Ivan The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Tsar (& His Next 7 Wives)

After the death of Tsarina Anastasia at the hands of the boyars, Ivan IV was furious. With his 2nd wife, he started the Oprichnina, and one of Russia's darkest periods in history, resulting in the deaths of nobles, peasants, and even his own family. But it wouldn't be until his 8th marriage that his brutal rule came to an end. Don't worry, we somehow still found a few laughs in there!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh yeah, all right, take it easy, baby, take it,
make it last all night.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Oh yeah, of course, different song. Yeah, that's going with
slow ride.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Let's see here.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
We should roast each other again. Apparently that was kind Okay.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Look, I mean that's fine and all, but A, it's
got it. You can't force it. No, it sounds bad.
And B I could do it every other episode. If
it came up in every episode, I would start to
get I wouldn't enjoy doing the show. It's hard for
me to play playfully roast. Not even that it's like
I can't take it, can't dish it out kind of thing.
But just it's just I don't like it. That's fair, well,

(00:42):
not even roasting. Roasting's fine if you're like teasing and stuff,
but bickering, right, you know, I need everyone to agree
with me at all times. No, that's not it.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I'm gonna have a tough, tough life.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So far, it's been great because I've been right pretty
much every single time, constantly forever.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, thank you for.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
A great God that you were right all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Thank you? Or else, Look, you'll know what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Oh ship am I married to I've in the terrible, Eli,
the terrible? Is that what you would if you were
a tzar? What would you call yourself?

Speaker 1 (01:19):
If I was a czar, I'd be Eli? Hmmm, I honestly,
I mean, you can't give yourself your own tzar nickname?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
You know, I guess that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So what is that? What am I? Eli? The ambivalence?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, in that moment, you're quite a caretaker. Oh maybe Eli,
the amiable. Oh okay, that would be a cute name
for you.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Doesn't exactly strike fear into the hearts of my enemies.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
What maybe you are presiding over an unprecedented era of peace.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Let me tell you. Let me tell you I'd better
be because I would fare much better in that world.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
That sounds great and more time, because.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
They would be like, sir, the British are attacking, and
I'd be like, I don't like bickering. Can we just
move past this? Can we just pretend this fight never happened.
I'd much rather just give each other the silent treatment
for an hour and then we just continue on with
our day as if none of this ever happened. So

(02:29):
they also hate.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
That, I know you would. Yeah, I don't know. I
don't know. I don't know. Well, what would you call
me you?

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Oh, you'd be Diana, the overworked.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Oh I feel like as bizarre. I should be taken
it easy.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
You should, but you would not. You would. They'd be like, uh, sorryna, Diana,
it's time. Everything is fine, the country's at peace, the
economy is doing well. And you'd be like, I need
a few more projects.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Please, let's build a cathedral.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Like we have so many cathedrals.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Well, build another one. We'll put a couple of little
stages in there.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, cabaret to a theater show exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
The cathedral cabaret. Actually would totally do a cathedral cabaret.
That sounds great. Oh no, anybody with the cathedral, reach out.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
There we go. Here comes the next six months of
our lives.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Somehow, I'm sorry I planned a cabaret.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Well, when you plan a cabaret, we plan a cabaret.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Thank you, babe. That's where the partnership is about.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
No, I'm just saying that's how it is. I'm not
volunteering that.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I thought you were trying to be supportive.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
No, No, it's a I don't have a choice.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Oh yeah, because.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I'm innately so supportive because I'm Eli the amiable. Well,
there's only one Tzar I want to talk about today.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, me too, the czar who's been living in our
hearts for the last week or so, Ivan the Fourth,
also known as Ivan the Terrible.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
If you joined us in the last episode, and I
don't know why you wouldn't have, if you're here now,
we learned that Ivan the Fourth was named ruler of
Russia at just three years old when his father died,
but he was raised by the Shwisky family of boyars,
who took control of Russia after probably poisoning his mother,
Elena Glinskaya. When Ivan was sixteen, he crowned himself the

(04:28):
first Czar of Russia and started cutting off the boyar's power,
mostly by cutting off their heads. Effective but he married
honest Assiya Romanov, who loved him and helped him be
a great ruler by cooling his horrible temper. But when
she died at twenty nine years old, Ivan was certain
that the Boyars had poisoned her as well. Now he

(04:50):
would marry again and again and again, taking a total
of eight wives in his life. None of them, however,
fared too well, and ultimately neither did Russia. So let's
hear about the Tsar's next seven wives and how this
guy went from being Ivan the Fine to Ivan the
not so good, all the way down to Ivan the terrible.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Let go, Hey, let friends come listen. Well, Eli and
Diana got some stories to tell. There's no match making
a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relation, ships, a love.
There might be any type of person at all, and
abstract concept or a concrete wall. But if there's a
story where the second glance, so ridiculous romance a production

(05:37):
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
The boy Yards, if you remember from part one, are
basically the ruling class of nobility in Russia, and they've
always held a lot of power. They had poisoned Ivan's mother,
and they likely poisoned on Us the Sea, Ivan's first wife,
and after this, Ivan had multiple people jailed and executed.

(06:00):
But Ivan didn't really work with a lot of evidence
when he was accusing the Boyars of doing all these
evil things. And while yes, some of these Boyars were
rich schemers working to secure their own power, Ivan's hatred
of them as a whole wasn't really very focused, and
it even started to spill over into the civilian population.
But you know what, all of that can go on

(06:22):
hold because Ivan Vassilievitch was now Moscovie's number one most
eligible bachelor.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Ladies, ladies, lady.

Speaker 4 (06:33):
Well.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
The first idea for Ivan to remarry was Katarzhina Yagyelunka,
a Polish princess, and at the time of anest Dosia's death,
Ivan was fighting a major war between Russia and basically everyone,
Oh my god, the Polish, the Swedish, the Danes, and
the Cossacks in the south. So if a marriage made

(06:54):
an ally out of Poland, it was a pretty good
idea classic reason for his art to get married.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Oh yeah, we're at war, but I married one of
your daughters, so now we're not at warning.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Yeah, everything you're mad about it's over now now. I
haven't thought it made sense, and Katarzina's brother was into it,
but Katarzina herself was apparently crying her eyes out at
the idea. But then another woman was presented to Ivan
in fifteen sixty one, Mariya Temryokovna. She was the daughter

