Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, this is Danis Sports, the host of Noble Blood.
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Speaker 1: Patreon at patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. I
Speaker 1: upload episode scripts every week. Every month I do a
Speaker 1: bonus episode where I talked to someone about a historical
Speaker 1: period piece movie. This month July, I talked to my
Speaker 1: sister about the Cough Terrible movie The Other Bowlin Girl.
Speaker 1: And on the Patreon every season we have a brand
Speaker 1: new exclusive sticker club. So yeah, thank you so much. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the best support for the show is just listening, So
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Let's get into it. If you
Speaker 1: were a tourist traveling in Shaw on May ten, and
Speaker 1: you happened to be walking through Moscow's Trechikov Gallery, you
Speaker 1: would have heard a terrible sound, first the tearing of
Speaker 1: a metal pole away from its security barrier, then the
Speaker 1: shattering of glass guard. Someone would have screamed. The smell
Speaker 1: of vodka was hovering in the air. It was eight
Speaker 1: pm outside, it was just growing dark amidst the chaos
Speaker 1: came the sound of a canvas being slashed once, then twice,
Speaker 1: then a third time. The ruined painting was called Ivan
Speaker 1: the Terrible and his Son, considered the Mona Lisa of
Speaker 1: the Trechikov by its most ardent curators. The painting was
Speaker 1: painted in eighteen eighty five by Ilya Rapine, the master
Speaker 1: of late nineteenth century Russian realism. If the painting title
Speaker 1: conjures images of a loving father cradling his child, think again.
Speaker 1: We're closer to Saturn devouring his son territory. Here in
Speaker 1: the painting, Tsar Ivan has haunted eyes. He's cradling a
Speaker 1: man with a bleeding head, wound and a limp body.
Speaker 1: Ivan is looking out over the younger man's head, wide eyed,
Speaker 1: with a look that clearly says, oh God, what now?
Speaker 1: That man? Ivan is known to history as the Terrible.
Speaker 1: He was the first Tsar of Russia, crowned in Fife.
Speaker 1: He remade Russia. He was married at least seven times.
Speaker 1: He brutally murdered thousands. But among those countless massacres, one
Speaker 1: murder stands out as especially horrifying. The painting all so
Speaker 1: has an unofficial name, Ivan the Terrible, killing his son
Speaker 1: the philocidal image is too much horror for some to bear.
Speaker 1: The man who slashed the painting in who would confess
Speaker 1: to getting drunk on vodka in the museum cafe and
Speaker 1: then being quote overwhelmed by something was not the first
Speaker 1: to deface the painting. A century earlier, the painting was
Speaker 1: defaced for the first time, also with three slash marks.
Speaker 1: What were the vandals responding to in this particular work
Speaker 1: of art, What did they hate so much that they
Speaker 1: had to rip paint from canvas, remove the depravity from sight?
Speaker 1: And why is it that both times these vandals guided
Speaker 1: their hands by inches centimeters so that they tore through
Speaker 1: the sleeve and the collar, the tip of the ose,
Speaker 1: and the ear of the painting subject. But they never
Speaker 1: removed a single flake of paint from Ivan's haunted eyes.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's because Ivan, looking wide eyed to the future,
Speaker 1: is experiencing double panic, not only a philicide of his
Speaker 1: son by the first wife, the one that he loved best,
Speaker 1: but also the horror of a succession crisis. So many
Speaker 1: rulers throughout history prayed for a male successor, divorcing or
Speaker 1: banishing or beheading their wives in order to get one,
Speaker 1: but Ivan brought his fate upon himself. Ivan the Terrible,
Speaker 1: First Czar of Russia had just murdered by his own hand,
Speaker 1: his one and only competent male heir. I'm Dana Schwartz
Speaker 1: and this is noble blood. Yeah. Two hundred years before
Speaker 1: Katherine the Great and the Romanov dynasty would ascend to
Speaker 1: the Russian throne, before there were even official Russian tsars,
Speaker 1: a different Russian dynasty was dealing with a succession crisis.
