WEBVTT - Ivan the Terrible and his Oldest Son 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:05.200 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:08.480 and Mild from Aaron Mankey listener discretion advised. 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:11.480 Hey guys, this is. 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:14.160 Danas Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood. If you want 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:17.440 to support the show, we are on Patreon at patreon 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:22.320 dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. I upload episode scripts 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.480 every week. Every month I do a bonus episode where 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:28.639 I talk to someone about a historical period piece movie. 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:31.479 This month July I talk to my sister about the 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.760 Cough Terrible movie The Other Bolin Girl. And on the 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:40.280 Patreon every season we have a brand new exclusive sticker club. 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:41.840 So yeah, thank you so much. 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:45.159 Obviously the best support for the show is just listening, 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:57.880 So thank you so much. Let's get into it. If 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:01.760 you were a tourist traveling in Russia on May twenty fifth, 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.520 twenty eighteen, and you happened to be walking through Moscow's 0:01:05.520 --> 0:01:10.800 Tretchikov Gallery, you would have heard a terrible sound, first 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.440 the tearing of a metal pole away from its security barrier, 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:20.800 then the shattering of glass guard. Someone would have screamed. 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:25.120 The smell of vodka was hovering in the air. It 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:30.080 was eight pm outside, it was just growing dark. Amidst 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:34.720 the chaos came the sound of a canvas being slashed once, 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:40.800 then twice, then a third time. The ruined painting was 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:46.080 called Ivan the Terrible and his Son, considered the Mona 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:50.280 Lisa of the Tretchikov by its most ardent curators. The 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:54.920 painting was painted in eighteen eighty five by Ilyaureppin, the 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:58.920 master of late nineteenth century Russian realism. 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:00.080 If the painting his. 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:05.200 Title conjures images of a loving father cradling his child, 0:02:06.000 --> 0:02:11.480 think again. We're closer to Saturn devouring his son territory. 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:17.320 Here in the painting, Tsar Ivan has haunted eyes. He's 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:20.880 cradling a man with a bleeding head, wound and a 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:26.160 limp body. Ivan is looking out over the younger man's head, 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:30.000 wide eyed, with a look that clearly says, oh God, 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:30.800 what now? 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:31.919 That man? 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:37.600 Ivan is known to history as the Terrible. He was 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:42.280 the first Tsar of Russia, crowned in fifteen forty seven. 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:47.920 He remade Russia. He was married at least seven times. 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:54.119 He brutally murdered thousands, But among those countless massacres, one 0:02:54.240 --> 0:03:00.639 murderer stands out as especially horrifying. The painting all has 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:07.080 an unofficial name, Ivan the Terrible killing his son the 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.920 philicidal image is too much horror for some to bear. 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.960 The man who slashed the painting in twenty eighteen, who 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.400 would confess to getting drunk on vodka in the museum 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:23.680 cafe and then being quote overwhelmed by something, was not 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:28.640 the first to deface the painting. A century earlier, the 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:32.800 painting was defaced for the first time, also with three 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:37.840 slash marks. What were the vandals responding to in this 0:03:37.960 --> 0:03:41.720 particular work of art, What did they hate so much 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.120 that they had to rip paint from canvas, remove the 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:49.920 depravity from sight? And why is it that both times 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:55.720 these vandals guided their hands by inches centimeters so that 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:59.560 they tore through the sleeve and the collar, the tip 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:01.440 of the and the ear. 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:02.760 Of the painting subject. 