Speaking about the ruler of Moscow Ivan III, we first of all recall his efforts to unite the Russian principalities around Moscow, the end of the Horde yoke and his second wife, Sophia Paleologue. But before her there was another woman in the life of the Grand Duke.
Who benefited from this marriage?
The engagement of the then heir to the Moscow principality with Maria Borisovna Tverskaya took place in 1447, when Vasily II, already blinded by enemies, and his family found shelter in Tver with Prince Boris Alexandrovich.
The bride and groom were just children, but the Tver prince insisted on the engagement, tea, in the future, benefits for himself and his principality.
The bride was 5 years old, the groom - 7. And the future mother-in-law simply pressed her lips together. She did not like the persistence of Prince Boris, but the situation of the exiles was hopeless. Tver helped them at a difficult moment, and such support had to be paid for. And Prince Boris threatened to betray Vasily the Dark to his enemies in case of refusal.
Agree, humiliating matchmaking?
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Family life
After Vasily the Dark returned to himself the princely throne, in 1452 a wedding took place in Moscow. The bride was 10 years old, the groom only 12. The Tver relatives were in a hurry to consolidate their exceptional position.
It is not known when the marriage became real, but Maria Borisovna was 16 years old when her son Ivan Molodoy was born. And later a daughter was born.
Maria Borovskaya, still from the film Sophia Paleologue.
Ivan III became the Grand Duke and co-ruler of his father, and Maria Borisovna shared the title of Grand Duchess with her mother-in-law Maria Yaroslavna Borovskaya. The relationship between them was strained.
And Maria Borisovna herself was kind, modest, educated.
In 1462, her father-in-law dies and her husband remains the sole ruler of Muscovite Russia, a year earlier her father died and her 8-year-old brother Mikhail Borisovich sat on the princely table in Tver.
Strange death
On April 22, 1467, 25-year-old Maria Borisovna suddenly dies. Her son Ivan is only 9 years old. The woman did not get sick, didn’t lie down, didn’t complain of indisposition.
And then they havetily buried her, because the body can no longer wait: it is unnaturally inflated. And my husband is in Kolomna, they are not even in a hurry to inform him that he has become a widower. The wife is buried without him.
And in Moscow rumors are creeping that the princess, kind and humble, was simply "worn out". Who! They whisper that the mother-in-law has not forgiven the humiliating matchmaking. And right there, after the funeral, the mother-in-law began rebuilding and decorating the Ascension Monastery in the Kremlin. Atone for sins?
Did her husband love her? Who knows. For the sake of appearance, the wife of a certain clerk was accused of divination, but they did not punish anyone, only they did not allow the clerk to appear in front of his eyes for 6 years.
Maria Borisovna Tverskaya.
If the prince loved his wife, he would probably avenge her much more seriously. Or … the prince was afraid to interrogate the guilty with partiality: could traces of his own princess-mother's participation in the elimination of his wife be revealed?
Or maybe it was about politics?
At the time of the death of Maria Borisovna, only Ryazan, Novgorod and Tver remained virtually independent from Moscow. But Tver has long been an eyesore for Russia, being previously a rival of Moscow in the unification of Russia.
And Maria Borisovna ardently objected to the liquidation of the Tver Great Reign, on which her own younger brother was sitting.
Moreover, she reminded her husband of the service the Tver princely house had done to Moscow at the time of civil strife.
Maybe the princess interfered with the supporters of the annexation of Tver to Moscow and her own husband? It is no coincidence that in 1485 Ivan III declared war on his brother-in-law Mikhail Borisovich and drove him out of the reign.
Ivan III.
His brother-in-law fled to Lithuania, and Tver became the inheritance of Ivan the Young and became part of the Moscow state.
So who benefited from the early death of Ivan III's first wife?