(07:24):
of a prince from Kebardia, an independent country located near
what is the border of Russia and Georgia today, so
this would ally region that could help them fend off
the Cossacks in the south. So another good, powerful alliance.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Isn't that so interesting? I mean, these the Kabardians weren't
fighting with the Russians at a time, but they would
have been strong allies. But even thinking back to him
trying to marry out of a war with Poland, it
just so clearly to me shows how desperately they both
want the war to end and they just need any excuse.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
I agree, you know, it's not like today that like
Putin would be like, oh right, Ukraine, send me one
of your lady and we'll solve this the old fashioned way.
Like that shit don't work anymore.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
So Maria Temriyukovna's father presented her to Ivan the fourth,
and Ivan went absolutely gaga for this lady. She was
maybe the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and he
suddenly is like kata Argina, who I don't even care
that girl's crying anyway, I'm not gonna marry her. Maria

(08:28):
was gorgeous, she was rich, she was royalty from a
foreign country that would make a great partner to Russia.
There was really only one problem. Maria was a Sunni Muslim.
Now Russian folklore says that on her deathbed, Ivan's first wife, Anastasia,
had told Ivan, whatever you do, you've got to marry

(08:52):
a Christian.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Oh my god, final words, right.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
I mean they were Orthodox and Catholics, and they were
pretty strict about, you know, keeping it in the family,
so to speak. So Ivan is thinking like, oh boy, well,
my ex wife did specifically warn me about this. But
on the other hand, this lady is super hot.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
She's fine, absolutely spotty, attid, malicious, like I am in
with this woman.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I love the idea of the Tzar. Ivan like bumpin'
yeah at aliens. So he decided Maria is the one,
and they married on August twenty first, just four days
before Ivan's thirty first birthday. But it was quickly clear
that nobody liked Maria. She was seen as manipulative and vindictive.

(09:45):
She refused to respect local customs, and she is very
rude to her step children, Ivan surviving sons, Ivan Junior
and Theodor, as opposed to Ana Sessia. Maria seemed to
encourage Ivan's ruthlessness, but actually Ivan didn't like her much himself,
and that just added to his general anger and paranoia.
They had one son together in fifteen sixty three, named Vasili,

(10:08):
but he died just a few months later.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, now Ivan already basically trusted no one. We know this.
But the war also was not going well, and Russia
was struggling with drought and famine. Peasants were angry, they
were quitting their jobs, dogs and cats were living together,
just mass hysteria. And then in fifteen sixty four, Ivan's

(10:31):
good friend, close advisor, and military leader Andrey Krebsky suddenly
defected and joined the Lithuanians. And he cited Ivan's growing
distrust of everyone, and he was worried about all these
repressive ideas that the Czar was forming. Krebski led a
Polish Lithuanian force against his own people, the Russians, and

(10:53):
he decimated them in several battles.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Or kicked him to the Krebski Keurbsk, I love it.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
So at this point, you know, Ivan's been betrayed again.
The boyars are acting crazy, the clergy was embezzling, the
peasants were restless. So Ivan the Fourth just left, He
packed his bags, He grabbed his wife Maria, and he
left Moscow without telling anybody for Alexandrov, and he sent

(11:22):
a letter back to the Boyars in Moscow and said,
y'all suck, I'm gonna quit.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Damn Yeah, nobody wants to work anymore. Well, the Boyar
court had always been locked in a battle with Ivan,
but they took a look at the state of Muscovie,
particularly the desperate and furious peasant class, and realized they
were one hundred percent shit out a lukski uh. They
wanted all this power over the Zar, but they realized
that if he was fully gone, they had basically no

(11:51):
power at all. It can't be the power behind the
throne if there's no one on the.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
Throne right exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
So they followed him to Alexandrov and they begged him
to come back in rule Russia. And he said, okay,
but on one condition, I get absolute power. I want
to be able to condemn and execute people. I decide
our traders, and I want to confiscate their land, and
I don't want them no interference from yell Boyars or

(12:17):
the church. Woww. Some historians say that Maria Temryokovna herself
gave Ivan this idea she sounds like she could easily
come up with it, but of course common to blame
a lady for some shitta guy does the boy. Our
delegation looked at each other awkwardly, turned back to Ivan
and they said, yeah, man, whatever you want. And thus

(12:38):
began the Abridge Nina, one of the darkest and scariest
periods in Russian history, right.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
The Abridge Nina was this huge territorial state within the
borders of Russia, where Ivan had absolute power and control
and could execute people at will if he felt like
they were being disloyal. So it's a large chunk of land.
It encompassed all the major cities, you know, not Siberia,
but the populous part. At will. He could confiscate land

(13:10):
of people he felt like were traders, and he could
kick their families out to go live in the Zim's Gena,
which was the Russian land outside the Opportunita, so the
place you didn't want to be. To enforce this brutal
new rain, he formed a guard called the Oprichnik. The
Oprechnik was basically Ivan's private personal army. They were a

(13:32):
thousand hand picked super soldiers who dressed in all black
and rode black horses. Tied to their saddles was a
severed wolf's head, which symbolized the Oprechnick sniffing out the
Tsar's enemies and the hounds of Hell nipping at their heels.
Ivan himself off and rode at the front of the horde,

(13:53):
and he affixed iron jaws to his wolf's head that
would open and snap shut as his horse gallon.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
All Right, I can't approve of a brutal private army, right,
but the vibes are incredible metal Again, I feel like
an opeh album is about to start.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
It's like, I don't like severed wolf's heads, but no, yeah,
this was like a movie. I'd be like, these guys
are terrifying and kind of awesome, Like, you know, I
definitely dresses this for Dragon Con if this was just
a fantasy.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Of course, of course, of course it is.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
That's very very ring rate vibes, very true.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
But I mean that's sort of like such an interesting
thing about historic armies and stuff is that they're like
you have to defeat them, you know, kind of they're
morale first, that's the first thing. So if you have
the right look or like even like the rebel yell
or whatever, like there's just so many armies that had
their little thing that was like, let us freak them
out before we ever strike a single blow.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Striking fear into the hearts of your enemies. Key in
all things. I remember in uh, speaking of movies, I
remember in the film Little Giants in the early nineties
with Rick Moranish and playing a football coach. I'm getting there.

(15:20):
It was all, you know. It was like a ragtag
group of misfits playing football, little little pee wee football,
and one of the kids had real bad tummy troubles,
so we always had He was always taking alka seltzer
and when they were trying to figure out how to
intimidate the other team because they are all little nerds,
he told them all to put an alka seltzer tab
in their mouth and they all started foaming at the mouth.

(15:44):
So they all pot one in their mouth while they're
all lining up to play football, and the other kids
freak out because all the whole team full of nerds
is all foaming at the mouth, like do.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
You have rabies? That's a really big problem.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
It's great. So just like the old preach nig Giants.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Like Little giants being the natural air of the operation.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
I wish that line had been in the movie. Like, okay, well,
I remember the Preachnick Rick Maris is like, no, we
can't carry around severed wolf heads onto the football.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Field, but we can learn a lesson about intimidation.

