Saint Dmitry of Uglich

Dmitry Ivanovich (Russian: Дмитрий Иванович; 29 October [O.S. 19 October] 1582 – 15 May 1591) was the youngest son of Russian tsar Ivan the Terrible. He was the tsarevich (heir apparent) for close to seven years of his half-brother Feodor I's reign (though his legitimacy as an heir could have been contested by the Russian Orthodox Church). After his death, he was impersonated by a number of imposters to the throne, during the Time of Troubles. Dmitry was the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible by his last wife Maria Nagaya, and their only child together. Ivan died in 1584, and was succeeded by Dmitry's older brother, Feodor I. Feodor was sickly and weak, and the country was governed by a regency council. This was headed from 1586 by Boris Godunov, Feodor's brother-in-law and Malyuta Skuratov's son-in-law. In 1584, Godunov sent Dmitry, and his mother and her brothers, into internal exile in the tsarevich's appanage of Uglich. On 15 May 1591, Dmitry died there under mysterious circumstances. As a result, when Feodor I died childless in 1598, Dmitry, the only other possible Rurikid heir, was also dead, and Godunov claimed the throne. It was widely believed at the time that Godunov got rid of Dmitry to clear the way for his own eventual succession. Russian chroniclers and later historians offered two possible scenarios of what could have happened to Dmitry. The first theory is that Dmitry was killed by order of Boris Godunov, the assassins making it look like an accident (this version was supported by the prominent 19th-century historians Nikolai Karamzin, Sergei Soloviev, Vasily Klyuchevsky and others). Critics of this version point out that Dmitry was Ivan's son from his last marriage, and thus illegitimate by Russian Orthodox canon law, which allows a maximum of three marriages. This would make any claim of Dmitry's for the throne dubious at best. Modern scholarship tends to exonerate Boris of any role in the prince's death.