Ivan IV the Terrible - Tsar and Grand Duke of All Russia was a real "Bluebeard" of his time. Some historians believe that most of the women were later attributed to Ivan the Terrible. He only had four legal wives, while the church allowed only three marriages. The other four wives could not be recognized as legitimate.
For the first time, Ivan the Terrible married Anastasia Romanovna at the age of 17. She was destined to become the first Russian tsarina. This marriage lasted 13 years. Anastasia gave John six children, most of whom died in early childhood. The most famous children from marriage with Anastasia are Tsarevich Ivan, who was killed by John in a quarrel, and Fedor. Anastasia died a violent death, presumably poisoned by the boyars.
A few days after the death of Anastasia, the tsar expressed a desire to marry a second time. A traditional show of brides was organized, and the Tsar's choice fell on the Kabardian beauty Maria Temryukovna, and a year later their wedding took place. According to contemporaries, the new queen was a very cruel, licentious and insidious woman. The marriage lasted a little over eight years, ended with the death of Mary. Historians believe that she was poisoned by the king himself, who, however, blamed the boyars for everything.
The third wife of Tsar John was Martha Vasilievna Sobakina in 1571. Shortly before the wedding, she fell ill, but they decided not to postpone the wedding. Martha stayed as Queen for only two weeks. She died without knowing the marriage bed. The king suspected that the brother of the previous wife had poisoned her, and ordered the killer to be impaled.
According to the Orthodox tradition, the third marriage was supposed to be the last, but Ivan the Terrible convinced the Metropolitan that "he never became Martha's husband." And in 1572, the metropolitan allowed John to get married for the fourth time. Anna Koltovskaya became his chosen one. Soon after the wedding, at the instigation of the boyars, she was exiled to a monastery and forcibly tonsured into a nun. She was the luckiest one - she died a natural death in 1626, having outlived Ivan the Terrible by more than forty years.
John no longer asked permission for a fifth marriage from the clergy. The wedding ceremony was performed by Archpriest Nikita, who had previously served in the guardsmen. The fifth wife of Ivan the Terrible was Maria Dolgorukaya in 1573. This marriage lasted less than a day. After the first wedding night, it turned out that Mary was not a virgin, and in the morning the tsar took the tied queen in a sleigh to the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda and drowned her in an ice-hole.
In 1575, Ivan's sixth marriage with the young Anna Vasilchikova took place. Like the previous one, this marriage was not recognized as legal, and less than a year later, the young wife tired of the king, he sent Anna to a monastery, where she soon died under strange circumstances.
The seventh wife, Vasilisa Melentieva, also did not stay as queen for long. John found her in bed with her lover and severely punished her unfaithful wife for adultery. According to legend, he buried Vasilisa alive in the same grave with her dead lover.
In 1580, Ivan Vasilyevich liked Maria Nagaya, she became the eighth and last wife of Ivan the Terrible. Maria managed to give birth to Ivan's last son - Tsarevich Dmitry, soon after which she became objectionable and was exiled to a monastery, where she lived until 1612.
Contemporaries called Ivan the Terrible "lascivious" and "depraved". According to descriptions of the appearance and general condition of the cruel king, in the last years of his life he was probably sick with syphilis. At 41, at the time of his marriage to Martha Sobakina, John looked like a sick old man. And at 53, just before his death, he could no longer walk on his own.