Speaker 5 (16:26):
Well.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
On their acceptance, recruits to the Opreachnik swore loyalty to Ivan,
his sons, his wife Maria, and also swore quote not
to eat or drink with the zem's Gina and not
to have anything in common with them. Now, these guys
terrorized the Russian civilian population. They executed anyone who was

(16:48):
suspected to be disloyal to Ivan, who had declared himself
the quote hand of God.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Always a good sign and a leader.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Okay. Citizens were terribly treated. They were quarter boiled, impaled,
or even roasted over an open fire. If Ivan declared
them treeson is oh God. If their families were lucky,
they were exiled. Often they were killed too. Now you'd
think this would be all about controlling people through fear,

(17:17):
right striking terror into the hearts of the populace.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Right, Like I'm going to go around and murder some
folks so that nobody acts up like, that's my real reason, right,
right exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
But because Ivan was what modern psychologists call loopier than
a cross eyed cowboy. Yes, as a soup sandwich.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, crazier than a cat in a room full of
rocking chairs.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
That boy's cheese lit all the way off his cracker.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
They're all the clinical modern diagnos.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Le yes, So a lot of the time, you know,
he's just imagining trees and his behavior. Hen't have proof
for any.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Of this, Yeah, no, but he really believes it.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Of course, he's just like steriously paranoid. And of course
if you had a problem with how he was doing things,
you were next in line for whatever torture he could
come up with. So it's just like no criticism, no
looking at him the wrong way anything. No one just
set him off.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
No one could stand off to the side and say,
I don't Yeah, this guy sucks, but he didn't actively
commit treason. Are you sure we should boil him alive?
Because Ivan would just turn and say, oh, I guess
you're a trader too, So add him.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
To the pot, another one for the pot.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah, uh, brutal. And that's it's so much harder when
these people really believe it, you know, like, it's one
thing if someone's aggressively manipulative and knows that they're lying
to everyone, But when you have someone who's so crazy
they believe their own crazy theories, well and it get scared.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yet it must be said, he has a lot of
reason to believe them, because it's not like people ain't
been poisoning people all around him and stuff. Absolutely, so
he does have some things that he is clearly blown
off to a very very upsetting paranoid bubble that he's
right right.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
What he needs is someone to talk to. I mean,
he needs a therapist, and honest, I mean honestly, that
might be part of what him and honest to see
his marriage. You know why that was so beneficial because
it may have been we don't know, but it may
have been a situation where he sat down and was like,
oh my god, I think everyone is out to get me.
This guy looked at me funny when I walked down
the hall, and she was like, honey, sometimes people just

(19:30):
look at you funny, like yours are You're the most
important guy in the room. And he's like, oh, you're right,
you're right, okay. So that he was able to discern
more who was a real threat and who he was
just getting feeling a little paranoid about. But once she
got poisoned, all bets are off. Everyone could have been
out to get him, and no one was there to
suggest that he was overreacting. So all this to say,

(19:53):
Ivan had become a ruthless, brutal monster and an all
powerful dictator during his marriage to Maria, just even more
than before, of course, So let's take a quick break
and we will get into the consequences of his actions
for both him and his wife right after this.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Welcome back everyone, Do I sound like Count Chocula? It
was a little Chocula, Yeah, welcome back.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Not the Count. I love it all right. So it
was far from Maria Tenbrinokovna's fault that her husband Ivan
was the terrible, but she did seem to encourage it,
and of course she was no peach herself, and while
he might have listened to her when she suggested that
he start the opportunina, he also regretted marrying her. She

(20:47):
was hated by her subjects and the courts alike, as
well as by Ivan's whole family, and we can't say
that this wasn't xenophobia or some sort of bigotry against
whether she was Muslim. You know, if this was a
racist thing, you know, hard to say. But what history
suggests to us is that she was pretty rotten herself. Yeah,

(21:09):
so maybe it was not a total shock when on
September first of fifteen sixty nine, eight years after their marriage,
Maria Timriyokovna died of poisoning. Again, rumors went around that
Ivan himself actually poisoned her, but Ivan not only denied that,
but he had several nobles executed who he blamed for

(21:32):
her death.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Well, I mean, I'm doubt he's going to be like,
I did it, no right, And he's like I did
it and a bunch of y'all are going to pay
for it.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Proof that I didn't is that I killed a bunch
of other people for doing it, So it must have
been them. I mean, no, I will say that historians
generally agree that he was not the one behind it
this time. It wouldn't make have made a lot of
sense for him, but that's true.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
That Well, raise your hand if you think I've been
calmed down after that, I don't see any hands. Well,
I'll give you a hint The next thing to happen
was something called the Massacre of Novagrad. Oh boy, so
in fifteen seventy, Ivan believed Novagrad, Russia's second largest city,

(22:15):
was planning on defecting tow the Lithuanians, and we know
we don't like that. So he rode to the city,
sending the bodies of dead clergymen ahead of him. He
constructed a barrier around the city so no one could escape,
and then he and the Opachnik performed the most brutal
attack in their existence, with estimates between two thousand and

(22:38):
fifteen thousand casualties. Merchants were tortured, nobles were roasted with
what one chronicler called a quote clever fire making device,
which just sounds like a fifteen hundreds like flamethrower. Women
and children were tied up and thrown into the frozen river,
where they would be trapped under the eye drowned. God,

(23:02):
that sounds horrible.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Oh yeah, oh, and then they had boatmen riding around
with spears to make sure they got anyone who didn't drown.
Oh my god. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Well, those who confessed to treason after torture were dragged
behind sleds across town, and then peasants' homes were looted
and destroyed, and if they survived his attack, many starved
or froze later because they had nowhere to live.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, there's a whole lot of history about the massacre
of Novgrod, if anyone's interested in Russian history, there's i mean,
just books dedicated to just this event. Of course, all
we have time for is a paragraph, but it's wild,
very upsetting. Well, the next year, in fifteen seventy one,

(23:45):
another fire broke out in Moscow. Damn these fires, third
one and this time it was definitely deliberate, because see
the Crimean and Ottoman forces had come to attack Moscow
and they set the suburbs on fire and it's huge,
which wind came in and it blew the fire into
the city. In six hours, the palace, the oprichnin the headquarters,

(24:09):
and the suburbs had completely burned down. WHOA. People were fleeing.
They rushed into stone cathedrals, and a lot of those
cathedrals collapsed, either from the heat of the fire or
just from the sheer number of people shoving their way
into them. Other people jumped into the river and many
of them drowned. The gunpowder storage room at the Kremlin exploded.

