“S” is for “Seriously?” The Staritskii Plots as “Disorienting Defense”

The role of the succession question in court politics during the reign of Ivan iv has been a recurrent theme in Muscovite historiography, with particular focus on the “dynastic crisis” of 1553 as the first in a series of plots by Ivan’s cousin Vladimir Staritskii to gain the throne. But the true instigator, according to our sole source (interpolations in the Tsarstvennaia kniga segment of the Illuminated Chronicle), was Vladimir’s mother Evfrosin’ia. Somehow she was behind all the treasonous plots involving her son, and indirectly a guiding force behind all Ivan’s problems with disloyalty among the Muscovite elite. How she managed this is not at all clear, given the circumscribed role of women in Muscovy and her own absence from the capital. But the internal logic of the narrative clearly had a powerful appeal, and her image as the wicked witch of Muscovite domestic politics became the basis of “alternative facts” that have deflected historians from considering other explanations of Ivan’s dealings with his court.