Will the Real Tsar Dmitri Please Stand Up? (Part 2)

Tsar's private stable. This was no theft, however, no devious horse heist. The courtier Mikhail Milkanov had been tasked with securing this royal herd by their owner himself, Tsar Dmitri. Milkanov was one of the Emperor's closest associates and had helped hatch this escape plan after Dimiti learned of a post wedding assassination plot against him that was set to kick off in mere hours. Milkanov had tasked and experienced stable hand with gathering the horses, But was that man trustworthy?

Could this risky getaway possibly work? The tense moments ticked past, until at last the stable hand delivered the horses as covertly as he could. Milkanov and his men met up with a disguised Tsar Dmitri and successfully helped him flee Moscow under cover of darkness, so that he could then travel incognito and daringly test the true loyalty of his subjects and purportedly devoted lords. Or so goes this alternate

version of events. After Vasili Shwisky initiated his murderous plan and grotesquely paraded Czar Dmitri's supposed by through the streets, Milkanov began to spread his dramatic tale. Within days, the Tsar, he said actually escaped, and a few details did add a sniff of plausibility. For example, twenty five horses did

go missing from Zar Dmitri's stables. Milkanov also had Dmitri's favorite Turkish horse and state seal to back up his claim, and vasily reportedly had that skillful stable hand tortured, hoping to make him reveal that he had not actually helped Dmitri survive, But that poor stable hand, apparently deeply loyal to Dmitri after all, died without admitting a thing. Milkanov gradually headed for Poland Lithuania, and has been credited by some historians as having done more to keep the legend

of Zar Dmitri alive than any other individual. Vulkanov achieved this by not only spinning his yarn that the Czar and his horses had artfully escaped their enemies, but by also pretending to be Dmitri himself. Milkanov did not bear much resemblance to Dmitri, but he knew him so well that he could defintely imitate him while traveling among less

familiar townsfolk. In spite of these efforts, Milkanov is typically not even included by scholars as one of the main quote false Dmitris because although he elicited considerable Dmitri loyalty in certain localities, Milkanov was already too well known in Moscow and other power circles to continue to play the role.

Since the original Czar Dmitri was seemingly never seen or heard from again, Milkanov essentially served as a stand in who stoke the fires of rebellion until eventually you guessed it. The time came to debut a new Dmitri. I'm Danish forts and this is noble blood, how was yet another man and eventually more after that, able to somewhat successfully assume the same Dmitri identity. Much like franchise movie sequels

or knockoff rollis'es. The market for them was clearly there, and to fully understand how Russia's impersonator supply kept up with the Dmitri demand, we must first look at the unstable situation in Moscow. Following the death of the man who had seized power under the name Zar Dmitri, Vasily

quickly finagled his way into becoming the new Czar. Vasily's transition to the throne was rocky, though many accounts have pegged Vasily as a cunning strategist, particularly accounts he commissioned and or those that conveniently ignore his less cunning plans that backfired in farcical ways, But compared to his predecessor, Vasily was less respected in the capitol, where many nobles reportedly saw him as a detestable trader, and he was

far less well liked than Dmitri. Within the larger realm, Vasily has been unfavorably depicted as a stocky, balding, and exceedingly near sighted man who apparently looked fairly ridiculous, yet still intimidated his opponents through tireless scheming and betraying. This is by no means to say that a ruler's overall effectiveness hinges on their looks or benevolence or reluctant to fearmonger.

There are plenty of historical cases that prove otherwise. But unfortunately for Vasily when it came to winning broad support, he also did not have many other common image enhancing factors to help his case among either the noble classes or the wider population. Vasily was of a.

to sell to the masses. Throughout his time in power, Vasily tried to boost his own legitimacy and combat wild rooms us about his popular predecessor in numerous ways, ways which often involved spreading wild rumors about his popular predecessor. He eagerly picked up where czar Boris had left off by launching a dramatic propaganda campaign to discredit Dmitri. Remember grigory Otrepev, the defract Monk, the supposed alter ego of

the supposed Tzar. Vasily incessantly endorsed the idea that the pretender Dmitri had undoubtedly been that dabbler in the dark arts all along, and went to great lengths with his related scare tactics. For example, Vasily allegedly staged a ghoulish incident where Dmitri's corpse suddenly appeared at a churchyard far from where it had been buried the weak prior, so