(24:31):
Casualties were estimated to be between sixty thousand and two
hundred thousand people. Afterwards, Ivan ordered bodies found in the
streets to be thrown into the river, but there were
so many that it caused flooding.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Yeah. Historian James Horsey wrote that it took more than
a year to clean out all the bodies. You know,
the smell was like, oh my god, just horrible. After this,
the Oprichnina was disbanded and the lands of the Oprichnina
and the Zemschena were reunified under one new Boyar council

(25:09):
that Ivan helped pick out. Now, historians think Ivan might
have found the country being divided into two sections was
just too ineffective while the country was dealing with this
big war that they were losing. Maybe Ivan felt like
he'd achieved his goal by striking fear into everyone's hearts,
so his opposition wasn't going to be so you know,

(25:30):
it's going to be easier to put down. So he
got rid of the Obergnina, the Oberjnik. They were done now,
And they generally think that he recognized it wasn't doing
anything good for him at this point, but he wanted
to look like it was a success. So he was
just kind of like, we're done with this now, great
job me. It worked exactly like I wanted to and

(25:50):
now I can get rid of it.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
He unraveled that big mission, accomplished exactly right, palace.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Well, by now, I think you'll probably know the patterns,
so you know what's coming next, because it goes Ivan's
wife gets poisoned, a bunch of people get executed, and
then there's a big fire, and then it's time for
another beauty pageant.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
It was time for Ivan to get a new bride,
since now what three have been poisoned.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
You know, everybody that had to show up was like, well,
I guess I'm gonna be poisoned.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
I remember in part No.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
One year or two or thirteen. But it's gonna happen,
I know.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
I remember in part one we said that some of
the girls were probably excited to go in and take
part in this beauty pageant because marrying this are was
so cool. And by now it's probably like, oh god,
it's like American idol, Like I hope I get second place,
because then I'm not locked into this horrible contract. But
maybe I'll get a good record deal. I love that. Actually,

(26:54):
actually this is not far from the truth, because sometimes
the uh, the runners up in the beauty pageant would
end up marrying other nobles. Sure, one of them even
went to one of Ivan's sons. No, I could second
place was probably not bad.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Well, I actually I remember, did you ever see the
Man in the Iron Mask?

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah? Wow, yeah, yeah, way back when.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
I just remember when Louis the shitty one was like
starting to hit on that girl and she starts to
get really worried. And I remember when I watched it.
Of course it was when it came out. I was
younger and everything, and I was like, oh, well, why
she was so worried. It's great the king likes her,
you know, she's set for life. But actually everybody knew
that it was really not great, right, be either too

(27:36):
favored or too disfavored by the ruler, Like you want
to be nice in the middle somewhere where he likes you,
and then he forgets you.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Relatively exactly true with a lot of bosses, I think,
you know, like I want you to like me and
then not think of me when you're making decisions. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
So, once again, young women are called from across Land,
and in October fifteen, seventy one out of twelve finalists,
Ivan gave the rose to Marfa Sobachina. He arranged their
marriage and this time they would stay in an impenetrable fortress,
which Ivan had filled with only loyalists. Absolutely no one

(28:19):
was going to get to his third wife, Marfa. And
she's dead.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Oh no, what.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Yeah, only sixteen days after their wedding, Marfa died of
a mysterious ailment. God. Now, it was rumored and is
probably true, that Marfa's own mother accidentally poisoned her with
a potion that was meant to increase her fertility. So
that's really tragic because you know, Marfa's mom is like,

(28:48):
I'm just trying to set you up for success, right
in your very scary marriage to the worst man in
the world, and she accidentally kills her own kid. That's
so sad.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
And you know we mentioned in the last episode a
lot of meta distance back then used mercury and other toxins,
so it's likely that, you know, Marfa just took too
much of a bad thing in order to try to
be the mother you know, of the heir to the
to the czar, and like secure her position for life. Right,
but that is really sad, it is I feel really
bad for Marfa's mom.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Oh, all of them. Well, you know, at least Ivan,
we know calmly and quietly accepted the death of his wife,
and he spent a few weeks in quiet morning. Are
you kidding me? Of course not. No, he went absolutely nuts.
I mean, his his impregnable fortress had been impregnant, so pregnant, impregnant,

(29:42):
somebody impregnant it so it once again, Ivan got super
paranoid that everyone he trusted was out to get him,
and he immediately executed twenty people, including his previous wife's brother,
Mikhail Timryukovna, and much of Marfa's own family. Now this time,

(30:04):
Ivan decided that he better get married real quick before
another fire broke out, and he just went ahead and picked.
Speaking of runners up, Anna Koltovskaya. She was an eighteen
year old girl and she had also been in the
last beauty pageant. But the Orthodox Church had a real
problem with Ivan going into a fourth marriage. In fact,

(30:25):
their rule was quote the first marriage is law, the
second an extraordinary concession. The third is a violation of law.
The fourth is an impiet a state similar to that
of the animals.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Damn, So even though they're not alive.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yep, they said you get three marriages. I imagine they're like,
if you're getting married a fourth time, God doesn't want
you to be married?

Speaker 2 (30:53):
You know, I guess, so, I guess you could.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
I got hint. This is the official stance of the church. Hint.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Well, Ivan, we know is not the kind of guy
to say, well, rules a rule. But he did throw
the clergy a bone here. He did not roast them
all like marshmallows with a medieval flamethrower.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Oh good for him.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, some real growth growth and with iron right now.
He actually told them, you know, look, my third wife
died in practically zero days. We never got a chance
to consummate the marriage. That one don't count, okay, but
count count me.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Four wives.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
He organized a meeting at the Church of Assumption and
he gave this heartfelt speech about all the loss he'd
endured and his struggle to find a bride, and it
reportedly moved the clergy to tears. So they said he
could marry her, but he would have to do penance
for a year. And so they married in April of

(32:02):
fifteen seventy two, and they took their honeymoon and sunny.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Noma Gorod, Oh.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
The city that he had decimated two years earlier. Wow,
it's lovely this time of year. Right, Yes, Anna, I'd
love to take you to this beautiful cathedral, but sort
of burned it.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Down, although we give you a tour of town. That's
what I said, the guy with forty spears.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
This is the river that has so many women and
children in it.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Oh, you can still smell the barbecue. Oh God, what
a weird choice for honeymoon.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
I mean, I guess its many options.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
I'd be like, is this honeymoon a threat?

