February 25, 2025 • 34 mins
In 1605, Dmitri — the son of Ivan the Terrible — became the Tsar of Russia. Less than a year leader, he was brutally deposed. But one question remained: was he actually even the real Dmitri?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised, as legend
has it, Shortly after dawn on May seventeenth, sixteen o six,
Sar Dmitri crouched on a window ledge outside his palace
(00:22):
in Moscow. This was not part of the Russian Emperor's
typical morning routine and was definitely not an activity that
he and his new bride, who was hiding inside in
an adjacent room, would have had on their ideal post
wedding itinerary. But times were desperate. There were assassins closing in,
(00:47):
so Sar Dmitri gazed down from his window perch. The
drop was substantial, but over in the direction of Red Square.
Loyal citizens were street onto the Kremlin grounds. If Dmitri
could leap to the next building, his supportive subjects would
(01:08):
surely be able to arrive in time to protect him
from the horde of coordinated assassins who had surrounded his
bedchambers and were about to break in at any moment.
The next few seconds would prove vital for Czar Dmitri's
life and reign, as well as for the entire course
(01:30):
of early modern Russian history. He prepared to make his
daring leap, But unfortunately for Dmitri, like so many aspects
of the period of political turmoil that would become known
as the Time of Troubles, Dmitri's plan took an almost
comically dire turn. Dmitri slipped and plummeted to the ground,
(01:55):
breaking his leg in the process. He was soon at
the mercy of his enemies, and that's where things got
even more peculiar. In the heat of a violent coup,
plenty of rulers find themselves in the tense and awkward
position of needing to beg for their lives. But even
(02:16):
within that pantheon of impassioned please, the back and forth
that Czar Dmitri had with his particular group of would
be assassins stands out because a good portion of his
pleading supposedly focused on him trying to convince them that
(02:36):
he was in fact who he claimed to be. He
begged his captors to bring him to his people. They'd
embrace him as Czar Dmitri, their rightful leader, or they
could go ask his mother. She'd certainly vouch for him
that he was her son. And the heir of former
Zar Ivan, why not even pray those of ardent faith
(03:01):
would receive confirmation from God that he Dmitri, had been
divinely chosen to rule. With the larger crowd fast approaching, however,
the assassins chose not to waste time praying and to
avoid any further delay by shooting, hacking, and bludgeoning their target,
(03:23):
who may or may not have been the rightful Czar Dmitri,
to death. But Dmitri's story was far from over. Whoever
he truly was, that young emperor who literally fell from
power kicked off quite a trend. Many more so called
(03:44):
false Dmitries would eventually come forward, all claiming to be
the one, the only, the original Czar Dmitri. I'm Danish
forts and this is noble blood. Unlike other famous characters
(04:05):
who probably never existed, such as your King Arthur's or Odysseus's,
there is evidence that at least at the start of
this heightened tale, there was a real person named Dmitri
Ivanovitch who had a hereditary link to the Russian monarchy.
In fifteen eighty two, Tsarevich, or son of the Tsar Dmitri,
(04:29):
was born to Tsar Ivan Vassilovitch, commonly known to the
modern world as Ivan the Terrible, and his sixth wife, Maria.
Relatively few details seem to be known about Dmitri's earliest years,
especially since many accounts of this period focused more on
(04:49):
the royal succession plan, of which the young Tsarevich was
not initially a featured contender. According to some, Dmitri was
not even a fully legitimate Tsarvich. His parentage was not
necessarily in doubt, but per Russian Orthodox law, the offspring
(05:10):
of a man's fourth marriage was typically deemed to be illegitimate,
so the child of a sixth marriage pretty far down
the potential inheritance standings. After Ivan died, his oldest living
son became czar. The new power dynamic was complicated, however,
(05:32):
because Ivan's heir purportedly possessed what might be classified today
as significant neurodivergence or learning disabilities. Ivan had foreseen his
oldest son struggling to rule on his own, and he
appointed a council of regents to help run Russia behind
the scenes. What could go wrong right? An ambitious member
(05:57):
of that council named Boris Godunov soon relished his newfound
influence so much that he didn't see why he should
stop at being mere regent with a sidelined, ineffectual tsar
Boris envisioned taking the throne for himself. This path meant
(06:17):
weeding out all likely future challengers, so Boris pushed the
illegitimate Tsarevich narrative while also exiling Dmitri, along with his
mother and numerous members of their family, to the far
off principality of Uglik. Unfortunately, few memorable personal details about
(06:40):
Dmitri's upbringing appear to have survived. Sources recount that his
grandfather and several relatives, having not taken their banishment very amicably,
plotted to topple Boris. It is highly unlikely that young
Dmitri meaningfully participated in any of that planning, given that
(07:01):
he would have been under the age of eight, but
it is probable that on some level, his family's desired
retribution triggered his tragic demise. In May of fifteen ninety one,
young Dmitri reportedly died in Uglik. His family members were incensed,
(07:25):
certain that the event was a covert murder orchestrated by
Boris as retaliation for their opposition to his governmental control,
and their argument may very well have been valid. As
the circumstances of young Dmitri's death were dubious. Boris sent
(07:46):
an official delegation led by a zealous prince named Vasily
Schiski who will become integral later on, so remember that name,
to investigate the death. But given the conflicts of an
interests involved, it seemed like less an act of proper
due diligence and more like let's say, an oil company
(08:08):
sending a team to check if they were at fault
for an oil spill. Sure enough, the commission ruled that
Dmitri's death was accidental, reporting he had suffered a seizure
at the exact time that he had been playing with
a knife, which had led him to inadvertently cut his
own throat. A possible explanation, sure plausible, you be the judge. Nevertheless,
(08:37):
despite being sad and a little suspicious, more than a
little suspicious, the death of a debatably legitimate tsarvich did
not initially seem to cause that much of a stir
in larger Russian society. After all, in those days, individuals
in line for the throne frequently died in odd accidental
(09:01):
ways years before. Zar Ivan himself had even been said
to have accidentally killed his own eldest son at the time,
which we actually covered in the fittingly titled Ivan the
Terrible and his Oldest Son episode. In general, to many
(09:22):
Russians outside of Moscow, news of Dmitri's passing was likely
met with fairly mild reactions, ranging from who to well
these things happen. Flash forward to sixteen o two. Boris
had successfully become Tzar by out maneuvering and dispatching all
(09:45):
of Ivan the Terrible's remaining descendants, or at least he
thought he was rid of the lineage. Rumblings began that
young Dmitri Ivanovitch had miraculously survived the attempt to kill
him as a boy. After a few months, a man
(10:05):
finally came forth in Poland Lithuania in sixteen o three
and declared that he was, in fact Dmitri, the rightful
claimant to the throne. It was quite the assertion then
and even now. Historians continue to debate the origins of
this mysterious figure. The most widespread theory at the time
(10:29):
was that this Dmitri impostor was originally a monk named
Gregory Otrepev, who had been defrocked for dabbling in dark sorcery.
