The bride: how in Russia the tsars chose a bride

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The custom of tsarist reviews in Russia existed for a very short time. Despite this, he went down in history and is mercilessly exploited in literature, cinema and painting. That is why this action was overgrown with speculation and few people know about the true essence of the event. How did the ritual of choosing a bride for the monarch come to be in our country, and by what criteria did they choose the future queen?

The custom of royal smotrins came to us from Byzantium - this is how future wives for emperors were chosen in the once mighty empire. Sophia Palaeologus, the Byzantine princess and grandmother of Ivan the Terrible, brought him to Russia. With her light hand, the bride began to practice among the Russians and sank into oblivion after the first marriage of Peter I.

We are convinced that the tsar walked along the line of promising brides and considered them, choosing a life partner for himself. In fact, anything happened and, more often than not, the future spouse was not invited to the bride at all. The Byzantine queen Irina, who introduced this custom, in order to find a bride for her son, sent measurements throughout the country with parameters such as height, leg size and even head circumference.

The set of measurements was accompanied by paper, which indicated additional requirements for girls - origin, health status and much more. The selection was carried out by many candidates, but in the whole of Byzantium only 13 were found who answered the queen's requests.

The lucky woman turned out to be an orphan from an aristocratic Armenian family named Maria, who approached in all respects, and besides, she liked the groom's mother. The tsarina simply presented her son Constantine with a fact, not taking into account the fact that he was betrothed for love to the princess of the Franks.

Needless to say, absolutely nothing came of this marriage. A few years later, Constantine came out of the care of an imperious mother and insisted that his wife take her hair as a nun. Maria finished her days in the monastery, and the tsar found himself a new wife, without any strict castings, and lived happily with her. As we can see, the innovation immediately showed its inconsistency, but it was nevertheless made the rule.

The first Russian sovereign who was chosen a bride at the bride was the son of Sophia Palaeologus, Grand Duke Vasily III. He became the first Rurikovich in the history of Russia who married not an overseas princess or his relative, but a boyar's daughter. For Vasily, they gathered 500 noble beauties from all corners of his possessions and chose a bride for him from them.

She was a 15-year-old orphan from the boyar family of Solomoniy Saburov. In general, they liked to choose orphans who did not have numerous relatives greedy for money and power as wives to monarchs. After the wedding, a little time passed and Vasily III from the heir became a full-fledged sovereign.

Unlike Constantine, the Russian prince loved his wife or was too decent - he patiently waited 20 years for an heir from her, forbidding his brothers to have children all this time. As a result, his patience ran out and his wife was traditionally sent to the monastery.

They tonsured Solomon by force - she fought back desperately, threw her monastic robe on the floor and trampled on it with her feet. To pacify the woman, they whipped her right in the wards and forced her to shave. Vasily immediately remarried a young noblewoman from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Elena Glinskaya, who gave her husband the heir to John, known to everyone as Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible.

Ivan Vasilievich also got married, mainly after the show. At the age of 16, having barely ascended the throne, the sovereign decided to find a life partner. He was offered an excellent choice of the most beautiful boyar daughters, among whom Ivan chose Anastasia Zakharyina-Yuryeva. This girl was very pretty, but it was not only for this reason that she was among the brides.

The Zakharyins had served at court for a long time, and Anastasia's uncle was even the guardian of young Ivan. All this gives reason to think that the bride and groom were familiar even before the show, and the choice of the monarch was based at least on sympathy. Contemporaries recalled that the first wife of the formidable Russian tsar was a short girl with beautiful fluffy hair. Among her virtues, meekness and unparalleled kindness were mentioned.

Anastasia had a beneficial effect on the tsar with his tough disposition, but their family happiness lasted only 13 years. The queen suddenly fell ill and soon died, as many believe, poisoned by ill-wishers. It was difficult to describe Ivan's grief, but eight days later preparations began for a new bride.

The second bride of Ivan IV differed from the first and looked more like a date for the purpose of acquaintance. The tsar was advised to look for a spouse among the Caucasian princely families, and soon a girl named Kucheny, the daughter of the Kabardian prince Temryuk, was brought to Moscow. The bride was brought to the king and he liked her. Since the beauty was of a different faith, before the wedding she was baptized and named Mary.

Eight years later, Maria Temryukovna died under the same strange circumstances as Anastasia. At the third bride, Ivan decided not to be modest and he was immediately offered two thousand girls. As a result, the king immediately met his third and fourth wife. At the same time, they found a bride for Ivan Ivanovich, the tsar's son, whom, according to legend, his father later killed with a staff.

The third bride - Martha Sobakina, like Anastasia, was from an aristocratic, but not too noble family. To compensate for this, the king generously endowed all the men from the wife's family with titles and lands. Father Martha was even made a boyar, which he could not even dream of. But the Sobakins' triumph did not last long and Martha lived only a week after the wedding. After that, the tsar married for the fourth time, to the "reserve" bride, whom he had looked after at the previous bridegrooms.

Who could participate in the bride

I must say that the bride was an almost democratic event. If during the usual marriage of the monarch they took brides from the most noble families or in pursuit of certain goals, then girls from noble but impoverished families could be present at the bride. The tsarist "casting" gave a chance to girls like Anastasia, the daughter of Zakharyin-Yuriev, a police officer, whose families were not like the tsar's.