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:07.080 But they never removed a single flake of paint from 0:04:07.200 --> 0:04:14.080 Ivan's haunted eyes. Perhaps it's because Ivan, looking wide eyed 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:19.279 to the future, is experiencing double panic, not only a 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.600 phylicide of his son by the first wife, the one 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:26.160 that he loved best, but also the horror of a 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:32.120 succession crisis. So many rulers throughout history prayed for a 0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:36.760 male successor divorcing or banishing or beheading their wives in 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:41.880 order to get one. But Ivan brought his fate upon himself. 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:47.839 Ivan the Terrible, First Czar of Russia had just murdered 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:53.279 by his own hand his one and only competent male heir. 0:04:54.760 --> 0:05:06.960 I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. Two hundred 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:10.360 years before Catherine the Great and the Romanov dynasty would 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:13.800 ascend to the Russian throne, before there were even official 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:18.599 Russian czars, a different Russian dynasty was dealing with a 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:24.280 succession crisis. It was August fifteen thirty and the nineteenth 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.560 ruler of the Ruric dynasty was waiting to find out 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.800 whether the child being born to his wife was male 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:35.560 or female. Vasily the third Ivanovitch was fifty one. 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:37.720 Years old and childless. 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.479 He was Grand Prince of Moscow, the area that would 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.440 later become the Tsardom of Russia, and the woman in 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:48.960 labor was his second wife. This felt like his last chance. 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.200 His first wife, Salamonia, had given him no male heirs 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:57.320 after twenty one years of marriage, so he divorced her 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:03.240 despite the controversy and has her shipped off to a monastery. Coincidentally, 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.359 Henry the Eighth in England was dealing with a similar 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.400 lack of male heirs after a twenty plus year marriage 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:13.960 at the exact same time, but back in Russia, post divorce, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:20.440 Vassili remarried the much younger Elena Glinskaya, only twenty years old, 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.400 less than half of her new husband's age. She had 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:27.960 literally not yet been born when Vassili and his first 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.359 wife had gotten married, and now Elena was in labor. 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:36.159 The fate of the dynasty now rested upon the sex 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:37.320 of the child that. 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:37.880 She would have. 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:43.520 Young Elena breathed heavily, sweat glistening on her forehead, and 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.479 she pushed for the final time, and then there was 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:51.359 a sigh of relief in the room. The child was 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.560 a boy, to be named Ivan. The crisis was averted. 0:06:56.000 --> 0:07:00.839 The Ruric dynasty, thus far, nineteen generations long, male heir 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:07.760 to male heir remained intact. Ivan's father died when he 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:12.200 was only three, leaving Ivan and a younger brother, Yuri behind. 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.160 In early Russia, the older son was destined to become 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:19.559 the ruler, but there was extra pressure in Ivan's case, 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:24.840 not quite a typical air and despair situation, because Yuri 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.600 might have been disabled, but he wasn't considered competent at 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.480 the time to rule. Ivan was named Grand Prince of 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:37.160 Moscow as a toddler, not exactly an age when most 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:42.400 people generally showed an interest in taxation or international relations. 