Speaker 1: It was August fifteen thirty, and the nineteenth ruler of
Speaker 1: the Ruric dynasty was waiting to find out whether the
Speaker 1: child being born to his wife was male or female.
Speaker 1: Vasily the third Ivanovitch was fifty one years old and childless.
Speaker 1: He was Grand Prince of Moscow, the area that would
Speaker 1: later become the Tzardom of Russia, and the woman in
Speaker 1: labor was his second wife. This felt like his last chance.
Speaker 1: His first wife, Salamonia, had given him no male heirs
Speaker 1: after twenty one years of marriage, so he divorced her
Speaker 1: despite the controversy, and had her shipped off to a monastery. Coincidentally,
Speaker 1: Henry the Eighth in England was dealing with a similar
Speaker 1: lack of male heirs after a twenty plus year marriage.
Speaker 1: At the exact same time, but back in Russia, post divorce,
Speaker 1: Vassili remarried the much younger Elena Glinskaya, only twenty years old,
Speaker 1: less than half of her new husband's age. She had
Speaker 1: literally not yet been born when Vassili and his first
Speaker 1: wife had gotten married, and now Elena was in labor.
Speaker 1: The fate of the dynasty now rested upon the sex
Speaker 1: of the child that she would have. Young Elena breathed heavily,
Speaker 1: sweat glistening on her forehead, and she pushed for the
Speaker 1: final time, and then there was a sigh of relief
Speaker 1: in the room. The child was a boy, to be
Speaker 1: named Ivan. The crisis was averted. The Ruric dynasty, thus
Speaker 1: far nineteen generations long, male heir to male heir remained intact.
Speaker 1: Ivan's father died when he was only three, leaving Ivan
Speaker 1: and a younger brother, Yuri behind. In early Russia, the
Speaker 1: older son was destined to become the ruler, but there
Speaker 1: was extra pressure in Ivan's case, not quite a typical
Speaker 1: air and despair situation, because Uri might have been disabled,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't considered competent at the time to rule.
Speaker 1: Ivan was named Grand Prince of Moscow as a toddler,
Speaker 1: not exactly an age when most people generally showed an
Speaker 1: interest in taxation or international relations. His mother, Elena ruled
Speaker 1: for him with such power and ambition that she actually
Speaker 1: inspired a rebellion against her in fifteen thirty seven, and
Speaker 1: then died the following year at the age of thirty
Speaker 1: and what has long been speculated to have been a
Speaker 1: poison ning. Some historians are almost certain of it. Others
Speaker 1: say that the background amounts of arsenic and mercury found
Speaker 1: in her exhumed corpse may just have been the normal
Speaker 1: amount of poisons in a sixteenth century Muscovite bloodstream. Either way,
Speaker 1: Ivan was both the holder of the most powerful title
Speaker 1: of Russia and an orphan by the age of eight
Speaker 1: years old. His youth meant that the ruling classes of
Speaker 1: Russia had almost ten years to fill with their own
Speaker 1: violent power struggles before the young prince could rise to
Speaker 1: any meaningful throne. A lot of bloody and complicated political
Speaker 1: machinations followed, but the important thing to know is that
Speaker 1: they all involved a group of people called the Boyars,
Speaker 1: a ruling class of a couple hundred families. They were
Speaker 1: basically ruling Russia in this time, and they were responsible
Speaker 1: for raising the child Ivan and his brother. In a
Speaker 1: letter to his friend Andrei Kurbsky, a grown Ivan would
Speaker 1: look back at this time, writing that the Boyars quote
Speaker 1: were bent on acquiring wealth and glory and were quarreling
Speaker 1: with each other. And what have they not done me
Speaker 1: and my brother Yuri of blessed memory? They brought up
Speaker 1: like vagrants and children of the poorest. What have I
Speaker 1: not suffered for want of garments and food end quote?