Sar Boris tried to push that idea to undermine his challenger,
and for centuries that presumption prevailed, largely due to how
(10:52):
the political climate under subsequent regimes dissuaded historians from questioning
that theory. However, modern scholars, less fearful of Russian Tsars
threatening their lives and freedoms, have pretty persuasively shown that
this adult Tsarevich Dmitri impostor could not have been Otripev.
(11:16):
Another key theory is that the pretender was someone raised
to believe he truly was Dmitri. Contemporary witnesses marveled at
how convincing he was, believing that not even a talented
actor could so seamlessly inhabit the role. The proposed timeline
(11:37):
is critical here, since producing a Dmitri who so wholeheartedly
bought into his backstory would have meant in doctrinating him
at a very young age. Considering the contentious rift between
Dmitri's family and Boris Godunov, it's not unthinkable that after
(11:57):
the murder of actual Dmitri as a child, his calculating
relatives had the foresight to immediately start training a replacement
Dmitri to have ready to go when the opportunity arose.
There's a third main theory as to who the pretender
(12:18):
or false Dmitri was the real Dmitri. This notion was
laughed off by many historians over the years, but there
is actually a bit of evidence to possibly bolster that argument. Specifically,
there were many suspicious details involved in the aftermath of
Dmitri's young death. For example, there was a highly irregular
(12:44):
four day delay in bearing his body. The investigative commission
apparently could not confirm that the body was Dmitri, and
a few sources at the time declared outright that the
real Dmitri had been swapped for a different boy before
the alleged murder took place. Dmitri's godfather, at one point
(13:07):
even apparently swore on a cross that the man claiming
to be Dmitri was his true godson, who he'd been
hiding from Boris since the assassination ordeal. But again in
terms of conflicts of interest, Dmitri's close relative insisting that
he had outwitted the man he'd been trying to overthrow
(13:31):
for a quarter of a century is not exactly the
most reliable testimony. Whatever his true identity, this adult Tsarevich
Dmitri was soon making waves, and he amassed an impressive
army to take the throne as Russia's reputedly rightful and
(13:51):
if overlooking the Church's debatable fine print on sons of
sixth marriages, wholly knew ruler naturally, at this point you
might be wondering how this adult Dmitri was able to
sow effectively hoodwink people, or if he was the real deal,
(14:12):
how he managed to convince everyone of that. Looks mattered little,
since few knew or remembered what Dmitri looked like as
a boy. This adult version was apparently not the most
striking or handsome. He was of middling height and had
a distinctive wart by his nose, but he won people
(14:33):
over with his demeanor. As a supposedly twenty two year
old man, this Dmitri was a skilled horse rider, a
brave warrior, smart, and very eloquent. In short, he was popular. Still,
launching a full scale rebellion was not as simple as
(14:54):
trotting around on horseback and making charismatic speeches. Many elements
were involved in winning support from both the Russian people
and the nobility. One massive tragic factor that greatly aided
this Dimitri's case among the people was starvation. One of
the worst famines in Russian history arrived in sixteen o two,
(15:19):
and it was so devastating that contemporary reports estimate that
it ultimately killed roughly one third of the total population.
To czar Boris's credit, he desperately tried to help his
subjects by distributing food and money, but the situation was
(15:40):
so extreme and corruption so rampant that the crisis snowballed,
and with unceasing hunger, disease, and death being overwhelming obstacles
to nuanced reflections on macroeconomics, many surviving citizens predominantly blamed
their leader for the horrific state of things. Thus, when
(16:03):
this new Tsarevich Dmitri emerged, many disgruntled Cossacks, soldiers, merchants,
and townsfolks quickly backed him. Religion was another crucial factor
that helped Dmitri. Throughout the sixteenth century, the major players
at the Kremlin had strived to fortify their standing by
(16:26):
sacrilizing the monarchy. Essentially, the goal was to assure the
Russian Orthodox masses that it was not worth bothering to
question Azar's right to rule, since God handed down that right.