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:46.840 His mother, Elena ruled for him with such power and 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:51.280 ambition that she actually inspired a rebellion against her in 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:55.200 fifteen thirty seven, and then died the following year at 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.880 the age of thirty in what has long been speculated 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:03.240 to have been a poison. Some historians are almost certain 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:07.120 of it. Others say that the background amounts of arsenic 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:10.880 and mercury found in her exhumed corpse may just have 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.560 been the normal amount of poisons in a sixteenth century 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:19.720 Muscovite bloodstream. Either way, Ivan was both the holder of 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:23.920 the most powerful title of Russia and an orphan by 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:28.400 the age of eight years old. His youth meant that 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.640 the ruling classes of Russia had almost ten years to 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:35.240 fill with their own violent power struggles before the young 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:39.400 prince could rise to any meaningful throne. A lot of 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:44.559 bloody and complicated political machinations followed, but the important thing 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.440 to know is that they all involved a group of 0:08:47.440 --> 0:08:50.600 people called the Boyars, a ruling class of a. 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:52.000 Couple hundred families. 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.120 They were basically ruling Russia in this time, and they 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:59.040 were responsible for raising the child Ivan and his brother. 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.679 A letter to his friend andre Krubsky, a grown Ivan 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:06.720 would look back at this time, writing that the Boyar's 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.719 quote were bent on acquiring wealth and glory and were 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.640 quarreling with each other. And what have they not done 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.920 me and my brother Yuri of blessed memory? They brought 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:21.240 up like vagrants and children of the poorest. What have 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:23.959 I not suffered for want of garments and food? 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:25.360 End? Quote? 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.200 At the age of eight, Ivan had already lost his parents, 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:34.079 and now he felt himself and his little brother mistreated 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:37.240 by the grown ups who were left behind. It was 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:39.880 the start of a grudge against the Boyars that he 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.920 would hold for the rest of his life. It was 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.920 also perhaps the start of his education in the bloody 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:52.280 mechanics of murder, warfare, and destruction. But as much as 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:55.880 the Boyars fought for positioning back when Vasili the third 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:59.400 had been alive, he had clearly wanted his son Ivan 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.600 to be his successor. Vasili had even gotten a child 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:07.840 sized helmet made for his little firstborn son, featuring all 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:13.079 the adult regalia of a future ruler. So on January sixteenth, 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:18.400 fifteen forty seven, seventeen year old Ivan was crowned not 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:22.720 only Prince of Moscow like his father, but Tsar of 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.960 all russ It was the first time any Russian ruler 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:31.520 had been called tzar, a word derived from the Latin caesar. 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:34.520 It was a reference to the titles of the Old 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:38.920 Testament kings and Byzantine emperor, but above all it suggested 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:44.679 a rule ordained by God. This God ordained teenager Ivan 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.960 had in the meantime been spending a decent amount of 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:53.360 his adolescence trying to find a foreign wife and failing, 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:58.000 I just don't trust their foreign temperaments, he would decide, 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.000 only after he had almost certainly been turned down. But 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:05.199 don't feel too bad for Ivan. Here he would make 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:09.280 up for the romantic failures of his teenage years with 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.080 a long list of wives. 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:11.439 Later. 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:16.520 The first of these, Anastasia Romanovna, he married one month 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:21.000 after his coronation. Russian names are very similar, but don't 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:26.280 confuse this Anastasia with the much more famous Anastasia Romanov 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:30.360 who comes along during the Russian Revolution we are still 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:34.640 squarely in the sixteenth century. Here back to Ivan and 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:39.600 his first wife, Anastasia. They were both seventeen. Anastasia was 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:43.000 from a powerful Russian family and had been chosen from 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:46.760 as many as fifteen hundred potential wives brought to the 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:51.600 Kremlin for the Czar to examine, And although he'd wanted 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:55.720 a foreign wife earlier in his life, presumably to bolster 0:11:55.840 --> 0:12:01.040 his global power, by all accounts, Ivan loved Anastatia. Their 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:06.080 marriage was happy, maybe even blissful. They had six children together. 