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Are you transcend a message here? Well? Okay, So at
this point in history, with the opperach Nina disbanded, uh,
the war going on and not great. There aren't a
ton of big events over the next few years in
terms of the story we're telling, And according to Natalia
Pushkareva's book Women Inrussian History on the Koltovskaya did have
a good influence on Ivan for a while. Russian sorenas

(33:06):
are not allowed to associate with common folk, including their
own families. So it was pretty customary that when a
woman marries as Are, her family would be moved to
the court and given noble titles so that she could
still associate.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
With them, which we've seen before oh many times. I'm
particularly thinking about ancient China episodes that we've done where
they're like, oh, you know, she marries the emperor and
her whole family gets lifted up. So as part of
the reason, the families are like pushing their daughters to
these parts that they're like, it's not even about you, Yeah,
it's about me.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
But unfortunately, honest family did not fit in well at court,
so they had a hard time making allies, and after
two years, Ivan and Anna had not been able to
conceive a child, so Ivan supposedly started to get kind
of bored with her and he sent her off to
live in a convent. She took the name Daria and

(34:02):
lived out her days there without ever getting poisoned. She
actually outlived Ivan himself. Oh so we're gonna go ahead
and call this one a win for Anna.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
Yeahza, the best you can hope for is going off
to live as a nun and having a long somewhat
comfortable life without getting poisoned or stabs.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
I mean as comfortable as nuns are. I mean, you know, well,
within the year, I've been decided to go for a
fifth wife. Historian Nikolay Karamzine wrote, quote, the czar, no
longer observing even the slightest decency, no longer seeking the
blessing of the bishops without any church permission, married Anna

(34:45):
Vasiltchikhova in fifteen seventy five.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
So yeah, he wasn't even pretending anymore, right, And anyone
who defied him or was like, hey, you're not supposed
to do that, and they pretty much faced torture and execution,
so nobody challenged it. He got his fifth wife, no problem.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, what a sad existence, though, God I no one
ever spoke to him at all. Is they're just like,
you say the wrong thing, You're dead?

Speaker 2 (35:08):
I mean, isn't that sort of the I mean not
just the only one. But one of the tragedies of
being a very paranoid person is that you end up
pushing so many people away that you like are lonely,
and you can't help but feel like everybody hates you
because you made them hate you. Like you made them
specifically withdraw from you.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
It becomes a spiral.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Yeah, and kind of a self fulfilling one.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
So yeah, nobody challenged this marriage, and Ivan and Anna
had a small wedding ceremony with just immediate family and
very little is known about her background or their marriage.
But similarly to his last Ana, this one was shipped
off to a monastery after two years. But unlike the
last Ana, it's believed that she died violently at the convent,

(35:54):
and rumors started to be spread that Ivan himself had
her killed.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah. Yeah, he's getting to the point where, you know,
nobody wrongs him and he doesn't leave any loose ends anywhere.
He's like, oh, I'm getting rid of this wife that
I was with for two years, but what if she talks,
what if she starts plotting revenge against me? Whatever? And
so he sent somebody in there to uh, I think

(36:19):
stabber a bunch of times.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Maybe the first Anna just took like a vow of
silence or something, and he's not to worry about it.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Just caught him in a good mood, right, maybe.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Or she changed her name and he's like, what it
was her name again?

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Whatever?

Speaker 2 (36:32):
I don't know anyway, look for if you find.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Now. At this point, Bush Garreva writes, quote, even people
at court could not keep track of the series of
women who appeared and disappeared beside the Czar's throne. Ivan
would take women in, but he had a hard time
actually caring about anyone, and they and their families generally
weren't treated well, And of course things didn't end too well. Again,

(36:57):
I really just think that he was looking to recapture
that feeling that he had with Anastasia. Yeah, and he
didn't know how to find it. He was too far
away from the person he was back then and he
couldn't be that anymore.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
But then came Vasalisa Melentieva, his sixth wife, or was she.
There's a bit of a mystery here, and we're gonna
get back to that miss Damsel right after this break.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Welcome back, everybody.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
Some historians think that Vasalisa Melentieva was Ivan the Terrible's
sixth wife, but others suggest she might not have existed
at all. Most of her story comes from a book
by Alexander Sula Katzev, who was notorious for writing fake
histories in the nineteenth century damn misinformation right way back

(37:53):
in the eighteen hundreds. This guy was doing it right up.

Speaker 5 (37:56):
He was just like the original clickbait. He's like whatever, right, right,
crazy story? People buy it, who cares, and then they
believe it journalistic integrity. But of course, Nikolai Karamzine and
more modern researchers did find documents that confirm that Vasilisa
was at least real and did have a special relationship
with Ivan. So it's possible that she was simply a

(38:18):
concubine if not his actual sixth wife.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Ah, okay, okay, So maybe no marriage here, Yeah, hard
to see he was there.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Some definitely think that there was a marriage, and some
think there probably wasn't.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Well. The story goes that her husband, Nikita, worked in
the Tsar's court, and Ivan had him poisoned and brought
Bessilissa to live with him instead.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
Ah. The old switcheroo call.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
That she was, according to Pushkareva quote, such a beauty
that none of the maidens at the bridal pageant could
match her. This keeps happening, Yeah, beauties constantly right, And
allegedly Ivan was pretty happy with her. She was a
bit older than his other brides, and she was kind

(39:02):
of like Anastasia. She was sweet and calming. But a
few months in Ivan's marital luck ran out again and
he discovered Vasilisa was having an affair with a prince
named dev letel No, which is just absolutely the dumbest
thing she could have done, right, like this little last
guy I would cheat on. So I've been forced Vasilisa

(39:25):
to watch as he had her lover impales, and then
he exiled her to a convent as well, and then
she allegedly died mysteriously later that year, and some think
it's possible that Ivan had her killed as well.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
So I'm kind of wondering about the validity of this
story for a couple of reasons. One, like you said,
who would bait this man into having any reason to
be mad at you? I mean, at the same time,
how could she possibly be happy with him? So maybe
that was she just really loved this guy, and she
was like, I can't not be with you because my

(39:59):
husband is literally one of the worst people in history.
That's true, so I see that. But also it does
seem like I would just be on eggshells the entire time.
I wouldn't be runing around, cheating or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
I know, although maybe you're right, and she's like, it's
only a matter of time before he turns on me. Anyways,
CONGRATU while.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
I can that's true. I guess maybe my bigger question
is Devlatev. Who would be that stupid to cheat with IV?
In the Terrible Spike, I.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Was about to say this thing if she was like,
I'm ready, I.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
Don't keep it. I don't care if you're a twelve.
I am sorry, but your husband is literally the most
frightening person in a country with a history full of
frightening people.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Seriously, he's going to roast me over an open fire,
like I'm not gonna know.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
But my other reason I'm not sure if I buy
this is because some of the other elements seem to
be mashed up from previous stories, right, like the fact
that he sent her to a convent and she died there.
You know that she was very calming to him. I
even literally saw the same painting labeled on two different websites,
one as Ivan and Vasilissa and one as Ivan and Anastasia,

(41:08):
So it seems like the parts of their stories are
getting crossed over to Okay, it's hard to say. We
just don't know. It's the fifteen hundreds. There's not a
lot of really good records.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
Right, Apparently you got guys out here just writing.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
I believe well. Ivan's seventh marriage is also disputed, and
little is known about this one, maybe even less. Her
name was Maria Dolgurukaya, and he supposedly married her in
the year fifteen eighty, although some people write their story
as as her being his fifth wife in between the

(41:41):
two anas. Now, if Maria Dolgurukaya existed, the legend says
that she was engaged to Ivan but had an affair
before their wedding. Ivan discovered after their wedding night that
she was not a virgin, and he ordered his guard
to drown her in the frozen river. That's all we
really know about that story. This one maybe even less

(42:05):
likely to be real, but it tracks. I don't not
believe it, you.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Know, I mean, I guess he wanted a personality where
you could believe any number of horrible things about him. Yeah,
so I guess you win, Ivan, Great.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Job, all right. Well, before we get to Ivan's eighth
and final wife, let's do a quick recap at Sarina summary.
Sarna summary. Number one Anastasia Romanov. They have two surviving
sons together at this point, lil Ivan Junior and Feodor.