This effectively laid the groundwork for Dmitri in the sense
that his apparent evasion of the assassination attempt against him
(16:49):
when he was a child fit with a story that
he was divinely selected. It was easy enough to even
promote parallels between his grand reas appearance and Christ himself
rising from the grave. Plenty of Lord's influential families and
exiled boyars, members of the highest ranking nobility, also harbored
(17:14):
ample animosity toward tsar Boris, and so they joined the
Tsarevich Dmitri's cause, hoping to sway the political scene back
in their favor. Dmitri's own mother, Maria, had been stripped
of her privileges and forced to go live in cramped
confinement as a nun. So when the plucky supposed Tsavich
(17:38):
arrived with his growing army and promised to bring his
mother back to Moscow and restore her to status if
she confirmed that he was in fact her son, it
likely didn't take her long to declare something along the
lines of yep, definitely this guy is my son everyone. Meanwhile,
(17:58):
in Moscow, Tsar Boris grew increasingly paranoid about the man
leading a military campaign through the country against him. Thus,
in citing the first civil war in early modern Russian history,
harsh punishments awaited anyone deemed to be a supporter of
(18:19):
the impostor Dmitri. Boris tried to counter his rival's popularity
by continuing to espouse the idea that this impostor was
the disgraced monk Otrapev, who was disgraced since he was
clearly debauched and evil. However, it should be noted that
accusing a political foe of being a wicked heretic was
(18:42):
pretty standard practice in those days, and in this case
it does not appear to have significantly helped zar Boris's cause.
Far less helpful to his cause was an illness that
killed him before Tsarevich Dmitri even reached Moscow. So faced
with a magnetic young warrior prince leading a sizeable army
(19:06):
toward them, the noble classes at the Kremlin were suddenly
also offered a relatively easy choice over whether to acknowledge
this Dmitri's legitimacy or call him out as a sacrilegious poser,
to loosely paraphrase their general response, Hi, the long lost Dmitri,
welcome back. We are your loyal supporters and we always
(19:29):
thought so. Dmitri air Quotes was crowned on July twenty first,
sixteen oh five. Historians would later refer to him by
names such as false Dmitri, the first, the pretender Dmitri,
and the quote first false Dmitri. But for now, since
(19:50):
he did undeniably attain the title of Czar, I think
we can simply call him Czar Dmitri. But after riding
Russia's f first Civil War to the highest seat of power,
did he actually have a plan for ruling. It's tricky
to get a complete sense of Czar Dmitri's short reign,
(20:13):
since his successor ordered numerous court documents be destroyed, and
he vigorously tried to discredit his predecessor through an intense
propaganda campaign. Nonetheless, in spite of being frequently labeled a
conniving impostor or evil runaway monk, perhaps the biggest shock
(20:36):
of all is that, gasp, this Dmitri may have been
a deserving and effective monarch. Many of his contemporaries, including
some avowed enemies agreed that he possessed many outstanding qualities.
He was apparently well educated, adept at state craft, and
(20:58):
highly resourced and wise. Czar Dmitri was also an ambitious
military leader who sought to greatly improve Russia's army. Unlike
countless other rulers who eschewed the nitty gritty of battle
preparation in favor of lounging around and bragging about the
(21:19):
size of their conquered territories, Dmitri enjoyed immense popularity with
his soldiers because he actually trained with them. Fun fact,
he was also the first Russian czar to use the
title of emperor, so yeah, he was feeling himself a little.
But still, many biographers point out how, rather than fully
(21:41):
descending into egomania once he gained power, Zar Dmitri actually
apparently tried to use his platform to improve Russia's government.
For example, he ushered in more progressive laws, promoted plans
to further education and scientific research, and even tried to
(22:02):
cut down on bribery of public officials. That last one
may sound basic to the point of obvious, but it
was a decidedly rare stance for seventeenth century Russia. Former
czars were extremely reliant on their private police forces to
terrorize enemies and extort peasants, so the idea of even
(22:25):
proclaiming that someone would want to limit corruption, much less
taking any relevant action, would have been likely laughable to them.
Dmitri was no old school czar, and he went a
step further to try to ensure timely justice for average citizens.
He allowed them to come and petition him in person
(22:48):
twice a week. Imposter or not, you have to give
the guy credit for his dedication. Dmitri's different ruling style
started to rub a few at court the wrong way. However.
He reportedly cut back on traditional ceremonies and dressed in informal,
(23:09):
quote Western ways. He supposedly scorned certain entitled or uneducated,
high born lords. Dmitri also flummixed many of his nobles
by essentially being a bit too chummy. Many nobles were
used to living in fear of provoking vitriol and retribution,
(23:30):
and they were apparently confused as to why Dmitri sometimes
seemed to want to hear them talk without first threatening
them or commanding them to do so. Perhaps far more consequentially,
Dmitri was unusually welcoming of foreign intellectuals, and he did
(23:51):
not follow many of the same religious rights as former czars. Supposedly,
he was reluctant to spend hours in every day he
ate food seen as unclean by the Russian Orthodox Church,
and he was relatively tolerant of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.
(24:12):
The friction between Czar Dmitri and some members of the
aristocracy all came to a head with his planned marriage
Marina Mnishek, was a Polish Catholic princess, daughter of the
commander who had led Dmitri's forces during his rebellious military campaign.
(24:32):
Many higher ups in the Russian Church eventually signed off
on the marriage agreement, but there were fanatical holdouts who
saw this as proof of a plan to secretly convert
Russia to Catholicism. While there is essentially no convincing evidence
that a religious overhaul was ever Zar Dmitri's goal, his
(24:56):
plan to marry Marina gave his usurper the ammunition and
opportunity they needed. His primary usurper would be Vasily Shuisky, who,
if you'll recall, was the power hungry prince who happened
to be the man who once oversaw the dodgy investigation
(25:17):
into the death of Dmitri the child back when he
was eight years old. In an ironic turn of fate,
all these years later, Vasily's ascension to the throne hinged
on him covertly gaining enough allies to oversee a deadly
coup of Dmitri the grown man. Despite some of the
(25:43):
initial wariness regarding Czar Dmitri marrying a Polish Catholic woman,
Russians living in the capitol were still clearly suckers for
a big, glamorous royal wedding. Marina was reportedly given a
warm public welcome in Moscow on May second, sixteen o six,
(26:04):
and over the course of two celebratory weeks there there
were grand processions, Lavish festivities, and on the wedding day itself,
huge crowds who gave the bride enthusiastic ovations. However, cross
cultural tensions also ratcheted up between certain resident Russian factions
(26:26):
and incoming Polish wedding guests. Behind the scenes, Vasily sought
to maximize this chaos by fanning the flames of xenophobia.
