Anastasia Romanovna
Anastasia Romanovna was Ivan the Terrible's first wife, and the difference between the two halves of his reign is usually dated from her death. She came from the Zakharyin-Yuriev family, boyars of standing but not of princely rank, and was chosen in 1547 from a bride-show to which several hundred daughters of the nobility were summoned. The marriage took place in February, weeks after Ivan had crowned himself tsar - the first ruler of Russia to use the title - and the choice of a woman from outside the great princely houses was itself a statement about where power now came from. She bore six children, of whom two sons survived her: Ivan, whom his father would kill in a rage in 1581, and Fyodor, who succeeded and left no heir. Contemporaries credit her with a restraining influence on a violent husband, and the first thirteen years of the reign are the reformed ones: a new law code, the reorganisation of local government, the chosen council, and the conquests of Kazan and Astrakhan. She died in August 1560 after a long illness. Ivan was convinced she had been poisoned by the boyars, and the terror, the oprichnina and the executions follow. He said so for the rest of his life. Twentieth-century examination of her remains found mercury and arsenic at levels well above normal, which is suggestive and not conclusive, since both were in the cosmetics and the medicines of the period. Her family gave Russia its next dynasty: her great-nephew Michael became the first Romanov tsar in 1613.
- Lived: 1530 CE – 1560 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: aristocrat
