Godunov, according to a later widespread version,…
May 1591 CE
Godunov, according to a later widespread version, had wanted to get rid of Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich, son of Ivan the Terrible and Maria Nagaya, who could have succeeded the throne in light of Feodor's childlessness.
Godunov had in 1584 sent Dmitry, his mother and her brothers into exile to the Tsarevich's appanage city of Uglich.
The ten-year-old Dmitry is on May 15, 1591, found in the palace courtyard, a few steps from his residence, dead from a stab wound, under mysterious circumstances.
Suspicion immediately falls on Godunov.
Russian chroniclers and later historians offered two possible scenarios of what have happened to Dmitry.
In one scenario, Dmitry was killed by the order of Boris Godunov; the assassins made it look like an accident (this version was supported by the prominent nineteenth century historians Nikolai Karamzin, Sergei Soloviev, Vasily Klyuchevsky and others).
The critics of this version point out that Dmitry was Ivan's son from his fifth (or seventh) marriage, and thus illegitimate by the canon law (a maximum of three marriages are allowed in the Russian Orthodox Church).
This would make any claim of Dmitry's for the throne dubious at best.
In the second scenario, Dmitry stabbed himself in the throat during an epileptic seizure, while playing with a knife (this version was supported by historians Mikhail Pogodin, Sergei Platonov, V. K. Klein, Ruslan Skrynnikov and others).
The detractors of this scenario assert that, since during an epileptic seizure the palms are wide open, the self-infliction of a fatal wound becomes highly unlikely.
However, the official investigation, done at that time, asserted that the Tsarevich's seizure came while he was playing a version of darts game with a knife and thus holding the knife by the blade, turned toward himself.
With the knife in that position, the version of self-inflicted wound on the neck while falling forward during seizure appears more likely.
There is also a third version of Dmitry's fate, which found support with some earlier historians Konstantin Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Ivan Belyaev and others.
They considered it possible that Godunov's people had tried to assassinate Dmitry, but killed somebody else instead and he managed to escape.
This scenario explains the appearance of impostors, sponsored by the Polish nobility (see False Dmitry I, False Dmitry II, False Dmitry III).
Most modern Russian historians, however, consider the version of Dmitry's survival improbable, since it is hardly possible that the boy's appearance was unknown to his assassins.
Also, it is well-known that many Polish nobles who supported False Dmitry I did not believe his story themselves.
The death of the Tsarevich rouses a violent riot in Uglich, instigated by the loud claims of Dmitry's mother Maria Nagaya and her brother Mikhail that Dmitry had been murdered.
Hearing this, enraged citizens lynch fifteen of Dmitry's would-be "assassins", including the local representative of the Moscow government (dyak) and one of Dmitry's playmates.
The subsequent official investigation, led by Vasily Shuisky, after a thorough examination of witnesses, concludes the Tsarevich had died from a self-inflicted stab wound to the throat.
Official investigators cut a "tongue" from the cathedral bell that had rung the news of Dimitriy's death and "exile" it to Siberia.
Following the official investigation, Maria Nagaya is forcibly tonsured as a nun and exiled to a remote convent.
(When the political circumstances change, however, Shuisky will retract his earlier claim of accidental death and assert that Dmitry had been murdered on Godunov's orders.)
As Dimitry was the last scion (other than the mentally incompetent Tsar Feodor) of the central branch of the ancient Rurik dynasty, his death is a prelude the dynastic and political crisis known as the Time of Troubles.
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