While it is again difficult to separate the truth from
rumors that he perpetuated. There were multiple reports of thefts, vandalism,
(26:47):
and even the alleged murder of a Russian by a
Polish visitor. But rather than put his assassination plan into
action as fights spilled onto the streets when Ri and
his security forces were on highest alert, Prince Vasily waited. Finally, cunningly,
(27:08):
Vasly struck at a time when Dmitri was most vulnerable,
the direct aftermath of all the wedding celebrations. By then,
Dmitri was feeling confident that most of the discord and
danger had passed, so seemingly, ever, striving to be a
thoughtful boss, he told half his guard to stand down
(27:30):
to rest. In the wee hours of May seventeenth, sixteen six,
Vasily snuck his amassed group of over two hundred armed horsemen, merchants, clerics,
and relatives into the Kremlin. At the same time, he
played up the idea around Moscow that the Polish were attacking,
(27:52):
so that angered crowds would storm the gates and inadvertently
block reinforcements from coming to Czar Dmitri's aid. Dmitri still
had enough time to retreat through his chambers and try
to leap out the window to safety. But we now
know how that turned out. Even for an athletic guy
(28:15):
who loved military training exercises, he likely never practiced specific
window escapes. After he fell and unsuccessfully tried to reason
with his attackers, who clearly did not buy into his
identity and overall hype, he was murdered. Thus ended the
(28:36):
life of an enigmatic figure who had ruled for a
little under a year, been married for a little over
a week, had played a starring role in Russia's first
Civil War, and ostensibly became the only czar to take
over the throne thanks to popular uprisings and a military campaign.
(29:00):
It's worth taking a moment here to recognize just how
influential this young man's unprecedented reign potentially was, even though
it was so brief. From Zar Dmitri's legal reforms to
his incentives that improved many citizens' livelihoods, to his military innovations,
(29:20):
Zar Dmitri demonstrably backed up his purported goal of governing
as a fair minded emperor rather than a ruthless tyrant.
Historian Richard Helley went so far as to call Zar
Dmitri quote one of the few really enlightened rulers Russia
has ever had. Several scholars have even argued that Czar
(29:43):
Dmitri's short but productive rule made him a clear forerunner
to Peter the Great. The flip side of his legacy
is that while he was a potential role model for
future czars, Dmitri also served as a an excellent proof
of concept for subsequent royal pretenders. Following Czar Dmitri's assassination,
(30:09):
Vasily immediately began fretting over his victim's legendary popularity and
hold on Russia's collective imagination. He ordered that Dmitri's body
be dragged through the street in a horrific manner to
show everyone that he was not some divinely selected monarch
(30:29):
and that he was very clearly dead. But if there
was one thing that Vasily had not prepared for in
all of his scheming, it was having to deal with
a czar who would not remain dead, a czar whose
ghost would insist on haunting him throughout the rest of
(30:50):
his life. Really, this oversight was silly, a Vasily, having
led the investigation of Dmitri's murder back when Dmitri was
a child, Vasily knew as well as anyone that this
wasn't the first time that Dmitri had quote unquote died
and returned from beyond the grave. The last time Dmitri
(31:14):
had been murdered, Ham had accidentally slit his own throat
as an unsupervised knife wielding caeizure prone child. It took
over a decade for rumors to start spreading that Dmitri
had miraculously survived this time, though whispers that Dmitri Ivanovitch
(31:35):
had somehow, yet again cheated death would begin circulating within
a matter of days. That's the first part of the
wild and duplicitous story of the false Dmitris. But stick
around after a brief sponsor break to hear about another
(31:56):
key slip up that helped to seal Csar Dmitri's fate.
The intriguing duality of Zar Dmitri was such that some
of the same traits that won him favor, like his
thoughtful approach to doling out justice, also directly contributed to
(32:19):
his own downfall. Specifically, this was the case with an
early assassination attempt on the Czar's life. The assassination attempt
was easily sniffed out right after Zar Dmitri took over
in Moscow, and guess who was behind it? One Vasily Schwisky.
That's right, good old Vasily tried to pull off a
(32:41):
murderous plan with his two brothers, but this time early on,
he was caught and put on trial in what basically
played out like a riveting Time of Troubles era episode
of Law and Order. Zar Dmitri himself acted as prosecutor.
He reportedly wowed the crowd with his eloquent argument against
(33:02):
Vasily's family history of traitorous behavior, and Vasily was sentenced
to death several days later in Red Square. However, Dmitri
allegedly halted Vasily's execution at the last second, in a
dramatic reversal likely intended to foster unity. Dmitri mercifully exiled
(33:25):
Vasily to a far off town where we know now.