(42:40):
They were together for thirteen years before she got poisoned
by the boyars.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Number two Maria hemrio Kovna, who also got poisoned, maybe
by Ivan, probably by boyars after eight years of marriage.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Number three Marfa Soobatina, who died sixteen days after their wedding,
probably accidentally poisoned by her mother.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
Number four Anna Koltovskaya, married for two years before he
got bored with her and shipped her to a monastery.
She's still alive in the story, not in her life.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Number five Anna Vasilchikova, also married for two years before
getting sent off to a monastery where she was killed.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Number six Vasilissa Melentieva, they were married for a few
months before I even discovered she was cheating, had her
boyfriend impaled in front of her. She's sent off to
a monastery where she was also killed.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
And number seven Maria Dolgurukaya, who cheated before they got
married and she got dropped. So just a super list
of Sarinas.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
What a super summary.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
They all did stupendously.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
I don't know, some of them did stupid shit, but
that brings us to Zarina number eight, Maria Nagaya. This
woman and this marriage both definitely did exist, so no
questions here. They married in the year fifteen eighty one,
but this was also the year of one of Ivan's

(44:09):
most terrible acts in a long time. Ivan had actually
been trying to make amends for his uprich Nina years
by making massive donations to monasteries. He would visit other
towns and pray at their churches for his victims, and
Russia had been weakened under his strict and violent rule,

(44:30):
and the war wasn't going well either. Ivan's son, Ivan Junior,
had been married three times since he was twelve years old.
The first two wives did not produce children quickly, so
Ivan Senior had them each shipped off to convents, so
the two Ivan's relationship was pretty strained.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Ivan Junior's third wife was Yolena Sharremiteva, and she was
found to be pregnant in October of fifteen eighty one,
and everyone was thrilled. Ivan Junior course was in line
to be Ivan the Fifth, the next Czar of Russia,
and he already had his family lined up and ready
to go. He was going to have an heir himself.

(45:10):
But on November fifteenth, fifteen eighty one, Ivan the Terrible
saw his daughter in law, Yelena, wearing what he saw
as immodest clothing, and he started to beat her. Ivan
Junior ran in hearing his wife's screams, and he stopped
his father, shouting at him, quote, you sent my first

(45:30):
wife to a convent, did the same with my second,
and now you strike the third, causing the death of
the son she holds in her womb. And indeed Yelena
suffered a miscarriage just shortly after.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
This damn Iivan Yeah. On the next day, Ivan Junior
confronted his father. They had already been fighting over Ivan
the fourth military failures, and Ivan Junior had tried to
raise his own army to save the besieged city of Puskov.
So when Ivan Junior shouted at his father for beating
his wife, the czar changed the subject and accused him

(46:05):
of inciting a rebellion by raising his own forces. Ivan
Junior denied it, but he insisted the city be liberated,
at which point Ivan the Terrible lost his temper and
struck his son over the head with his scepter. Ivan
Junior collapsed to the ground, bleeding from the head, barely conscious.
His father immediately threw himself down on the ground and

(46:28):
cradled his son, crying, quote, May I be damned, I've
killed my son. I've killed my son. The younger Ivan
regained consciousness briefly and reportedly said quote, I die as
a devoted son and most humble servant. His father prayed

(46:49):
over his bedside for the next few days, but on
November nineteenth, young Ivan, heir to the Russian throne, died
at twenty seven years old. This again, Ivan's just he
can't hold on to his temper at all. He's just
like he doesn't really have a focus for any of
his violence.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Really, this is like the most tragic part to me
because you see especially him like collapsing to the ground. That, yeah,
his his reactions are out of his own control, right.
He has these violent outbursts that I don't think he
knows he's doing until he's done them. Obviously, no excuse,
but it's just it makes he's so much more than

(47:30):
just an awful person. He's really got mental health issues.
I think, and most historians say that as well, that
he was not a sane a fully sane person in
control of his own faculties right like he was losing
it or had lost it long ago. The guy really
needed some some therapy and maybe some medications. He certainly

(47:51):
didn't need to have this kind of power.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
No, it's only making him a billion times worse.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
This scepter that he hit his son with, he cared
around for that purpose. He would beat people with it
all the time.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Of course, what else do you do with this scepter?

Speaker 1 (48:05):
I guess and his son just like challenged him once, like,
just stood up to him, and his immediate reaction, without thinking,
without even knowing who was in front of him, was
to swing that thing and bash him over the head
with it.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Yeah, it's like very knee jerk.

Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yes. Now. Ivan didn't really care much for his eighth wife,
Maria Nagaya, but she bore him a son the next year,
fifteen eighty two, and they named him Dimitri, and this
is believed to be what saved her from being exiled
or worse. But later that year Ivan sent a letter
off to our old friend Queen Elizabeth the First of

(48:40):
England two and he said, Hey, I want to marry
your relative Mary Hastings and create an alliance between our
two nations. Russia had only formed their first trade connections
with England in the last few decades, and he saw
them as a very powerful ally, you know, for blanking

(49:00):
Middle Europe. Sure, he said in his letter that, yeah,
I know that I'm married, but you know what, I
will totally ditch my wife if you agreed to me
marrying your cousin.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Well, Elizabeth pretty much did not respond to this letter,
maybe because ten years earlier I even had exchanged two
other letters with her. One offered some political proposal, and
when she rejected him, he wrote the second letter, which
basically said, Wow, I thought you were a good ruler,
but I guess your country is actually ruled by merchants

(49:34):
that only care about prophets quote and you flower in
your maidenly a state like a maid.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
That ain't the way to go with Queen Elizabeth.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Oh my god. Yeah no, it's the first letter, no
mention of her being a queen, and his second one
he's like, wow, well this is what happens when women rule,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Like jeez, dude, your dumb female brain. Uh huh, can't
grasp the intricacies and my perfect proposal.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
I guess you're just flouncing around in your gardens, you know,
doing curtsies and watching the notebook.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
And Queen Elizabeth is like, meanwhile, how many fires have
we had?