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:11.160 They seemed to balance each other's temperaments. Ivan was excitable, 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:15.960 Anastasia affable but calm, and able to pacify her husband's 0:12:16.080 --> 0:12:21.239 darkest tempers. Legends and stories and movies now view Anastasia 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:26.560 as the one great true love of Ivan's life, but 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:31.640 he couldn't have her forever. In fifteen sixty, in Unlucky, 0:12:31.760 --> 0:12:38.160 thirteen years after their wedding, Anastasia died. Ivan was grief stricken. 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:43.840 Modern historians see his mental health faltering here. Emotionally, he 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.959 seemed to fall apart. He grew paranoid that the boy AARs, 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:52.000 those old hated enemies of his youth, had poisoned his wife, 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:56.960 perhaps in a misguided effort to poison him. Who knows, 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.240 maybe they had had a hand in murdering his mother too, 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:05.560 who internally Ivan vowed to take revenge and what was 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:10.000 left of his beloved wife. Of their six children, only 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:15.960 two survived. Ivan Ivanovitch born fifteen fifty four and six 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:18.560 years old at the time of his mother's death, and 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:23.320 Fyodor three years younger. Just a note for listeners that yes, 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.800 both our Ivan the Terrible and his son are named Ivan. 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:30.440 Must have been great for the guy's ego, but I 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.160 know it can be hard to keep track of I'll 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.160 be calling Ivan the Terrible Ivan and his son Ivan 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:43.319 Ivanovitch to help us keep it straight. Ivan Ivanovitch's younger brother, Fyodor, 0:13:43.640 --> 0:13:47.800 was considered slow at the time. Perhaps today we might 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:51.720 call him developmentally disabled. But what we know is he 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:56.440 was not considered competent to rule, and if God forbid 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:59.520 something should happen to his older brother, it meant that 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:04.120 the dying ynasty was in a precarious situation. If this 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:06.800 family dynamic sounds familiar. 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:07.720 To you, you're right. 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:11.680 The older Ivan and his younger brother Yuri were in 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.480 a very similar position when their own mother died. 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:16.080 As we'll see. 0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:19.960 Ivan's life would come to replicate his father's life in 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:24.600 a lot of ways, though with more tragic ends. In 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:28.520 any case, Fyodor was not considered competent, and so the 0:14:28.600 --> 0:14:33.160 young Ivan Ivanovitch was Big Ivan's clear hope as heir 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:37.520 to the dynasty, his only hope, it seemed. When the 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.920 young boy was just three years old, his father Ivan 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:45.480 gave him a mini helmet emblazoned with double headed eagles, 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.160 just like the one Ivan's own father had given him. 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.400 It was on Ivan Ivanovitch the entire future of the 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:54.480 tsardom rested. 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:55.480 His father. 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.200 Ivan was first Tsar of Russia, and he was going 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:07.400 to need a second. Ivan's rule was bloody. He got 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.360 that name the Terrible from somewhere, after all. 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:12.680 Although it is a little bit of. 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:16.600 A misnomer to modern ears, the Terrible may have also 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:21.040 been a signifier more like the awesome awe inspiring in 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:25.480 his great power. Terrible, let's not forget, is a hair's 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:31.600 breadth from terrific. After his wife Anastasia's death, Ivan embarked 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.640 on the Livonian War, a long and losing battle for 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.960 a route to the Baltic Sea. Around fifteen sixty four. 