Vasily spent time strategizing about how to return for his
next assassination attempt. So as strategic as his eventual successful
usurping was, Vasily perhaps does not deserve too much credit,
(33:46):
considering it was his second try. He bungled his first
attempt and was still granted a second chance to go,
perfect his plan and return once he was ready to
fully step in to ahem starring role. Noble Blood is
(34:12):
a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional
writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy
Hit and Julia Melaney. The show is edited and produced
by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il KLi and
(34:35):
executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm
and Mild from Aaron Manky listener discretion advised, as legend
has it, Shortly after dawn on May seventeenth, sixteen o six,
Sar Dmitri crouched on a window ledge outside his palace
(00:22):
in Moscow. This was not part of the Russian Emperor's
typical morning routine and was definitely not an activity that
he and his new bride, who was hiding inside in
an adjacent room, would have had on their ideal post
wedding itinerary. But times were desperate. There were assassins closing in,
(00:47):
so Sar Dmitri gazed down from his window perch. The
drop was substantial, but over in the direction of Red Square.
Loyal citizens were street onto the Kremlin grounds. If Dmitri
could leap to the next building, his supportive subjects would
(01:08):
surely be able to arrive in time to protect him
from the horde of coordinated assassins who had surrounded his
bedchambers and were about to break in at any moment.
The next few seconds would prove vital for Czar Dmitri's
life and reign, as well as for the entire course
(01:30):
of early modern Russian history. He prepared to make his
daring leap, But unfortunately for Dmitri, like so many aspects
of the period of political turmoil that would become known
as the Time of Troubles, Dmitri's plan took an almost
comically dire turn. Dmitri slipped and plummeted to the ground,
(01:55):
breaking his leg in the process. He was soon at
the mercy of his enemies, and that's where things got
even more peculiar. In the heat of a violent coup,
plenty of rulers find themselves in the tense and awkward
position of needing to beg for their lives. But even
(02:16):
within that pantheon of impassioned please, the back and forth
that Czar Dmitri had with his particular group of would
be assassins stands out because a good portion of his
pleading supposedly focused on him trying to convince them that
(02:36):
he was in fact who he claimed to be. He
begged his captors to bring him to his people. They'd
embrace him as Czar Dmitri, their rightful leader, or they
could go ask his mother. She'd certainly vouch for him
that he was her son. And the heir of former
Zar Ivan, why not even pray those of ardent faith
(03:01):
would receive confirmation from God that he Dmitri, had been
divinely chosen to rule. With the larger crowd fast approaching, however,
the assassins chose not to waste time praying and to
avoid any further delay by shooting, hacking, and bludgeoning their target,
(03:23):
who may or may not have been the rightful Czar Dmitri,
to death. But Dmitri's story was far from over. Whoever
he truly was, that young emperor who literally fell from
power kicked off quite a trend. Many more so called
(03:44):
false Dmitries would eventually come forward, all claiming to be
the one, the only, the original Czar Dmitri. I'm Danish
forts and this is noble blood. Unlike other famous characters
(04:05):
who probably never existed, such as your King Arthur's or Odysseus's,
there is evidence that at least at the start of
this heightened tale, there was a real person named Dmitri
Ivanovitch who had a hereditary link to the Russian monarchy.
In fifteen eighty two, Tsarevich, or son of the Tsar Dmitri,
(04:29):
was born to Tsar Ivan Vassilovitch, commonly known to the
modern world as Ivan the Terrible, and his sixth wife, Maria.
Relatively few details seem to be known about Dmitri's earliest years,
especially since many accounts of this period focused more on
(04:49):
the royal succession plan, of which the young Tsarevich was
not initially a featured contender. According to some, Dmitri was
not even a fully legitimate Tsarvich. His parentage was not
necessarily in doubt, but per Russian Orthodox law, the offspring
(05:10):
of a man's fourth marriage was typically deemed to be illegitimate,
so the child of a sixth marriage pretty far down
the potential inheritance standings. After Ivan died, his oldest living
son became czar. The new power dynamic was complicated, however,
(05:32):
because Ivan's heir purportedly possessed what might be classified today
as significant neurodivergence or learning disabilities. Ivan had foreseen his
oldest son struggling to rule on his own, and he
appointed a council of regents to help run Russia behind
the scenes. What could go wrong right? An ambitious member
(05:57):
of that council named Boris Godunov soon relished his newfound
influence so much that he didn't see why he should
stop at being mere regent with a sidelined, ineffectual tsar
Boris envisioned taking the throne for himself. This path meant
(06:17):
weeding out all likely future challengers, so Boris pushed the
illegitimate Tsarevich narrative while also exiling Dmitri, along with his
mother and numerous members of their family, to the far
off principality of Uglik. Unfortunately, few memorable personal details about
(06:40):
Dmitri's upbringing appear to have survived. Sources recount that his
grandfather and several relatives, having not taken their banishment very amicably,
plotted to topple Boris. It is highly unlikely that young
Dmitri meaningfully participated in any of that planning, given that
(07:01):
he would have been under the age of eight, but
it is probable that on some level, his family's desired
retribution triggered his tragic demise. In May of fifteen ninety one,
young Dmitri reportedly died in Uglik. His family members were incensed,
(07:25):
certain that the event was a covert murder orchestrated by
Boris as retaliation for their opposition to his governmental control,
and their argument may very well have been valid. As
the circumstances of young Dmitri's death were dubious. Boris sent
(07:46):
an official delegation led by a zealous prince named Vasily
Schiski who will become integral later on, so remember that name,
to investigate the death. But given the conflicts of an
interests involved, it seemed like less an act of proper
due diligence and more like let's say, an oil company
(08:08):
sending a team to check if they were at fault
for an oil spill. Sure enough, the commission ruled that
Dmitri's death was accidental, reporting he had suffered a seizure
at the exact time that he had been playing with
a knife, which had led him to inadvertently cut his
own throat. A possible explanation, sure plausible, you be the judge. Nevertheless,
(08:37):
despite being sad and a little suspicious, more than a
little suspicious, the death of a debatably legitimate tsarvich did
not initially seem to cause that much of a stir
in larger Russian society. After all, in those days, individuals
in line for the throne frequently died in odd accidental
(09:01):
ways years before. Zar Ivan himself had even been said
to have accidentally killed his own eldest son at the time,
which we actually covered in the fittingly titled Ivan the
Terrible and his Oldest Son episode. In general, to many
(09:22):
Russians outside of Moscow, news of Dmitri's passing was likely
met with fairly mild reactions, ranging from who to well
these things happen. Flash forward to sixteen o two. Boris
had successfully become Tzar by out maneuvering and dispatching all
(09:45):
of Ivan the Terrible's remaining descendants, or at least he
thought he was rid of the lineage. Rumblings began that
young Dmitri Ivanovitch had miraculously survived the attempt to kill
him as a boy. After a few months, a man
(10:05):
finally came forth in Poland Lithuania in sixteen o three
and declared that he was, in fact Dmitri, the rightful
claimant to the throne. It was quite the assertion then
and even now. Historians continue to debate the origins of
this mysterious figure. The most widespread theory at the time
(10:29):
was that this Dmitri impostor was originally a monk named
Gregory Otrepev, who had been defrocked for dabbling in dark sorcery.