Speaker 1: At the age of eight, Ivan had already lost his parents,
Speaker 1: and now he felt himself and his little brother mistreated
Speaker 1: by the grown ups who were left behind. It was
Speaker 1: the start of a grudge against the Boyars that he
Speaker 1: would hold for the rest of his life. It was
Speaker 1: also perhaps the start of his education in the bloody
Speaker 1: mechanics of murder, warfare, and destruction. But as much as
Speaker 1: the Boyars fought for positioning back when Vassily the third
Speaker 1: had been alive, he had clearly wanted his son Ivan
Speaker 1: to be his successor. Vasily had even gotten a child
Speaker 1: sized helmet made for his little firstborn son featuring all
Speaker 1: the adulter galia of a future ruler. So on January six,
Speaker 1: fifteen forty seven, seventeen year old Ivan was crowned not
Speaker 1: only Prince of Moscow like his father, but Tzar of
Speaker 1: all russ It was the first time any Russian ruler
Speaker 1: had been called czar, a word derived from the Latin caesar.
Speaker 1: It was a reference to the titles of the Old
Speaker 1: Testament kings and Byzantine emperor. But above all, it suggested
Speaker 1: a rule ordained by God. This God ordained teenager Ivan
Speaker 1: had in the meantime been spending a decent amount of
Speaker 1: his adolescence trying to find a foreign wife and failing,
Speaker 1: I just don't trust their foreign temperaments. He would decide
Speaker 1: only after he had almost certainly been turned down. But
Speaker 1: don't feel too bad for Ivan. Here he would make
Speaker 1: up for the romantic failures of his teenage years with
Speaker 1: a long list of wives. Later. The first of these,
Speaker 1: Anastasia Romanovna, he married one month after his coronation. Russian
Speaker 1: names are very similar, but don't confuse this Anastasia with
Speaker 1: the much more famous Anastasia Romanov who comes along during
Speaker 1: the Russian Revolution. We are still squarely in the sixteenth
Speaker 1: century here, back to Ivan and his first wife, Anastasia.
Speaker 1: They were both seventeen. Anastasia was from a powerful Russian
Speaker 1: family and had been chosen from as many as fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred potential wives brought to the Kremlin for the Tsar
Speaker 1: to examine, And although he'd wanted a foreign wife earlier
Speaker 1: in his life, presumably to bolster his global power, by
Speaker 1: all accounts, Ivan loved anasta Ja. Their marriage was happy,
Speaker 1: maybe even blissful. They had six children together. They seemed
Speaker 1: to balance each other's temperaments. Ivan was excitable, Anastasia affable
Speaker 1: but calm, and able to pacify her husband's darkest tempers.
Speaker 1: Legends and stories and movies now view Anastasia as the
Speaker 1: one great true love of Ivan's life, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: have her forever. In fifteen sixty and unlucky, thirteen years
Speaker 1: after their wedding, Anastasia died. Ivan was grief stricken. Modern
Speaker 1: historians see his mental health faltering here. Emotionally, he seemed
Speaker 1: to fall apart. He grew paranoid that the Boyars, those old,
Speaker 1: hated enemies of his youth, had poisoned his wife, perhaps
Speaker 1: in a misguided effort to poison him, who knows maybe
Speaker 1: they had had a hand in murdering his mother too. Internally,
Speaker 1: Ivan vowed to take revenge and what was left of
Speaker 1: his beloved wife. Of their six children, only two survived.
Speaker 1: Ivan Ivanovich born fifteen fifty four and six years old
Speaker 1: at the time of his mother's death, and Fyodor three
Speaker 1: years younger. Just a note for listeners that yes, both
Speaker 1: our Ivan the Terrible and his son are named Ivan.
Speaker 1: Must have been great for the guy's ego, but I
Speaker 1: know it can be hard to keep track of I'll
Speaker 1: be calling Ivan the Terrible Ivan and his son Ivan
Speaker 1: Ivanovitch to help us keep it straight. Ivan Ivanovitch's younger brother, Fyodor,
Speaker 1: was considered slow at the time. Perhaps today we might
Speaker 1: call him developmentally disabled. But what we know is he
Speaker 1: was not considered competent to rule, and if God's forbid
Speaker 1: something should happen to his older brother, it meant that
Speaker 1: the Die ynasty was in a precarious situation. If this
Speaker 1: family dynamic sounds familiar to you, you're right. The older
Speaker 1: Ivan and his younger brother Yuri were in a very
Speaker 1: similar position when their own mother died. As we'll see,
Speaker 1: Ivan's life would come to replicate his father's life in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, though with more tragic ends. In
Speaker 1: any case, Feodor was not considered competent, and so the
Speaker 1: young Ivan Ivanovich was Big Ivan's clear hope as heir
Speaker 1: to the dynasty, his only hope, it seemed. When the
Speaker 1: young boy was just three years old, his father Ivan
Speaker 1: gave him a mini helmet emblazoned with double headed eagles,
Speaker 1: just like the one Ivan's own father had given him.
