Foreword: The Tsar married eight wives, most of whom died unexpectedly. The eldest son was smashed by a hammer and died on the spot; The youngest son died mysteriously while playing in church. Was it a series of accidents, or was it a long-planned mysterious murder?
In the Yaroslavl region of western Russia, on the banks of the beautiful Volga River, there is a small town called Uglich. In Russian, Uglich means "corner", and the town gets its name from its topography.
The town is lush with trees and buildings, and people love her sophistication and beauty. Despite her small size, she is very famous, because there is a world-famous church, St. Temetri's Church, also known as the Bloody Church.
The appearance of the church is very beautiful, with red walls, blue roof, and such a bright church, why does it have such a terrible name? This is related to a mysterious death that occurred more than 400 years ago.
(The Bloody Church in the small town of Uglich)
May 15, 1591, Church of St. Temetri, in the small town of Uglich, on the banks of the Volga River in Russia. A woman dressed as an aristocracy, as usual, prayed here with a boy of eight or nine years old. The boy was very active, and he looked forward to a quick end to his prayers so that he could have fun with his friends.
After the prayer, the boy ran to the courtyard next to the church and joined the group of buddies who were eating walnuts. After a while, the children began to chase and fight, and bursts of laughter and laughter made this heavily guarded yard also cheerful.
The children played a game of throwing knives, which was simple: draw a white line on the ground as a starting point, and draw a circle not far away. The thrower stands at the white line and throws the knife in his hand, and the person who throws it in the circle wins.
The boy picked up the knife and was about to throw it, when suddenly his face was twisted, his limbs stiffened, and he foamed at the mouth, looking in pain. His body, along with the knife in his hand, fell to the ground.
(Deadly toy in the boy's hand)
Coincidentally, the tip of the standing knife just plunged into the boy's throat, and in an instant, the boy's neck was bleeding. This sudden disaster frightened all the little friends. The boy's life, in the exclamations of his companions and the screams of his mother, is forever fixed on this day.
The boy's death rewrites the history of an empire. Because he is the youngest son of the first Russian Tsar Ivan IV - Prince Dmitry, he is also the only healthy heir of the Rurik dynasty.
As we said in the previous article, Ivan IV's eldest son was crushed to death by him with a hammer, and his second son, Fyodor, was mentally retarded, so how could there be a little prince? This starts with the eight wives of Ivan IV (hereinafter referred to as the second and third...... Hachi).
In 1547, at the age of 17, Ivan IV was crowned Tsar, and the choice of an empress for the empire became a matter of great importance. At this time, although Russia had a vast territory, it was so poor that the princes and nobles of Europe looked down on this hillbilly in a remote corner and were unwilling to marry the princess.
Moscow sent beauty pageant notices to the provinces, and a group of the most beautiful maidens were sent to Moscow. One by one, these beauties appeared in front of the Tsar, and if the Tsar took a fancy to them, he would give one of them an embroidered gold handkerchief to the other.
A gentle girl walked by the Tsar's side, her smart eyes and shy smile made the Tsar's heart instantly glow. She was a girl from the Romanov family named Anastasia Romanovna.
(Anastasia)
In 1547, Anastasia became the first empress of the Russian Empire, and the young empress was gentle and learned, and the tsar's irascible heart began to settle down. The queen used her delicate hands to weave a gentle net that gradually melted the cold heart of the tsar.
Empress Anastasia gave birth to a total of four sons and two girls, and only two sons survived, the eldest son Ivan and Fyodor the wiser. In 1560, the empress, who had been with him for thirteen years, died of illness, and the tsar was so grief-stricken that he even knelt on the ground and prayed that he would "rather give up the country in exchange for the life of the empress".
The death of the empress reopened the cold valve in the tsar's heart. He began to suspect that someone around him had poisoned the queen, which led to her death. Without any evidence, the Tsar poured poisoned wine on the prince's family who were unreasonably suspicious, and then admired their slow death. The palace maid next to her screamed in fright, and the Tsar, thinking that she had ruined her good mood, stripped her naked and executed her.
Once, suspecting that the imperial physician might have concocted poison, he put a house on a fire and barbecued it, watching as a living person slowly turned to charcoal. He also made a cruel torture of black bears eating living people, and the Tsar laughed happily when he saw the black bears licking their paws.
After the death of the empress, the tsar married seven more wives. Once the sea was difficult to water, except for Wushan, it was not a cloud, because of the deep relationship with the first queen, the tsar did not look down on any of the wives he married later, and almost all of these wives ended tragically.
The second wife was Maria Temrugovna from a Muslim tribe, who married the Tsar in 1561. The girl was illiterate and had a pungent personality, and after two years of marriage, she gave birth to a son, but died not long after. In the following years, Xiao Er never got pregnant again.
When the passion of the newlywed faded and everything returned to nothing, the more the tsar looked at this wife, the more unpleasant he became. In 1569, the second child, who had been married for eight years, contracted tuberculosis on the way to visit the Tsar and hung up that year.
The third wife was Marfa Sobagina, a girl from an old family in Kolomna. This girl was beautiful and dignified, and she was loved by the Tsar, which reminded him of his first wife, Anastasia.