Sar Boris tried to push that idea to undermine his challenger,
and for centuries that presumption prevailed, largely due to how
(10:52):
the political climate under subsequent regimes dissuaded historians from questioning
that theory. However, modern scholars, less fearful of Russian Tsars
threatening their lives and freedoms, have pretty persuasively shown that
this adult Tsarevich Dmitri impostor could not have been Otripev.
(11:16):
Another key theory is that the pretender was someone raised
to believe he truly was Dmitri. Contemporary witnesses marveled at
how convincing he was, believing that not even a talented
actor could so seamlessly inhabit the role. The proposed timeline
(11:37):
is critical here, since producing a Dmitri who so wholeheartedly
bought into his backstory would have meant in doctrinating him
at a very young age. Considering the contentious rift between
Dmitri's family and Boris Godunov, it's not unthinkable that after
(11:57):
the murder of actual Dmitri as a child, his calculating
relatives had the foresight to immediately start training a replacement
Dmitri to have ready to go when the opportunity arose.
There's a third main theory as to who the pretender
(12:18):
or false Dmitri was the real Dmitri. This notion was
laughed off by many historians over the years, but there
is actually a bit of evidence to possibly bolster that argument. Specifically,
there were many suspicious details involved in the aftermath of
Dmitri's young death. For example, there was a highly irregular
(12:44):
four day delay in bearing his body. The investigative commission
apparently could not confirm that the body was Dmitri, and
a few sources at the time declared outright that the
real Dmitri had been swapped for a different boy before
the alleged murder took place. Dmitri's godfather, at one point
(13:07):
even apparently swore on a cross that the man claiming
to be Dmitri was his true godson, who he'd been
hiding from Boris since the assassination ordeal. But again in
terms of conflicts of interest, Dmitri's close relative insisting that
he had outwitted the man he'd been trying to overthrow
(13:31):
for a quarter of a century is not exactly the
most reliable testimony. Whatever his true identity, this adult Tsarevich
Dmitri was soon making waves, and he amassed an impressive
army to take the throne as Russia's reputedly rightful and
(13:51):
if overlooking the Church's debatable fine print on sons of
sixth marriages, wholly knew ruler naturally, at this point you
might be wondering how this adult Dmitri was able to
sow effectively hoodwink people, or if he was the real deal,
(14:12):
how he managed to convince everyone of that. Looks mattered little,
since few knew or remembered what Dmitri looked like as
a boy. This adult version was apparently not the most
striking or handsome. He was of middling height and had
a distinctive wart by his nose, but he won people
(14:33):
over with his demeanor. As a supposedly twenty two year
old man, this Dmitri was a skilled horse rider, a
brave warrior, smart, and very eloquent. In short, he was popular. Still,
launching a full scale rebellion was not as simple as
(14:54):
trotting around on horseback and making charismatic speeches. Many elements
were involved in winning support from both the Russian people
and the nobility. One massive tragic factor that greatly aided
this Dimitri's case among the people was starvation. One of
the worst famines in Russian history arrived in sixteen o two,
(15:19):
and it was so devastating that contemporary reports estimate that
it ultimately killed roughly one third of the total population.
To czar Boris's credit, he desperately tried to help his
subjects by distributing food and money, but the situation was
(15:40):
so extreme and corruption so rampant that the crisis snowballed,
and with unceasing hunger, disease, and death being overwhelming obstacles
to nuanced reflections on macroeconomics, many surviving citizens predominantly blamed
their leader for the horrific state of things. Thus, when
(16:03):
this new Tsarevich Dmitri emerged, many disgruntled Cossacks, soldiers, merchants,
and townsfolks quickly backed him. Religion was another crucial factor
that helped Dmitri. Throughout the sixteenth century, the major players
at the Kremlin had strived to fortify their standing by
(16:26):
sacrilizing the monarchy. Essentially, the goal was to assure the
Russian Orthodox masses that it was not worth bothering to
question Azar's right to rule, since God handed down that right.