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.280 In what a modern person might view as a bit 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.360 of a temper tantrum. He threatened to abdicate in fifteen 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:52.000 sixty five, five years after Anastasia's death, he decided not 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:55.720 to abdicate after all. Instead, he would have a bit 0:15:55.880 --> 0:16:00.680 of twisted fun. Ivan separated himself from the dayDay life 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:05.200 of Russia, left Moscow and installed himself in a private 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:09.920 court called the Oprichnina. The name can still strike fear 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:14.760 into a Russian heart. From his Oprichnina, Ivan could massacre 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.880 whomever he wanted, and who he wanted, who he had 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.160 wanted ever since he was a child, were the boyars. 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:26.560 Ivan is said to have sent memorials of over three 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:31.960 thousand executed boyars to monasteries around the country. He directed 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.960 massacres in a reign of terror that lasted seven years. 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.680 Perhaps the worst was the massacre at Novgorod, in which 0:16:40.720 --> 0:16:46.600 his forces brutally murdered thousands for no obvious reason. Was 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:52.640 Ivan acting out of grief, revenge, paranoia, pure politics, the 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:57.120 a moral privileged syndrome of so many young princes destined 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.760 to rule from the time that they were born. We 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:05.040 don't know the Oprichnina's official goals and dogma were never 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:10.119 totally clear. Documents from the period were destroyed in a fire, 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.520 so Ivan's motives are one of many things that we 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.560 have to guess about. I do want to say this 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:22.000 Aprichnina has a really weird literal translation. While a lot 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.320 of sources define it as a private court, and the 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.880 Cambridge History of Russia notes that its etymology is from 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:34.639 opriche separate, the historian Edward L. Keenan notes that the 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:39.280 term actually had a specific meaning in Ivan's time. It 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.240 was the legal term for the so called widows might 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:47.960 that is, the widow's portion the property left over for 0:17:48.119 --> 0:17:52.199 the widow of a deceased member of the Moscow Cavalry. 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.239 I can't emphasize enough what a bizarre term this is 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:00.760 for the headquarters of a violent czar of Russia. As 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:05.320 Keenan says, quote, Russian historians have been very reluctant to 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:09.840 let the term mean what it means. This reluctance is 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:12.800 the reason why we have to use the untranslated term 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.960 in English, much to the chagrin of undergraduate history majors 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:23.200 end quote. I think Ivan was weirdly possibly declaring himself 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:27.320 a widow. He was taking the revenge he felt was 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.080 owed him as a widow. It's a strange bit of 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:35.080 gender bending for a guy who was so brutally using 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:38.760 his masculine forces as head of state, but it's also 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:43.879 an important insight, possibly into his mental state. To me, 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.560 it lends some credence to the story that Ivan really 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:51.320 did love his first wife, Anastasia, and that he really 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:54.919 was in mourning over her to the point of madness. 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.879 So was it the brutal, bizarreness of Ivan's political vision 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:03.560 that would eventually cause him to quarrel with his own son, 0:19:04.320 --> 0:19:09.600 or was it something else, because Ivan wasn't otherwise acting 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.480 like much of a morning widower. In fact, he got 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:18.400 married again almost immediately after Anastasia's death, to a beautiful 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:23.560 Cherkisian princess named Maria. Ivan was thirty one at the time, 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.000 but his bride was the same age as Anastasia had 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:31.760 been at their wedding, only seventeen. As Taylor Swift would 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:36.320 later say, I'll get older, but your lovers stay my age. 