that spooky stories would spread. Then, claiming that the earth was clearly refusing to accept the body of an evil sorcerer, Vasily had Dmitri's remains burned in one of the forts Dmitri had commissioned, and, according to an apocryphal sounding legend, ordered his ashes to be fired from a cannon aimed in the direction from which the so called Sarvich and

his army had marched into Moscow. Along the way, Vasily continued to promote correlated notions that the heretic Dmitri was a tool of the devil, had impregnated thirty nuns, was maybe even the actual Antichrist, and so on. Sure, this strategy hadn't worked the first time around, but doubling down on thoroughly demonizing the formers are which surely release people from their sacred obligation to support him as a monarch.

Right far from it, Vasily's macab displays and scary accusations seemingly just confused or alienated sizable portions of Russian society. Many citizens were stout in their Russian Orthodox beliefs, and some presumably bought Vasili's stories, but many others were just fatigued by Vasili's rumor mill and skeptical of his desperate

copying of Boris's talking points. Again, it's worth noting that the whole painting your political adversary as a demon gambit had been so frequently deployed by that point that an average Russian on the street might have been hard pressed to name a former ruler who hadn't maybe had a

chat or two with Satan. But a more important factor is that Dmitri had made many promises to towns, soldiers, and exiled families in order to gain their support during his Civil war crusade back before he died, and he had started to deliver on those debts once he became Czar. Vassal, on the other hand, had not specifically promised these groups

nearly as many legal or financial rewards. So when Mikhail Milkanov aka stand in Dmitri and his associates traveled throughout the countryside building up the myth of Dmitri's miraculous escape, many of Dmitri's ambitious supporters quickly backed the cause once again and revived their civil war fighting. As this rebellion neared critical mass in early sixteen o seven, an individual emerged in dramatic fashion, claiming yet again to be the true Czar Dmitri. Russia had not even had to wait

a full year to get there. Exciting, if somewhat slap dash sequel. The origins of the man who would later be referred to by many as False Dmitri, the second or second False Dmitrie, are similarly foggy to those of Czar Dmitri, who we will now refer to as False Dmitrie number one, not because we're fully upholding the arguments of various detractors, but for the sake of historians, naming conventions and basic clarity, just to keep all of the

Dmitris straight. Apparently, False Dmitri number two was a similar height to False Dmitri the First, but only vaguely resembled him. Most accounts described False Dmitri the Second as well educated, having been able to write in Russian as well as Polish, which, similar to the prior Dmitri, would have helped him gain

support in both countries. His handwriting apparently even looked like False Dmitri the firsts, although this could have been thanks to help from stand in Dmitri, who could have closely modeled the first Dmitri's penmanship for the second Dmitri. Regarding the background of False Dmitri the Second, consistent facts are hard to come by. Some sources pinpoint him as a Jew named Bogden. This is largely based on the fact that Hebrew writings and a copy of the p Tulmud

were reportedly posthumously found in his belongings. Many other accounts also represent him as someone far less refined or from a low socioeconomic class, possibly the son of a coach driver or blacksmith. Maybe he was an apprentice himself, or a cossack, or maybe a teacher. According to many contemporary sources, False Dmitri the second also had some association with the church, since he was knowledgeable when it came to certain Russian Orthodox traditions. So he was probably, they say, the son

of a priest, or maybe a priest's servant. But he was also seemingly a beggar when determined rebel agents were out looking for lookalikes, or if you were sympathetic to their spin, when they were out trying to locate the true Czar, who was certainly alive and had in no way been cremated and shot out of a cannon, So that would make False Dmitri the second a priest's servant

turned beggar. Some accounts explained this progression through a salacious story about how he was a priest's servant, but how he had been turned out into the street when he was caught in bed with the wife of the priest

he had been serving. Whatever this man's pre Dmitri identity, the general consensus among many historians seems to be that False Dmitri the Second did not want to be Czar Dmitri at all, but after being found, jailed and threatened with execution, he agreed that yes, he definitely was the real Dmitri. That said, having only just remembered that he was Dmitri te he needed training and then a big

unveiling in May sixteen o seven. The town of Stardob was chosen by rebel leaders as a good place for this because of the helpful fact that the people there were not remotely familiar with what Zar Dmitri had been