This effectively laid the groundwork for Dmitri in the sense
that his apparent evasion of the assassination attempt against him
(16:49):
when he was a child fit with a story that
he was divinely selected. It was easy enough to even
promote parallels between his grand reas appearance and Christ himself
rising from the grave. Plenty of Lord's influential families and
exiled boyars, members of the highest ranking nobility, also harbored
(17:14):
ample animosity toward tsar Boris, and so they joined the
Tsarevich Dmitri's cause, hoping to sway the political scene back
in their favor. Dmitri's own mother, Maria, had been stripped
of her privileges and forced to go live in cramped
confinement as a nun. So when the plucky supposed Tsavich
(17:38):
arrived with his growing army and promised to bring his
mother back to Moscow and restore her to status if
she confirmed that he was in fact her son, it
likely didn't take her long to declare something along the
lines of yep, definitely this guy is my son everyone. Meanwhile,
(17:58):
in Moscow, Tsar Boris grew increasingly paranoid about the man
leading a military campaign through the country against him. Thus,
in citing the first civil war in early modern Russian history,
harsh punishments awaited anyone deemed to be a supporter of
(18:19):
the impostor Dmitri. Boris tried to counter his rival's popularity
by continuing to espouse the idea that this impostor was
the disgraced monk Otrapev, who was disgraced since he was
clearly debauched and evil. However, it should be noted that
accusing a political foe of being a wicked heretic was
(18:42):
pretty standard practice in those days, and in this case
it does not appear to have significantly helped zar Boris's cause.
Far less helpful to his cause was an illness that
killed him before Tsarevich Dmitri even reached Moscow. So faced
with a magnetic young warrior prince leading a sizeable army
(19:06):
toward them, the noble classes at the Kremlin were suddenly
also offered a relatively easy choice over whether to acknowledge
this Dmitri's legitimacy or call him out as a sacrilegious poser,
to loosely paraphrase their general response, Hi, the long lost Dmitri,
welcome back. We are your loyal supporters and we always
(19:29):
thought so. Dmitri air Quotes was crowned on July twenty first,
sixteen oh five. Historians would later refer to him by
names such as false Dmitri, the first, the pretender Dmitri,
and the quote first false Dmitri. But for now, since
(19:50):
he did undeniably attain the title of Czar, I think
we can simply call him Czar Dmitri. But after riding
Russia's f first Civil War to the highest seat of power,
did he actually have a plan for ruling. It's tricky
to get a complete sense of Czar Dmitri's short reign,
(20:13):
since his successor ordered numerous court documents be destroyed, and
he vigorously tried to discredit his predecessor through an intense
propaganda campaign. Nonetheless, in spite of being frequently labeled a
conniving impostor or evil runaway monk, perhaps the biggest shock
(20:36):
of all is that, gasp, this Dmitri may have been
a deserving and effective monarch. Many of his contemporaries, including
some avowed enemies agreed that he possessed many outstanding qualities.
He was apparently well educated, adept at state craft, and
(20:58):
highly resourced and wise. Czar Dmitri was also an ambitious
military leader who sought to greatly improve Russia's army. Unlike
countless other rulers who eschewed the nitty gritty of battle
preparation in favor of lounging around and bragging about the
(21:19):
size of their conquered territories, Dmitri enjoyed immense popularity with
his soldiers because he actually trained with them. Fun fact,
he was also the first Russian czar to use the
title of emperor, so yeah, he was feeling himself a little.
But still, many biographers point out how, rather than fully
(21:41):
descending into egomania once he gained power, Zar Dmitri actually
apparently tried to use his platform to improve Russia's government.
For example, he ushered in more progressive laws, promoted plans
to further education and scientific research, and even tried to
(22:02):
cut down on bribery of public officials. That last one
may sound basic to the point of obvious, but it
was a decidedly rare stance for seventeenth century Russia. Former
czars were extremely reliant on their private police forces to
terrorize enemies and extort peasants, so the idea of even
(22:25):
proclaiming that someone would want to limit corruption, much less
taking any relevant action, would have been likely laughable to them.
Dmitri was no old school czar, and he went a
step further to try to ensure timely justice for average citizens.
He allowed them to come and petition him in person
(22:48):
twice a week. Imposter or not, you have to give
the guy credit for his dedication. Dmitri's different ruling style
started to rub a few at court the wrong way. However.
He reportedly cut back on traditional ceremonies and dressed in informal,
(23:09):
quote Western ways. He supposedly scorned certain entitled or uneducated,
high born lords. Dmitri also flummixed many of his nobles
by essentially being a bit too chummy. Many nobles were
used to living in fear of provoking vitriol and retribution,
(23:30):
and they were apparently confused as to why Dmitri sometimes
seemed to want to hear them talk without first threatening
them or commanding them to do so. Perhaps far more consequentially,
Dmitri was unusually welcoming of foreign intellectuals, and he did
(23:51):
not follow many of the same religious rights as former czars. Supposedly,
he was reluctant to spend hours in every day he
ate food seen as unclean by the Russian Orthodox Church,
and he was relatively tolerant of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.
(24:12):
The friction between Czar Dmitri and some members of the
aristocracy all came to a head with his planned marriage
Marina Mnishek, was a Polish Catholic princess, daughter of the
commander who had led Dmitri's forces during his rebellious military campaign.
(24:32):
Many higher ups in the Russian Church eventually signed off
on the marriage agreement, but there were fanatical holdouts who
saw this as proof of a plan to secretly convert
Russia to Catholicism. While there is essentially no convincing evidence
that a religious overhaul was ever Zar Dmitri's goal, his
(24:56):
plan to marry Marina gave his usurper the ammunition and
opportunity they needed. His primary usurper would be Vasily Shuisky, who,
if you'll recall, was the power hungry prince who happened
to be the man who once oversaw the dodgy investigation
(25:17):
into the death of Dmitri the child back when he
was eight years old. In an ironic turn of fate,
all these years later, Vasily's ascension to the throne hinged
on him covertly gaining enough allies to oversee a deadly
coup of Dmitri the grown man. Despite some of the
(25:43):
initial wariness regarding Czar Dmitri marrying a Polish Catholic woman,
Russians living in the capitol were still clearly suckers for
a big, glamorous royal wedding. Marina was reportedly given a
warm public welcome in Moscow on May second, sixteen o six,
(26:04):
and over the course of two celebratory weeks there there
were grand processions, Lavish festivities, and on the wedding day itself,
huge crowds who gave the bride enthusiastic ovations. However, cross
cultural tensions also ratcheted up between certain resident Russian factions
(26:26):
and incoming Polish wedding guests. Behind the scenes, Vasily sought
to maximize this chaos by fanning the flames of xenophobia.