Speaker 1: It was on Ivan Ivanovich the entire future of the
Speaker 1: tsardom rested. His father. Ivan was first Tsar of Russia,
Speaker 1: and he was going to need a second. Ivan's rule
Speaker 1: was bloody. He got that name the Terrible from somewhere,
Speaker 1: after all. Although it is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: misnomer to modern ears, the Terrible may have also been
Speaker 1: a signifier more like the awesome awe inspiring in his
Speaker 1: great power. Terrible, let's not forget, is a hair's breadth
Speaker 1: from terrific. After his wife Anastasia's death, Ivan embarked on
Speaker 1: the Livonian War, a long and losing battle for a
Speaker 1: route to the Baltic Sea, around fifteen sixty four. In
Speaker 1: what a modern person might view as a bit of
Speaker 1: a temper tantrum, he threatened to abdicate. In fifteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: five years after Anastasia's death, he decided not to abdicate
Speaker 1: after all. Instead, he would have a bit of twisted fund.
Speaker 1: Ivan separated himself from the Day a Day Life of Russia,
Speaker 1: left Moscow and installed himself in a private court called
Speaker 1: the opreach Nina. The name can still strike fear into
Speaker 1: a Russian heart. From his opreach Nina, Ivan could massacre
Speaker 1: whomever he wanted and who he wanted, who he had
Speaker 1: wanted ever since he was a child. Where the boyars.
Speaker 1: Ivan is said to have sent memorials of over three
Speaker 1: thousand executed boyars two monasteries around the country. He directed
Speaker 1: massacres in a reign of terror that lasted seven years.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the worst was the massacre at Novgorod, in which
Speaker 1: his forces brutally murdered thousands for no obvious reason. Was
Speaker 1: Ivan acting out of grief, revenge, paranoia, pure politics, the
Speaker 1: immoral privileged syndrome of so many young princes destined to
Speaker 1: rule from the time that they were born. We don't know.
Speaker 1: The Opportunina's official goals and dogma were never totally clear.
Speaker 1: Documents from the period were destroyed in a fire. So
Speaker 1: Ivan's motives are one of many things that we have
Speaker 1: to guess about. I do want to say this Aprictnina
Speaker 1: has a really weird literal translation. While a lot of
Speaker 1: sources define it as a private court, and the Cambridge
Speaker 1: History of Russia notes that its etymology is from abridge separate,
Speaker 1: the historian Edward L. Keenan notes that the term actually
Speaker 1: had a specific meaning in Ivan's time. It was the
Speaker 1: legal term for the so called widows might, that is,
Speaker 1: the widows portion the property left over for the widow
Speaker 1: of a deceased member of the Moscow Cavalry. I can't
Speaker 1: emphasize enough what a bizarre term this is for the
Speaker 1: headquarters of a violent czar of Russia. As Keenan says, quote,
Speaker 1: Russian historians have been very reluctant to let the term
Speaker 1: mean what it means. This reluctance is the reason why
Speaker 1: we have to use the untranslated term in English, much
Speaker 1: to the chagrin of undergraduate history majors end quote. I
Speaker 1: think Ivan was weirdly possibly declaring himself a widow. He
Speaker 1: was taking the revenge he felt was owed him as
Speaker 1: a widow. It's a strange bit of gender bending for
Speaker 1: a guy who was so brutally using his masculine forces
Speaker 1: as head of state. But it's also an important insight,
Speaker 1: possibly into his mental state. To me, it lends some
Speaker 1: credence to the story that Ivan really did love his
Speaker 1: first wife, Anastasia, and that he really was in mourning
Speaker 1: over her to the point of madness. So was it
Speaker 1: the brutal bizareness of Ivan's political vision would eventually cause
Speaker 1: him to quarrel with his own son, or was it
Speaker 1: something else, because Ivan wasn't otherwise acting like much of
Speaker 1: a morning widower. In fact, he got married again almost
Speaker 1: immediately after Anastasia's death, to a beautiful Churkissian princess named Maria.