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Right?

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Seriously, after your Queen Elizabeth read this letter, she kind
of it, probably took a breath right, got her temper
together because that was something she could do. And she
wrote back, yeah, that is not how it goes over here.
She wrote, quote, we rule ourselves with the honor befitting
a virgin queen appointed by God, and no sovereign, thanks

(50:39):
to God, has more obedient subjects. So she's like, you
know all that disloyalty you're dealing with, I know nothing
of it.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah. Second, oh, I'm sorry. I have my shit together
over here.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
All right.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
You're out here begging for a wife when you're already married,
just so you can hold your country together.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Okay, my best he's over here not getting married quick
for me.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
I got three dudes on hold, I got.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Men on men on men, but none on me.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Well, fortunately before any poor english woman was sent off
to marry Ivan the Terrible, he died of a stroke
in fifteen eighty four while playing chess with a friend,
and across Russia there was much rejoicing ding Dong. Well,
or there might have been, except there wasn't really a

(51:35):
great air in place, because he had killed his eldest
son Ivan. His younger son, Feodor was next in line,
and he was named Zar pretty quickly. But this guy
was really quiet. He was kind of sickly, and he
was just this sweet, good natured little kid who had
pretty much no interest in politics. They said that he

(51:56):
liked to visit churches and he would ask them to
ring the bells and they got there because he just
liked to hear the bells ring. That he was actually
nicknamed Theodora, the bell ringer. And I just picture this
guy is like and he likes to sit down and
play with the bunnies, you know, chasing around butterflies. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Well, I guess he he's a lot more like honest
to see you, yea, his.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Mother and him for sure. And of course he was
but only three years old himself when his mother died.
Oh wow, so yeah, so he grew up just kind
of like can I just stay out of it please?

Speaker 2 (52:32):
I know, well, I would, That's definitely would be me.
I'd be like, I'm just seeing y'all's drama. It's very exhausted.
I'm gonna go sit over here, listen to some bells,
reading my books.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
Reading my books under the bell tell it. I mean,
you know, you think of it. He's the spare, right,
So Ivan probably put all of his like fatherness into
Ivan Junior, like I'm gonna do tryna be a man
son because you'll be czar one day, not thinking that,
you know, the other way would go, and little Fyodor
is just like, Okay, well, I'm just gonna go be

(53:04):
sweetie man.

Speaker 2 (53:05):
That's another thing I think is so weird, how many
times in history that they've had to resort to the
spare right, And even so people are like, I'm not
going to spend any time in the spare, you know, Like,
but what if he does have to? I mean, you
should should both know what to do.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Well. So everyone was kind of expecting Fyodor to not
really rule for very long because he was kind of
weak and he was kind of sick. The next in
line might have been Ivan and Maria's son Dmitri from
his last marriage, but in fifteen ninety one, at only
eight years old. Dmitri died under mysterious circumstances.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
And Boris Goldenov was the boyar who was effectively running
the country while Fyodor was you know, checked out listening
to the bells and stuff. And Maria Nagaya and her
brothers supported a theory that Boris had Dmitri killed to
strengthen his own power. Sure, but the modern scholars tend
to think Boris was not involved. So the most likely

(54:04):
theory is that Dmitri was playing a game called Sviika
where boys would throw this sharp spear into the ground.
But then he had a seizure which he was prone to,
and he fell down in such a way that the
spear cut his neck.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
Right.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
What a freak.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Accident, A total freak accident. That's the more accepted theory
about what happened.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
But when Czar Fyodor died in fifteen ninety eight without
an air it kicked off what's known in Russian history
as the time of Troubles, where in three different men
at different times claimed to be Dmitri, all grown up like.
There was this huge cult of people who believed that

(54:49):
Dmitri actually survived. So there's false Dmitri one, two and
three they call him, and these three guys that stepped
up and actually did rule Russia of them for a time.
It was chaotic. I mean, no one knew who was
in charge. This is a whole other, a whole other show.
I mean, this is this is Russian history that deserves

(55:09):
like a ten part series just on the false Dmitries
and the time of troubles at things. But the summary
is that things were rough for quite a few years,
almost two decades.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
I love I love that they named it the time
of troubles, unlike all the other times previously. Well, they're
not troubled.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
I mean that tells you right there just how bad
it was. They're like those were normal times. These are
trouble times.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
All the fires, massacres, so on normal ship. This is trouble.

Speaker 1 (55:41):
Russian bar very low. Well, to make a long story short,
In sixteen thirteen, I'm in the terribles government that he
set up. The Zemski Sabor elected a relative of his
first wife, Anastacia, to be the next Czar of Russia.
His name was Michael Romanov. Because remember back when Ivan

(56:03):
and honest Thesia were married people scoffed at the Romanov family.
They thought they were not very important. But now the
Romanovs would go on to rule Russia for the next
three hundred years.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
How crazy fail that? I mean, they basically had to
be like, I don't know, you sort of involved in
the family, I guess, I mean, certainly again, they end
up like holding on to power for so.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Long, right, definitely again another dense history if you study
the time of troubles in Russias more than I had
time to get into. But but yeah, I know I
love that. That. I mean, Ivan just destabilized things so
badly on his way out that they had to completely
switch lines. His dynasty was the Rurics, and they had

(56:53):
ruled Russia for quite a long time and no one
thought they would ever go. But I haven't wiped out
that and started the Romanov dynasty, who, of.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
Course, three hundred years later lost power very spectacularly, right, And.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Then we got up pretty solid Fox Animation Studios musical
movie out of it with Kelsey Grammar. Oh yeah, I
forget that. And the name Anastasia just cringed.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
That's not how you say it, right, Well, I guess
we also say Romanov is also wrong.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Yeah, but who knows Russians. Let us know Russians, let
us know what a story. Even the Terrible again a
name you hear floating through their history, like he was
one of the bad guys henchmen in I think Night
at the Museum two, like the Pharaoh who was like

(57:53):
taken over. He enlisted Ivan the Terrible and Napoleon and
like uh al Capone, I think, to help him take
over the museum. Yeah, exactly. So Ivan's got this historical
image of being terrible, and of course remember his name
does not really mean that, but he also is terrible. Yeah,

(58:14):
so really quite a quite a character, and just a
brutal history here with these poor eight you know, between
six and eight official wives and probably many other women
who well.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
That's what my question is, all these women that they
were like we can't even keep track. Yeah, in that
part of the story, I was like, well what happened
to them?

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Like I imagine he was just like all right, one night stand.
Well maybe he's like a mina of Nigeria and he's like,
I'll just one night stand and then you did.

Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yeah. I remember in part one he grew up as
a as a young teenage boy, he had a supposedly
a different woman every night. Oh yeah, so he was
probably very used to being able to sleep with a
woman anytime you wanted, and there was just women at
his disposal at all times. Would further makes me think
that Ivan's real goal was to find another honest to

(59:05):
see you, find someone who made him happy in that
way that he was, but he again was just too
far gone to ever feel that way again, no matter
who came in.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
I think that's true. I mean, you know, this is
this a terrible guy, but I kind of feel sorry
for him. I feel like there's a lot of There
must be a lot of that throughout history, is I
think we've run into a few times, but especially historians
must often read about particularly leaders where they're like, this
guy is not well right, you know, like if it
had been different, you know, someone would have been like,

(59:38):
let's let's maybe get somebody a little more like stable
and the throne. This guy is crazy, but they didn't
really have, i mean any any tools to address that.
And then of course when we did know kings were
crazy in England, they were just like, well put them
in a room by himself. But he's still going to

(59:58):
be king. I don't know, we can't can't change it.
It's just so strange. Well, I think you've done a
fine job making us feel sorry for a terrible guy.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Always. My goal is, like, you know, who's looking out
for the murderous white guys? You know we deserve a
little more respect, don't we we?

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I am I going to be poisoned? Or since you're
a monastery, yeah, prepare myself.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
No, I would send myself to a monastery before you.
I think, okay, good, all those nuns, am I right?

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
No, I don't think it's going to turn out the
way you play you're planning. I like that about our
show sometimes because you're able to just look at them
as a person, yeah, throughout there, from their romantic relationships
and stuff, and be like, regardless of all the terrible
things they're doing, there's just a person in here that
is is I don't know, chafing at a lot of

(01:00:54):
things in their life, like his mom being poisoned and stuff,
and he's also so clearly not mentally well and just
I don't know's you can kind of have some sympathy
for that actual person, even though I have very little
sympathy for the ruler and the terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Exactly. Yeah, I was gonna say it goes back to
this thing I say to you often when I'll say
I'm sorry and you say you've got nothing to be
sorry for it, and I said, well, I'm not apologizing,
I'm sympathizing, you know. And that's the difference between those
two sories. And it's like I can feel sorry for
Ivan and everything he'd been through and what led him
to being a monster without apologizing for his behavior at all. Right, no, one,

(01:01:33):
there is no apology for that, but there can be sympathy.
And that doesn't mean, oh, it's okay. Come on, let's
get you a hot bowl of soup and get you
inside and give you a nice comfy bed and you'll,
you know, we'll just we'll just find you a good
wife and then all will be forgiven. No, absolutely not.
You're a monster who murdered and tortured people horribly, and

(01:01:55):
you deserve nothing but the worst. But also it sucks
that you the circumstances that led you to become that
are are awful and shouldn't have happened.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
Yeah, I think that's true. I feel like that's sort
of when you're psychologically talking about you know, some some
terrible criminal and people are like, stop sympathizing with them,
they did horrible things, and it's like, that's true. I
don't you know, you don't want to sympathize with the
criminal over the victims, right, you know? Or something like that,
But we do. I think as people were so fascinated by,

(01:02:25):
like what makes you do something like that? What makes
you into a type of person who can go so
hard against social moras and morals? Yea of like just
not torturing and murdering a bunch of people. Like what
turns you into that person? Is kind of a draw,
is such a curiosity.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
I think we lose sight a little bit of why
we want to know that. I think there's an instinct
that's true that that makes us want to dig into that.
It's the reason true crime is so popular and stuff.
And I think the reason we probably feel that way
is because we want to be active and proactive about
stopping those from happening. But we get a little more
excited about the details and we're just like I just

(01:03:04):
want to know it. I just want to eat it,
and not like I want to do something about it. Yeah.
I think that's really what it comes down to, is
if we're looking so hard at why people are the
way they are, why people do terrible things that we
could not imagine, because well, you know, maybe we find
out that Ivan was that way because people were horrible
to him as a child, and maybe we should treat

(01:03:24):
children better and not poison their mothers. You know, if
that's all we take from this, I think it's a
good lesson, is don't poison children's mothers.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
I find that to be a good lesson as well.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Classic lesson could have avoided all of this. Who knows
what Russia would be like today if the boy ours
hadn't done all that, right, or if they just.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Yeah, if they let honest Sosia live, right, maybe Ivan
would still be himself, you know, but not so bad
right right, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Maybe things would have gotten worse. There's that theory too,
that we were in the best possible timeline.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
Oh that's a theory.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Yeah. Yeah, it's not great. It's not a great thing,
but sometimes I like it. Sometimes I'm like, well, this sucks,
but all other options were worse. Even though I think
they were better, they are actually worse.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
I was gonna say too that. I think what's part
part of us trying to figure out why someone is
the way they are being such a draw is that
we get really frustrated if we find out that they
just are like that because some people are born with
the violent, violent tendency. There's nothing that necessarily makes them
that way. I think we talked about it, like Sid

(01:04:31):
and Nancy, there was really nothing to point to that
was like this is the turning point where they said,
I'm you know, I'm broken now. But they were just
kind of had that impulse in them. And there's something
really scary about that that you can just be born
with that and not have any choice once whatsoever, and
that nothing could have done, no one could have done
anything differently. That's always really hard to accept.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Yeah, and you can't not damage people too, that's so right.
You can't be perfect to everyone around you all the time,
and you're gonna cause some harm, You're gonna cause some
lasting trauma, you know, just passively, right, So just try
not to do it actively. But yeah, I think you're right.
I think some people there's not a lot of answers

(01:05:15):
why do the things they do.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
But for Ivan, maybe for Ivan there seems to be
at least some answers, some triggers in there yet full answers.
There's some triggers yet, but yeah, I don't know. I
hope you all liked this episode, these two episodes too,
learning about Ivan the Terrible and feeling some sympathy for
this horrible.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Monster, or at least for his wives, or at.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
Least for his wives. He deserves some real sympathy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
Yeah, sure, yeah, thanks so much for tuning in for
this one. We would love to hear your thoughts, you know,
tell us about the terrible marriages you've had. We'll read
those on air too.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
I know. Leading it sent to any monastery.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Hopefully not, or maybe you did and it turned out
great for you, like the first Anah Yeah us an email.
We ridict Romance at gmail dot.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Com, Crater, We're on Instagram. I'm at playing to Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Boone and I'm at O Grade. It's Eli and.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
The show is at ridict Romance.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
Thank you again so much for tuning in today spending
your time with us. Hope you love this episode and
we've got many more coming your way.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Can't wait to talk to you soon. Love you, Bob Bay,
so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks for listening
to our show. Tell your friends, names, uncles, and dance
to listen to our show. Ridiculous Well means