Unfortunately, the newly married junior got a strange disease, his body slowly dried out, and he died inexplicably after only half a month of marriage. After investigation, it may be that Xiao San's mother poisoned her with the so-called "birth pill" without knowing it. The tsar was furious and ordered a bloodbath of the family.
(Tsar and Marfa Sobagina)
According to Orthodox rules, it is not legal to marry more than three times, but the tsar has already been married three times, and it is illegal to marry a fourth wife. The tsar played a trick by claiming that the third marriage was not consummated, that it could not be counted, and that his children still needed a mother. In this way, the tsar won the right to marry four times.
The fourth wife is still on the list of the last auditions, she is Anna Koltovskaya from an ordinary family. A few years after the marriage, the fourth child did not get pregnant for a long time, and the tsar decided to disown her.
In 1575, the junior, who had been married for three years, was sent by the tsar to the Tikhvin monastery, where he became a nun. The poor woman died in 1626 after more than half a century of captivity, 42 years after her violent husband.
The Church no longer agreed to the fifth marriage of the Tsar, but the Tsar decided to ignore the Orthodox tradition and intend to marry a fifth wife in the spirit of succession. Obviously, after that, all he chose were tools suitable for procreation, and once the tools could not give birth to an heir, they would be retired.
Since none of the marriages after the fifth tsar were approved by the church, there is no clear record in the historical records, but it is certain that the fifth wife, Maria Dolgojukaya, was a commoner girl. Around 1575, she was chosen by the Tsar, unaware that she had set foot at the gates of hell.
(Tsar Ivan IV)
According to historical sources, since the wedding night did not see red, the tsar found out that Xiao Wu was not a virgin, and she had another lover. The Tsar felt that he had been deceived, and in a fit of rage, he directly smashed Xiao Wu's Tianling Gai with a hammer, and the poor girl, whose skull was smashed and collapsed, was killed on the spot. There is also a theory that on the second day of the wedding, the tsar ordered someone to tie Xiao Wu to the carriage, and several angry horses dragged her directly into the river and drowned.
The sixth wife was named Anna Vasilchikova, a distant descendant of Prince Yuri, one of the founders of Muscovy, of royal blood, and the exact year of her marriage to the tsar is unknown. After two years of marriage, Xiaoliu never got pregnant, and the tsar sent her to the monastery again. The next year, poor Little Six died there.
The seventh wife was Vasilisa Melendeva, the widow of a martyr nobleman, who was good-looking and kind, and the tsar married her in 1579. However, the tsar's doom of taking a wife continued.
Not long after getting married, the tsar found out that Xiao Qi was having an affair with another nobleman, how could this tyrannical man tolerate his wife giving him a green hat? He brutally executed a third person and forced his wife to watch the event, after which he also imprisoned her in a convent. In the same year, Xiao Qi died inexplicably in the monastery.
On November 16, 1581, during a violent quarrel between father and son, the Tsar accidentally stoned Crown Prince Ivan to death. Now, he is left with only one son, Fyodor, who is not mentally normal. Remarriage and giving birth to a healthy heir are imminent.
(Ivan IV accidentally stoned the crown prince to death)
At the beginning of 1582, the 51-year-old Tsar welcomed his eighth wife, the daughter of the Tsar's right-hand man, Maria Nagoy. This time, fate seems to have taken a turn for the worse, and the little eight soon became pregnant, and the tsar was overjoyed.
On October 19, 1582, Hachi gave birth to his long-cherished son, Dmitry, who made great contributions. With the Tsar's tolerance, Hachi showed unusual ambitions, and she began to persuade the Tsar to plan for the future of her son.
However, the result was disappointing for the little eight, because the Tsar's eighth marriage was not recognized by the church, and Dmitry's status was illegitimate and had no inheritance rights. In desperation, the tsar had no choice but to appoint the wise Fyodor as the heir to the throne.
In 1584, the Tsar died, Fyodor succeeded him as Tsar, and his brother-in-law Godunov became regent and took control of the court. In the will of Ivan IV, Hachi did not receive any property, and her son Dmitry received only the fiefdom of Uglich. The new tsar drove the mother and son to Uglich.
On May 15, 1591, Prince Dmitry, who was less than nine years old, died mysteriously while playing in the courtyard next to the church of Uglich. The new tsar organized a special commission to go to Uglich to investigate. The results of the investigation showed that the little prince suddenly had a seizure while playing a game, and when he fell to the ground, a knife was inserted into his throat and died.
(The Dead Prince and His Mother)
It was an accident!
However, rumors circulated that the little prince had been assassinated, and Hachi and her brothers believed that it was Godunov's conspiracy and that it was he who deliberately murdered the little prince. Eventually, Hachi was forcibly sent to a convent, and her relatives were deposed and exiled.
Many years later, the church of St. Temetri in the small town of Uglić was remodeled. In honor of Prince Dmitry, who died mysteriously, the church was given a new name - the Bloody Church.
The church still preserves valuable relics related to the death of the prince in 1591, as well as the stretcher on which the prince was carried. A small silver reliquary contained a few walnuts that the prince had held in his hand when he died.
The Rurik dynasty lost all its heirs, however, the story does not end. Because, strange things happened, and two more Prince Dmitry magically appeared.