Grandson of the fearsome Ivan the Great and his Palaiologos wife Sophia, the boy had been grand prince since he was three when his father Vasili III died, leaving his mother Elena Glinskaia as regent. Her death left Ivan with only his deaf and dumb brother for company. ‘My brother Yuri, of blessed memory, and me, they brought up like vagrants. What have I suffered for want of garments and food.’ His claims are hard to believe, but he was a murderous melodramatist and hysterical fabulist, haunted by biblical purgatory. He grew up to be tall, as lithe ‘as a leopard’ with an aquiline nose, sensual mouth and flashing eyes.* Already torturing animals which he threw from the Kremlin towers, he spent his adolescence running wild with a gang of ruffians, committing acts of brigandage, and as soon as he got power he executed some of these friends by having them impaled. He had heard of the cruelties of Vlad the Impaler and his remarkable grandfather Ivan, whom he greatly resembled.
In January 1547, Ivan was crowned in the Dormition Cathedral as Autocrat of all the Russias – and for the first time – Tsar. He was crowned with the ‘cap’ of Constantine Monomachos, which was probably a Mongol gift, while his patriarch now merged Mongol-Roman ideology to declare the tsar, the embodiment of God and personification of the state.
Ivan then presided over a bride-show – a beauty contest of part-Byzantine, part-Mongol origins, in which orders were sent out to the kingdom stating, ‘Those of you who have daughters who are maidens proceed without delay to our lieutenants for inspection … Anyone who conceals a maiden daughter will be punished.’ Ivan chose Anastasia Romanovna Iureva-Zakharina – the first of the Romanovs – who gave birth to the required sons and whom he came to love or at least depend upon as an emotional support.
Ivan lived inside the Kremlin, a red-walled fortress of palaces and churches, amid a pious court that was dominated by a web of intermarried boyars (aristocrats) and an influx of Mongol princes known as
Revelling in sprees of partying and fornication interspersed with prayer and fasting, Ivan was influenced by a white-bearded priest called Silvester who regarded even mirrors and music as satanic manifestations. Young Ivan was clean-shaven until Silvester persuaded him that shaving was for sodomites, prompting him to enforce the growing of beards.
Shortly after his coronation, fire destroyed much of Moscow, killing thousands. Ivan was rushed out of the city, and a mob, inspired by public hysteria and court conspiracy, demanded the life of his Glinsky grandmother, accused of being a witch, and lit more fires. Ivan refused to give up his grandmother; then, rallying his forces, seized and impaled the ringleaders. Court life was inherently stressful, but the frequent fires that swept through Moscow and repeated spasms of the plague added to his sense of a world forever on the edge of an apocalyptic inferno.
In March 1553, Ivan fell ill. He was determined that his baby son, Dmitri, should succeed him, but there was no rule of succession; courtiers wished to avoid another regency and to stop Anastasia’s family from gaining power. Many turned to Ivan’s first cousin, the seventeen-year-old Prince Vladimir, a better prospect than a baby. For twelve days, Ivan, passing in and out of consciousness, tried to force the boyars to swear allegiance to his baby. Vladimir was forced to do so. Then Ivan recovered, and began accusing the boyars of wanting ‘to raise Vladimir to the throne and like Herod destroy his God-given son’. He went on pilgrimage to a distant monastery, demanding the presence of Anastasia and the baby Tsarevich Dmitri, but the journey was perilous. When the baby’s nurse was getting off their boat, she dropped the baby into the river. (The fate of the nurse is not recorded.) Ivan had lost his only heir.
Fortunately Anastasia gave birth soon afterwards to a strong new son, Ivan. In twelve years she bore six children, including another son Fyodor, who was probably born with Down’s Syndrome. The strain took its toll. Ivan was needily uxorious, demanding Anastasia’s constant presence even on unsuitably dangerous trips, yet he remained highly sexed and unrestrained.