Speaker 1: Ivan was thirty one at the time, but his bride
Speaker 1: was the same age as Anastasia had been at their wedding,
Speaker 1: only seventeen. As Taylor Swift would later say, I'll get older,
Speaker 1: but your lover's stay at my age. The Zaritza Maria
Speaker 1: died eight years later in fifteen sixty nine, at age
Speaker 1: twenty five. From then on, Ivan gave his little son
Speaker 1: no dearth of stepmothers. He married five more times between
Speaker 1: fifteen seventy and fifteen eighty, His third wife, Marfa, died
Speaker 1: within days of their wedding. His fourth, fifth, and seventh
Speaker 1: wives were sent away to monasteries, just like Ivan's own
Speaker 1: father's first wife had been. So little is known about
Speaker 1: the sixth wife that historians are not entirely in agreement
Speaker 1: that she existed at all. It was one year into
Speaker 1: Ivan's sixth or possibly seventh marriage November one, when his
Speaker 1: son raced into the room to find his father in
Speaker 1: a paroxyism of violence. Tsarevich ivan Ivanovitch was twenty seven
Speaker 1: years old at this point. Looking at his air running
Speaker 1: toward him, Ivan the Terrible must have seen a chip
Speaker 1: off the old block. His son had already been married
Speaker 1: three times by this point, his first two wives had
Speaker 1: already been sent off to the monastery. Someday, like Ivan,
Speaker 1: this son would rule Russia. But Ivan Ivanovich wasn't running
Speaker 1: for no reason. Ivan Ivanovitch, his third wife had been
Speaker 1: running ahead of him into that fateful room where her
Speaker 1: father in law was. Her name was Yelena Scheremiteva, and
Speaker 1: she was pregnant, possibly with the future heir to the throne,
Speaker 1: the continuation of Ivan's line. Her father, the Czar had
Speaker 1: come upon her, wearing, gasp, only her underwear in the hundreds.
Speaker 1: The underwear was likely even more modest than what women
Speaker 1: wear today, but it didn't matter. Ivan had gone berserk.
Speaker 1: He lashed out at her, dealing her a blow to
Speaker 1: the stomach, such a blow that he threatened the fetus's
Speaker 1: life the life of his own possible grandchild. Hearing the shouts,
Speaker 1: Ivan Ivanovitch raced in to protect his pregnant wife. You
Speaker 1: thrust my first wife into a nunnery for no good reason,
Speaker 1: the young man yelled at his father. He was beside
Speaker 1: himself in a frenzy. You did the same thing to
Speaker 1: my second, and now you strike my third, causing the
Speaker 1: sun in her womb to perish. Hot Headed Ivan the Terrible,
Speaker 1: unmoored by pain or grief or decades of violence, or
Speaker 1: perhaps just insane, or perhaps just blindingly, thoughtlessly, idiotically angry,
Speaker 1: turned on his son. Did the boy think he was
Speaker 1: the only one who had lost a beloved wife? Did
Speaker 1: he think he was the only one who had lost children?
Speaker 1: Ivan the Terrible couldn't control his rage. He had killed
Speaker 1: so many by this point, so thoughtlessly, so easily before.
Speaker 1: It wasn't any harder this time. The pointed staff was
Speaker 1: already in his hand. He lunged forward, extended the rod,
Speaker 1: and struck his son in the head. Immediately, the rage
Speaker 1: drained out of Ivan. His son, his one chosen air,
Speaker 1: lay bleeding on the floor. What have I done? He
Speaker 1: must have been thinking, His little son, who had once
Speaker 1: been given a child sized helmet, was now moments from death.