The wife of Alexei Mikhailovich, the second tsar from the Romanov dynasty, Maria Miloslavskaya, was from such a poor family that as a child she collected mushrooms for sale. Her father served as a clerk for the embassy clerk, which roughly corresponded to the position of a barman. The mother of Tsar Alexei Romanov himself was also from a poor family, so, as we can see, the bridegrooms gave rich and poor brides equal chances.

The financial situation of the brides of the tsars was not interested, but there were many other requirements for the participants in the show. In addition to a beautiful face, suitable height and appropriate build, the applicants had to "look modest", not have politically unreliable faces in their relatives, and also not be red. In fact, these rules were often violated - Elena Glinskaya was cheerful and daring, and besides that, she was also a redhead.

There were other secondary requirements as well. For example, the number of children in the bride's family mattered, since it was believed that having many children is inherited and the spouse in the future will be able to give the king many offspring. And, of course, women's health was taken into account. The midwives examined the girls for the correct development of the reproductive organs and virginity.

There have been exceptions. For example, for the elder brother of Peter I, Tsar Fedor III, the bride was organized formally. He already knew who would become his chosen one and the event was just a tribute to the ancient Byzantine tradition. The bride's name was Agafya Grushetskaya and she was from the Polish nobility.

The girl met the tsar in an unusual way - when the sovereign walked through the crowd of subjects during the procession, Agafya fainted in front of him. The queen came out of Grushetskaya quite good - friendly and cheerful. She started a fashion at court for Polish outfits and entertainment, and the tsar seemed in love and happy. But just a year and a half later, the young queen died of childbirth fever, and a week later their son Ilya died with Fyodor.

Intrigues of the royal smotrin

The selection for the bride was not without intrigue. Families often vilified each other and even outright framed each other in order to increase their chances. Especially often rumors were spread that denigrated the honor of the women of the family - it was still far from the sexual revolution and a girl with an unimportant reputation did not have the slightest chance of becoming a queen.

Before the bride-show, hundreds of girls were taken to Moscow and placed in wards. They lived in the capital in a barracks position, since they put a dozen or more beds in one room. The brides were fed and watered at the expense of the sovereign's treasury, and the sovereign's people were also responsible for creating beauty before going to the tsar.

This was not just a show of hospitality. It was important to prevent fakes, which were often attended by beauties eager to marry. From time immemorial, girls thickened their braids, weaving other people's hair into them, bleached their faces, poured their breasts, making it more magnificent.

The persons in charge of the bride's toilet were often bribed by the relatives of the competitors. The girl could be braided or pulled in ugly braids so that their owner fainted. In this case, the version was considered that the girl was unwell, and her relatives cunningly wanted to deceive the sovereign.

After such excesses, the girl and all her relatives could be in disgrace. This happened with Efimia Vsevolzhskaya, a candidate for the wife of Tsar Alexei Fedorovich, who was exiled to Tyumen with her family.

Alexei's father also became a victim of intrigues - the envious fiancee, already chosen by him, Marya Khlopova, organized an intestinal disorder. The Tsar was immediately convinced that the bride's diarrhea was a sign of infertility, and the Khlopovs with the whole family left to get acquainted with Tobolsk.

Taking this into account, it becomes clear why Ivan the Terrible personally briefly spoke with each of the two thousand applicants at his third bride in a row. This did not help, since Martha Sobakina nevertheless died 15 days after the wedding. The analysis of the remains of the queen, carried out in our days, did not show the presence of poison in the tissues. Therefore, it can be assumed that Marfa Vasilyevna was poisoned with a vegetable poison or that she was driven into a coffin by some kind of quick fatal illness.

But Ivan the Terrible accused Martha's relatives of having killed her from the light. The father of the late wife, who had only recently been made a boyar by the royal will, was sent to a monastery, and her cousins were executed. Intrigues and conspiracies were popular at that time, and the sovereign's marriage turned out to be surrounded by them all the time. Ivan IV was simply reinsured, as was customary among the tsars.

But the girls did not think about possible force majeure in their life and the fate of their family. They longed to receive a handkerchief and a ring embroidered with pearls and gold - signs of the royal choice. After the presentation of these gifts, the future queen remained in the chambers - she was taken to the upper premises of the residence and treated as an already established empress.

Appearance of royal brides

In the Middle Ages, a certain standard of female beauty was adopted in Russia, but not all royal brides fell into the category of beauties. The monarchs differed in rather varied tastes and did not always marry girls who were "allied eyebrows", portly and "white-faced".

Dark braids and eyebrows, ruddy cheeks and red lips were welcome. Moles and freckles on the face were not allowed, as was painful pallor. They were suspicious of being too thin and, on the contrary, too fat. Both, in the opinion of people of that time, could be signs of poor health.

Modesty was considered a very important virtue of the bride. Ideally, the girl should have blushed at the mere sight of a man. Agafya Grushetskaya and Elena Glinskaya, who were far from being among the timid ten, did not have this quality, but they were forgiven for this because of their foreign origin.

Often, after the marriage, the newly-made queen was forced to change her name to something that was more consistent with the new rank. For example, Praskovya Lopukhina, the first wife of Peter I, turned into a more euphonious Evdokia. The queen no longer belonged to herself after the wedding - she did not leave the female half of the royal chambers and was shown in public only in the church.

The walks of the tsar's wife were limited to a garden specially laid out for these purposes, where only women and persons close to the sovereign had access. Moments in films when the queen sits next to her husband during receptions are not true. Only Irina Godunova, the wife of Fyodor I and the daughter-in-law of Ivan the Terrible, did this. With such behavior, the queen shocked the conservative boyars, who behind their backs called her a shameless woman.