The First of the Romanov Tsars is Crowned

The great Russian dynasty was founded on July 22nd, 1613.

Mikhail Romanov and his father, the patriatch Philaret, distribute alms, in an illustration of the first Romanov coronation by Matevev, 1613When Tsar Ivan the Terrible died in 1584 he was succeeded by Fyodor, the elder of his two surviving sons (he had killed his eldest son in a fit of rage). Fyodor was not quite right in the head and the power behind the throne was Boris Godunov, a trusted adviser to Ivan, who had made him Fyodor’s guardian. Ivan’s younger son Dmitri died in mysterious circumstances in 1591 at the age of eight. Godunov was suspected of having organised the boy’s murder.

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