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:41.280 The Tsaritza Maria died eight years later in fifteen sixty nine, 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:46.080 at age twenty five. From then on, Ivan gave his 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:50.920 little son no dearth of stepmothers. He married five more 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:56.080 times between fifteen seventy and fifteen eighty. His third wife, Marfa, 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.199 died within days of their wedding. His fourth, fifth, and 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:04.640 seventh wives were sent away to monasteries, just like Ivan's 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:08.840 own father's first wife had been. So little is known 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.800 about the sixth wife that historians are not entirely in 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:17.000 agreement that she existed at all. It was one year 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:22.960 into Ivan's sixth or possibly seventh marriage, November fifteen eighty one, 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.840 when his son raced into the room to find his 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:32.359 father in a paroxyism of violence. Tsarevich ivan Ivanovitch was 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:34.680 twenty seven years old at this point. 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:36.280 Looking at his. 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:39.639 Air running toward him, Ivan the Terrible must have seen 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:42.960 a chip off the old block. His son had already 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.360 been married three times by this point, his first two 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:50.920 wives had already been sent off to the monastery. Someday, 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:56.560 like Ivan, this son would rule Russia. But Ivan Ivanovitch 0:20:56.800 --> 0:21:00.679 wasn't running for no reason. Ivan Ivanovitch which his third 0:21:00.680 --> 0:21:03.480 wife had been running ahead of him into that fateful 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:07.080 room where her father in law was. Her name was 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:11.760 Yolena Sharamityeva, and she was pregnant possibly with the future 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:16.200 heir to the throne, the continuation of Ivan's line. Her father, 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:21.000 the Czar, had come upon her wearing gasp, only her 0:21:21.119 --> 0:21:26.040 underwear in the fifteen hundred. The underwear was likely even 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:30.240 more modest than what women wear today, but it didn't matter. 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.760 Ivan had gone berserk. He lashed out at her, dealing 0:21:34.800 --> 0:21:37.840 her a blow to the stomach, such a blow that 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:41.520 he threatened the fetus's life the life of his own 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:47.280 possible grandchild. Hearing the shouts, Ivan Ivanovitch raced in to 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:51.240 protect his pregnant wife. You thrust my first wife into 0:21:51.240 --> 0:21:54.080 a nunnery for no good reason, the young man yelled 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:57.359 at his father. He was beside himself in a frenzy. 0:21:57.840 --> 0:21:59.840 You did the same thing to my second, and now 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:02.879 you strike my third, causing the sun in her womb 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:08.080 to perish. Hot Headed Ivan the Terrible, unmoored by pain 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:12.560 or grief or decades of violence, or perhaps just insane, 0:22:13.280 --> 0:22:19.480 or perhaps just blindingly, thoughtlessly idiotically angry, turned on his son. 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:22.040 Did the boy think he was the only one who 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:24.600 had lost a beloved wife? Did he think he was 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:28.080 the only one who had lost children? Ivan the Terrible 0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:32.160 couldn't control his rage. He had killed so many by 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:36.960 this point, so thoughtlessly, so easily before. It wasn't any 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:41.800 harder this time. The pointed staff was already in his hand. 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:46.680 He lunged forward, extended the rod, and struck his son 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:51.479 in the head. Immediately, the rage drained out of Ivan. 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.760 His son, his one chosen air, lay bleeding on the floor. 0:22:57.359 --> 0:22:59.480 What have I done? He must have been thinking. 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:02.919 His little son, who had once been given a child 0:23:03.000 --> 0:23:07.560 sized helmet, was now moments from death. Oh God, no, 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:13.480 or maybe it didn't happen that way at all. That's 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:18.120 the story that's been told down the centuries, usually spoken 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:21.639 with barely controlled glee at all of the sordid details. 