Speaker 1: Oh God, no, or maybe it didn't happen that way
Speaker 1: at all. That's the story that's been told down the centuries,
Speaker 1: usually spoken with barely controlled glee at all of the
Speaker 1: sordid details. The chivalrous son defending his wife, the near
Speaker 1: naked pregnant daughter in law, the evil that Ivan had
Speaker 1: done to so many families over the years, finally arriving
Speaker 1: at his own home by his own hand. It all
Speaker 1: feels ready made for a legend, or a soap opera,
Speaker 1: or a painting or an episode of a podcast. But
Speaker 1: is it true? As I was writing the story, I
Speaker 1: looked back to see when in August the murderer had
Speaker 1: taken place. After all, Allegedly it had been so hot
Speaker 1: that the pregnant Elena was lounging in her underwear. Then
Speaker 1: I remembered that this happened in November in Russia, it
Speaker 1: would have been unusual for Ivan to rush right past
Speaker 1: his daughter in law's ladies in waiting in order to
Speaker 1: be able to catch her in some scandalous state in
Speaker 1: the first place. Also, by this point, Ivan was suffering
Speaker 1: from a degenerative spinal condition that, by most accounts, severely
Speaker 1: inhibited his movement. Could he have physically overpowered his much younger,
Speaker 1: able bodied son. Of course, it's completely believable that a
Speaker 1: bloodthirsties are of Russia who had used his position to
Speaker 1: murder so many could have conceivably murdered his own. That
Speaker 1: a man with a long history of violent instability might
Speaker 1: have been unable to restrain his temperer, That a man
Speaker 1: who had sent countless wives off to nunneries and whose
Speaker 1: other wives had died of mysterious poisonings might assault a
Speaker 1: pregnant woman. But might the story have been something else?
Speaker 1: Was it instead a political dispute, a father son disagreement
Speaker 1: over the best course of military action or governance, And Ivan,
Speaker 1: who stood with a rod in his hand as his
Speaker 1: pompous son, a son who had always had a father,
Speaker 1: who hadn't been orphaned and hadn't been mistreated at the
Speaker 1: age of eight, dared to criticize him over losing the
Speaker 1: Livonian War, dared to say he wanted troops under his
Speaker 1: own command, as though his father didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was doing. Or was the death of Ivan Ivanovich a
Speaker 1: smaller and more domestic and less violent tragedy. A letter
Speaker 1: from Ivan a few weeks before said that he couldn't
Speaker 1: travel because of his son's illness. Perhaps Ivan Ivanovitch was
Speaker 1: simply struck down by ill health, though I want to add,
Speaker 1: who's to say that the younger Ivan wasn't sick when
Speaker 1: his father killed him. Maybe Ivan just conveniently sped the
Speaker 1: inevitable with violence. Even the letter suggesting an illness only
Speaker 1: has one dubious source. One of the reasons Ivan's reign
Speaker 1: is so fascinating is that most of the primary documents
Speaker 1: have been destroyed. We will never know what happened on
Speaker 1: that night between the young heir and his father, but
Speaker 1: what we do know is that Ivan Ivanovich, the only
Speaker 1: competent successor to Ivan the Terrible's enormous legacy, was dead.
Speaker 1: A lot happened in Russia after the death of the
Speaker 1: air but most important for our story, just two and
Speaker 1: a half years after the death of his son, Ivan
Speaker 1: the Terrible died too. His less competent younger son, Ivanovitch's
Speaker 1: younger brother, Fedor took over. In at forty one, Feodor
Speaker 1: died childless, ending the Ruric dynasty after twenty one generations.
Speaker 1: Fyodor's death threw Russia into the Infamous Time of Troubles,
Speaker 1: a violent power struggle that lasted fifteen years and saw
Speaker 1: a famine that killed nearly a third of population that time.
