In the previous material, the opinions of foreigners were given that the son and heir Ivan died from being hit by the staff of the king himself. Was it really so? Let us refer to the book by the head of the archaeological department of the Moscow Kremlin Museum, Doctor of History. Etc. Panova "Kremlin tombs. History, fate, mystery."
“The entire eastern end of Ivan's tombstone is occupied by a large slab with a carved epitaph in six lines:“In the summer of November 7090, on the 19th day, the noble and Christ-loving prince Ivan Ivanovich of All Russia passed away in memory of the holy prophet Avdey on a weekly day at the fourteenth hour of the night and was buried in the same month on the 22nd day in memory of the saints Martyr Arkhip, the disciple of Paul, the Apostle and Philemon the soldier and Anthathias."
When this burial was opened in 1963, an epitaph of seven lines, made with deep carving, was recorded on the lid of a white-stone sarcophagus: “In the summer of 7090 November, on the 19th day, the faithful prince Ivan Ivanovich of All Russia died in memory of the holy prophet Avdey and the holy martyr Barlaam in the fourth ten o'clock in the night …
… During the investigation of Ivan's remains, the poor preservation of the skull in the burial was revealed, which indicates a serious intravital trauma to the head of the prince. Anthropologists have failed to reconstruct the sculptural portrait of Ivan Ivanovich, who fell victim to his father's wrath …
… The remains of Ivan IV's son, Tsarevich Ivan, did not provide an opportunity for the same detailed study. The skull of this young man completely collapsed, only the lower jaw remained. Therefore, even approximately it was impossible to determine his height and weight (many other small bones of the skeleton suffered as well) …
… The assumption of the death of Ivan Vasilyevich from poison also failed to be confirmed or refuted … The remains of Tsar Ivan and his sons were different [from the results of the study of the remains of Prince. Dmitry Shemyaka] character. For the chemical study of skeletons for the detection of poisons, we had to take ashes - a powdery mass of brown color, individual bones, hair and nails, as well as fragments of decayed clothing fabrics from sarcophagi … Let's start with arsenic. It was recorded in the following amount: in materials from the burial of Ivan IV - from 8 to 150 μg (0.15 mg) per 100-gram sample. In the materials from the sarcophagus of Tsarevich Ivan, the data are somewhat different - from 14 to 267 μg (up to 0.26 mg).
The found quantities of arsenic, as noted by the publishers of this information, do not exceed its natural content in the human body. Let us remind the reader that the above data were given - the natural background for arsenic is only hundredths of a milligram - from 0.01 to 0.08. In the kidney of Prince Shemyaki, this poison was recorded within 0.21 mg; it was enough for acute poisoning. A simple recalculation shows that it is difficult to talk about the natural background for arsenic in the remains of Ivan IV and Tsarevich Ivan - it is clearly exceeded and significantly …
… Then they carried out tests to identify the compound of mercury - one of the most common poisons in the Middle Ages. The remains of the father and son also contained mercury compounds, and in more than sufficient quantities - up to 1.3 mg …”.
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And one more quote from the same book by T. D. Panova: "The study of the skeleton of Tsar Ivan amazed anthropologists - on the spine and shoulder girdle of this man powerful salt deposits developed - osteophytes, which undoubtedly caused him terrible suffering at the slightest movement …".
Let's turn to another source - the material "Poisoned!" Panova and anthropologist D. V. Pezhemsky and published in the journal Rodina, No. 12, 2004: “If the exploration of the Ascension necropolis had begun a little later, we would never have known what the Grand Duchess Elena Glinskaya looked like. The skull of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, which was studied by the famous anthropologist M. M. Gerasimov in 1964. Then it turned out that the merciless salts forever deprived us of the opportunity to see the appearance of his son Ivan Ivanovich killed by the Terrible and the outstanding Russian commander Prince Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky."
So what happened to the heir Ivan? Was his skull shattered from "serious life trauma" or from "ruthless salts"? And how could the tsar, to whom polyarthritis had been creating terrible pain for more than one year, make a sharp movement and hit his son with an "iron ostom"? For some reason, the researchers unequivocally speak of the poisoning of Ivan Ivanovich's grandmother and mother as an established fact, but only presumably about the death of the prince himself from the same arsenic and mercury? There are questions, no answers yet.