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:26.560 The chivalrous son defending his wife, the near naked pregnant 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:29.560 daughter in law, the evil that Ivan had done to 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:33.199 so many families over the years. Finally arriving at his 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:37.439 own home by his own hand. It all feels ready 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:41.760 made for a legend, or a soap opera, or a 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:44.960 painting or an episode of a podcast. 0:23:45.960 --> 0:23:47.520 But is it true? 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:50.480 As I was writing the story, I looked back to 0:23:50.520 --> 0:23:54.800 see when in August the murder had taken place. After all, 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:58.680 Allegedly it had been so hot that the pregnant Milena 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:02.720 was lounging in her underwear. Then I remembered that this 0:24:02.880 --> 0:24:08.640 happened in November in Russia. It would have been unusual 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:11.639 for Ivan to rush right past his daughter in law's 0:24:11.720 --> 0:24:14.320 ladies in waiting in order to be able to catch 0:24:14.320 --> 0:24:18.000 her in some scandalous state in the first place. Also, 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:22.160 by this point, Ivan was suffering from a degenerative spinal 0:24:22.240 --> 0:24:28.080 condition that, by most accounts, severely inhibited his movement. Could 0:24:28.160 --> 0:24:32.800 he have physically overpowered his much younger, able bodied son. 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:37.919 Of course, it's completely believable that a bloodthirsty Czar of 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:41.600 Russia who had used his position to murder so many 0:24:42.040 --> 0:24:45.679 could have conceivably murdered his own. That a man with 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:50.200 a long history of violent instability might have been unable 0:24:50.240 --> 0:24:53.400 to restrain his temperer. That a man who had sent 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:57.480 countless wives off to nunneries and whose other wives had 0:24:57.560 --> 0:25:01.399 died of mysterious poisonings might to assault a pregnant woman. 0:25:02.200 --> 0:25:06.080 But might the story have been something else? Was it 0:25:06.240 --> 0:25:11.280 instead a political dispute, a father son disagreement over the 0:25:11.320 --> 0:25:15.320 best course of military action or governance? An Ivan who 0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:18.359 stood with a rod in his hand as his pompous son, 0:25:18.920 --> 0:25:22.000 a son who had always had a father, who hadn't 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:25.240 been orphaned and hadn't been mistreated at the age of eight, 0:25:25.800 --> 0:25:29.800 dared to criticize him over losing the Livonian War, dared 0:25:29.840 --> 0:25:32.880 to say he wanted troops under his own command, as 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.000 though his father didn't know what he was doing. Or 0:25:36.359 --> 0:25:40.640 was the death of Ivan Ivanovitch a smaller and more 0:25:40.720 --> 0:25:45.639 domestic and less violent tragedy. A letter from Ivan a 0:25:45.680 --> 0:25:48.879 few weeks before said that he couldn't travel because of 0:25:48.880 --> 0:25:53.880 his son's illness. Perhaps Ivan Ivanovitch was simply struck down 0:25:53.960 --> 0:25:57.480 by ill health, though I want to add, who's to 0:25:57.560 --> 0:26:00.879 say that the younger Ivan wasn't sick when his father 0:26:01.040 --> 0:26:06.359 killed him. Maybe Ivan just conveniently sped the inevitable with violence. 0:26:07.359 --> 0:26:11.639 Even the letter suggesting an illness only has one dubious source. 0:26:12.320 --> 0:26:16.159 One of the reasons Ivan's reign is so fascinating is 0:26:16.240 --> 0:26:20.000 that most of the primary documents have been destroyed. We 0:26:20.119 --> 0:26:22.840 will never know what happened on that night between the 0:26:22.920 --> 0:26:26.040 young heir and his father, but what we do know 0:26:26.520 --> 0:26:30.720 is that Ivan Ivanovitch, the only competent successor to Ivan 0:26:30.800 --> 0:26:37.919 the Terrible's enormous legacy was dead. A lot happened in 0:26:38.000 --> 0:26:41.160 Russia after the death of the air but most important 0:26:41.200 --> 0:26:44.680 for our story, just two and a half years after 0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:48.879 the death of his son, Ivan the Terrible died too. 0:26:49.040 --> 0:26:54.840 His less competent younger son, Ivanovitch's younger brother, Fyodor, took over. 0:26:55.520 --> 0:27:00.000 In fifteen ninety eight. At forty one, Feodor died childless, 0:27:00.520 --> 0:27:06.000 ending the Ruric dynasty after twenty one generations. Fyodor's death 0:27:06.200 --> 0:27:11.000 threw Russia into the Infamous Time of Troubles, a violent 0:27:11.160 --> 0:27:15.639 power struggle that lasted fifteen years and saw a famine 0:27:15.640 --> 0:27:20.760 that killed nearly a third of population that time, concluded 0:27:20.880 --> 0:27:25.480 in sixteen thirteen with the instatement of the Romanov dynasty, 0:27:25.920 --> 0:27:29.280 which would go on to include Catherine the Great and 0:27:29.480 --> 0:27:34.399 continue until the Bolshevik Revolution in nineteen seventeen, when the 0:27:34.560 --> 0:27:39.120 last Romanov rulers were unseated and all of the dynasty's 0:27:39.160 --> 0:27:43.160 heirs were killed, including that young girl with the same 0:27:43.240 --> 0:27:49.080 name as Ivan the Terrible's beloved first wife, Anastasia. But 0:27:49.200 --> 0:27:53.840 Ivan's death wasn't the end of Ivan's legacy. Even the 0:27:54.000 --> 0:27:57.040 end of the Russian monarchy wasn't the end of his legacy. 0:27:57.600 --> 0:28:01.680 Three hundred years after Ivan's death. In eighteen eighty five, 0:28:02.280 --> 0:28:06.800 a Russian painting at the Itinerant exhibition caused such a 0:28:06.840 --> 0:28:10.879 stir that the police needed to be called in. The 0:28:10.920 --> 0:28:15.720