Speaker 1: Concluded in sixteen thirteen with the instatement of the Romanov dynasty,
Speaker 1: which would go on to include Catherine the Great and
Speaker 1: continue until the Bolshevik Revolution in nineteen seventeen, when the
Speaker 1: last Romanov rulers were unseated and all of the dynasty's
Speaker 1: heirs were killed, including that young girl with the same
Speaker 1: name as Ivan the Terrible's beloved first wife, Anastasia. But
Speaker 1: Ivan's death wasn't the end of Ivan's legacy. Even the
Speaker 1: end of the Russian monarchy wasn't the end of his legacy.
Speaker 1: Three hundred years after Ivan's death, in eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: a Russian painting at the Itinerant Exhibition caused such a
Speaker 1: stir that the police needed to be called in the
Speaker 1: painting was Ivan the Terrible and his Son Ivan by
Speaker 1: the contemporary master ilya Rapine. In nineteen thirteen, the painting
Speaker 1: was vandalized for the first time, after which legend has it,
Speaker 1: the curator was so mad with himself for not protecting
Speaker 1: the painting that he threw himself under a train. Is
Speaker 1: the story true? Who knows? It? Strikes me as appealingly Russian,
Speaker 1: straight out of Anna Karenina. What is true? Is this?
Speaker 1: The story of Ivan and his Son has become a
Speaker 1: kind of political lightning rod, a case study in controlling
Speaker 1: a narrative. It's striking that both Stalin and Putin have
Speaker 1: tried to rehabilitate Ivan's image, as if he were just
Speaker 1: a strong masculine leader doing what needed to be done
Speaker 1: in a difficult role. Stalin even edited history books to
Speaker 1: be gentler towards Ivan. It's striking that in a museum
Speaker 1: near the Kremlin put on a popular exhibition that basically
Speaker 1: renamed Ivan the Terrible Ivan the not So Bad. And
Speaker 1: it's striking that in a man came to the museum
Speaker 1: with no particular plan, but of all the paintings in
Speaker 1: the gallery when he held the metal rod of the
Speaker 1: security pole in his hand. He chose to lunge and
Speaker 1: strike at just that one. That's the story of the
Speaker 1: philocidal end of Ivan the Terrible's family dynasty. But stick
Speaker 1: around after a brief sponsor break to hear about one
Speaker 1: last way the famous painting has been recreated today. Early
Speaker 1: Europeans infamous painting showed up again recently in a pretty
Speaker 1: suddenly relevant piece of pop culture, Servant of the People,
Speaker 1: a TV comedy starring Vladimir Zelenski, the current President of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: In the show, Zelensky played the President of Ukraine for
Speaker 1: three seasons before his actual election. But that's not where
Speaker 1: the uncanniness ends. In the season one finale, he meets
Speaker 1: a fantastical Ivan the Terrible, all dressed up in sixteenth
Speaker 1: century garb. Zelenski's character and Ivan argue, Russia will come
Speaker 1: free you, says Ivan. Zelenski says Ukraine doesn't need freeing
Speaker 1: by the Russians, it wants to join Europe. Ivan gets confused,
Speaker 1: then upset, then angry. Finally, in a fit of rage,
Speaker 1: he pushes Zelensky, who falls arms played, and then, in
Speaker 1: a move right out of art history, Ivan too, falls
Speaker 1: to his knees, gathers a limp Zelensky in his arms,
Speaker 1: opens his eyes wide, and howls. It is an unmistakable
Speaker 1: exact replica of the famous painting. If you have Netflix,
Speaker 1: you can see it in the show Servant of the People,
Speaker 1: season one, episode twenty three, at about the eight minute
Speaker 1: twenty four second mark. It's probably relevant to pause here
Speaker 1: and say that a European, although widely known as perhaps
Speaker 1: the greatest painter in the Russian National School of Art,
Speaker 1: was actually Ukrainian and in servant of the People's version
Speaker 1: of the painting, Zalinsky and Ukraine are cast as the
Speaker 1: Sun killed by the murderous leader of Russia, all the
Speaker 1: way back in seven years before the tragic current war
Speaker 1: happening today. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Danish Sports. Additional writing and researching
Speaker 1: done by Hannah Johnston, hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder
Speaker 1: and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema Il Kali,
Speaker 1: with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Book