker 1: is her husband, it must be true. Right. So they

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Speaker 1: stayed together. They had a son eventually, who they named Ivan,

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Speaker 1: and False Dmitri the second was eventually killed by one

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Speaker 1: of his own followers in sixteen ten. No one to

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Speaker 1: this day really knows who he was. He may have

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Speaker 1: been a prett son or maybe a baptized Jew called Bogdanco.

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Speaker 1: So with false Dmitri the second out of the way,

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Speaker 1: we have an opening for false Dmitri the third, And

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Speaker 1: on March sixteen eleven, a third False Dmitri does show

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Speaker 1: up in northwest Russia. This time, but he I mean,

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Speaker 1: I guess it was an old story. By this point,

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Speaker 1: he really didn't gain quite as much of a following,

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Speaker 1: and historians identify him as a former deacon. He did

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Speaker 1: gain the alliance of, or the allegiance at least of

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Speaker 1: some Cothics and a couple of towns, but he was

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Speaker 1: also murdered by his own supporters May sixteen twelve. So

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Speaker 1: that's the end of that immediate line of of Dmitries.

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Speaker 1: But there were others that that followed, not necessarily more Dimitris,

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Speaker 1: but other pretenders to the throne. It was a pretty

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Speaker 1: wild time. There were many pretenders apparently during the seventeenth

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Speaker 1: century in Russia, and there are several explanations for that

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Speaker 1: out there. For example, Perry suggests that monarchism was the

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Speaker 1: only political ideology that existed in early modern Russia. So

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Speaker 1: leaders of rebellions or social movements or what have you,

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Speaker 1: they were called the true's are and their enemies were

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Speaker 1: considered traitors. And that's kind of how they set up

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Speaker 1: that dichotomy. Wouldn't work today. I don't think, no, not

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Speaker 1: at all. I mean, I think the widespread use of

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Speaker 1: photography would have put a pretty fast end to this

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Speaker 1: sort of thing. But the DNA paternity testing. You're not dmitri.

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Speaker 1: But I mean, I do think that that's interesting that

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Speaker 1: the only avenue open for them was forging some kind

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Speaker 1: of legitimacy, saying that you are somehow related to the

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Speaker 1: royal family in order to get a new political ideology

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Speaker 1: or a new regime out there, or overthrow somebody you

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Speaker 1: don't like. It's a it's a strange way about of

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Speaker 1: going about things, I think. Comparing it to today, though,

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Speaker 1: I think that's why we're so interested in this phenomenon

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Speaker 1: is because it's just something we can't fathom. It seems

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Speaker 1: so outrageous, how because something like this happened. So we

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Speaker 1: do love a good pretender story. And I know a

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Speaker 1: lot of people have been suggesting Bonnie Prince Charlie lately,

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Speaker 1: and he has seriously been on my list of podcast

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Speaker 1: topics for I think since I started in History. To

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Speaker 1: day did an article on him recently, so so he's

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Speaker 1: still up there. But if you have any other pretender

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Speaker 1: suggestions too, they are so much fun to talk about,

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Speaker 1: you can email them to us a history podcast at

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Speaker 1: and royal families work, we do have an article called

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