While it is again difficult to separate the truth from
rumors that he perpetuated. There were multiple reports of thefts, vandalism,
(26:47):
and even the alleged murder of a Russian by a
Polish visitor. But rather than put his assassination plan into
action as fights spilled onto the streets when Ri and
his security forces were on highest alert, Prince Vasily waited. Finally, cunningly,
(27:08):
Vasly struck at a time when Dmitri was most vulnerable,
the direct aftermath of all the wedding celebrations. By then,
Dmitri was feeling confident that most of the discord and
danger had passed, so seemingly, ever, striving to be a
thoughtful boss, he told half his guard to stand down
(27:30):
to rest. In the wee hours of May seventeenth, sixteen six,
Vasily snuck his amassed group of over two hundred armed horsemen, merchants, clerics,
and relatives into the Kremlin. At the same time, he
played up the idea around Moscow that the Polish were attacking,
(27:52):
so that angered crowds would storm the gates and inadvertently
block reinforcements from coming to Czar Dmitri's aid. Dmitri still
had enough time to retreat through his chambers and try
to leap out the window to safety. But we now
know how that turned out. Even for an athletic guy
(28:15):
who loved military training exercises, he likely never practiced specific
window escapes. After he fell and unsuccessfully tried to reason
with his attackers, who clearly did not buy into his
identity and overall hype, he was murdered. Thus ended the
(28:36):
life of an enigmatic figure who had ruled for a
little under a year, been married for a little over
a week, had played a starring role in Russia's first
Civil War, and ostensibly became the only czar to take
over the throne thanks to popular uprisings and a military campaign.
(29:00):
It's worth taking a moment here to recognize just how
influential this young man's unprecedented reign potentially was, even though
it was so brief. From Zar Dmitri's legal reforms to
his incentives that improved many citizens' livelihoods, to his military innovations,
(29:20):
Zar Dmitri demonstrably backed up his purported goal of governing
as a fair minded emperor rather than a ruthless tyrant.
Historian Richard Helley went so far as to call Zar
Dmitri quote one of the few really enlightened rulers Russia
has ever had. Several scholars have even argued that Czar
(29:43):
Dmitri's short but productive rule made him a clear forerunner
to Peter the Great. The flip side of his legacy
is that while he was a potential role model for
future czars, Dmitri also served as a an excellent proof
of concept for subsequent royal pretenders. Following Czar Dmitri's assassination,
(30:09):
Vasily immediately began fretting over his victim's legendary popularity and
hold on Russia's collective imagination. He ordered that Dmitri's body
be dragged through the street in a horrific manner to
show everyone that he was not some divinely selected monarch
(30:29):
and that he was very clearly dead. But if there
was one thing that Vasily had not prepared for in
all of his scheming, it was having to deal with
a czar who would not remain dead, a czar whose
ghost would insist on haunting him throughout the rest of
(30:50):
his life. Really, this oversight was silly, a Vasily, having
led the investigation of Dmitri's murder back when Dmitri was
a child, Vasily knew as well as anyone that this
wasn't the first time that Dmitri had quote unquote died
and returned from beyond the grave. The last time Dmitri
(31:14):
had been murdered, Ham had accidentally slit his own throat
as an unsupervised knife wielding caeizure prone child. It took
over a decade for rumors to start spreading that Dmitri
had miraculously survived this time, though whispers that Dmitri Ivanovitch
(31:35):
had somehow, yet again cheated death would begin circulating within
a matter of days. That's the first part of the
wild and duplicitous story of the false Dmitris. But stick
around after a brief sponsor break to hear about another
(31:56):
key slip up that helped to seal Csar Dmitri's fate.
The intriguing duality of Zar Dmitri was such that some
of the same traits that won him favor, like his
thoughtful approach to doling out justice, also directly contributed to
(32:19):
his own downfall. Specifically, this was the case with an
early assassination attempt on the Czar's life. The assassination attempt
was easily sniffed out right after Zar Dmitri took over
in Moscow, and guess who was behind it? One Vasily Schwisky.
That's right, good old Vasily tried to pull off a
(32:41):
murderous plan with his two brothers, but this time early on,
he was caught and put on trial in what basically
played out like a riveting Time of Troubles era episode
of Law and Order. Zar Dmitri himself acted as prosecutor.
He reportedly wowed the crowd with his eloquent argument against
(33:02):
Vasily's family history of traitorous behavior, and Vasily was sentenced
to death several days later in Red Square. However, Dmitri
allegedly halted Vasily's execution at the last second, in a
dramatic reversal likely intended to foster unity. Dmitri mercifully exiled
(33:25):
Vasily to a far off town where we know now.
Vasily spent time strategizing about how to return for his
next assassination attempt. So as strategic as his eventual successful
usurping was, Vasily perhaps does not deserve too much credit,
(33:46):
considering it was his second try. He bungled his first
attempt and was still granted a second chance to go,
perfect his plan and return once he was ready to
fully step in to ahem starring role. Noble Blood is
(34:12):
a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional
writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy
Hit and Julia Melaney. The show is edited and produced
by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il KLi and
(34:35):
executive producers Aaron Manke, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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