like in person. In a carefully engineered event, surprisingly similar to an episode of Undercover Boss, False Dmitri the Second arrived to town under an alias and asks around as to what people thought of Zar Dmitri and if they'd want him back in power again, and then aha, in a flashy public display, he revealed himself to be Zar Dmitri. All along he had been hiding as a test to

judge their loyalty, and they'd passed. The whole spectacle supposedly really stirred up the town and won over its occupants. False Dmitri the Second then continued to gain support, but his rise also came at a great cost. His military forces slogged through bloody battles, sieges, and starvation as they fought against Tsar Vassili's army, facing steep obstacles preventing them

from sweeping into Moscow. False Dmitri the Second and his rebel group set up a rival capital in the village of Tashino, which led to a messy, confusing, and wide ranging conflict that split the country in a sense. For over a year, Russia had two tsars, two capitals, and

two armies. Along the way, False Dmitri the second political alliances became extremely fraught, since, for various reasons, he had to accept into his circle several other impostors who were also pretending to be the sons of powerful men, some

of whom themselves were impostors. It's difficult to avoid being hyperbolic in parts of the story like this, but it basically got to the point that had you been sitting in a war planning meeting with False Dmitri the Second and looked to the person on your left and then to your right, at least one of them would have been an impostor, if not all three of you. During this time, zar vasily tried to speed up peace negotiations by releasing key prisoners to appease False Dmitri the Second.

Polish supporters, including the wife and father in law of False Dmitri the First, vasily strictly ordered False Dmitri the First's widow, Marina and her father stick directly with their convoy and after reaching Poland Lithuania that they were under no circumstances to go join False Dmitri the Second where they could declare him to be Marina's miraculously surviving husband.

So naturally, after getting captured by rubber, Marina and her dad met up with False Dmitri the Second, and after some negotiations about her future, she declared that he truly was Tsar Dmitri, her husband. He had survived, after all, what a miracle. This boosted the legitimacy of False Dmitri the Second, and by sixteen eight more than half of Russia recognized him as Tsar Dmitri. But this upswing also

brought many more Dmitris. Given how the story of Dmitri surviving assassination attempts clearly captivated people, Russia became a hotbed for pretenders hoping to use the same formula for themselves. During the later stages of the Civil War, about ten more copycats claimed to be Czar Dmitri. These fellows do not typically even make it into the top tier of scholars fall Dmitri lists, since many of them barely scratched

the surface of plausibility or garnered any traction at all. Still, all this Dmitri duplication led many Russians to lose faith in False Dmitri the Second. Desperate to curry favor with certain lords and rejuvenate his public support, False Dmitri the Second reportedly began offering rewards to those who found Pseudosavich's

roaming around and brought them to him. He even resorted to executing other impostors in his own circle, some who he'd previously claimed were his close relatives, to prove that he was real and he would not tolerate fakes. However, False Dmitri the Second's influence was unraveling too fast for him to stop. Unlike the more open and forward thinking ruling style of the first Dmitri, the Second Dmitri's court was, by most accounts the opposite. It was guarded, paranoid, snobbish,

and cruel. False Dmitri the Second lost the support of his advisers, and by letting his soldiers looting and pillaging go unchecked, he lost the support of townsfolk. False Dmitri the Second fled Tashino as his forces turned on him, but soon mistreated those around him so egregiously that the captain of his own bodyguard killed him on December eleventh, sixteen ten, while they were out sleigh riding. In addition to costing False Dmitri the Second his life, this bloody

chapter of Russian history also sealed Czar Vasili's fate. Plagued by backlash over his handling of this civil war, Vasily was ousted, forced to be a monk, and imprisoned. He died a couple years later. What a rim and tragic end to the time of troubles Huh, Nope, hold on to your fur hats, because it's time for False Dmitri number three. Don't worry. Within the hem czar studded cast of False Dmitri's False Dmitri the Third's time in the spotlight is the briefest and least complicated. Who was he?

Possibly a deacon or a trader. He purportedly ended up as a beggar in Novgorod, when sometime in sixteen eleven he or purportedly those who put him up to it, revealed his identity to be Dmitri, and he attracted some broader support. Like the first, false Dmitri, the third was said to be a great speaker and gained popularity among

Cossack groups who had backed prior Dmitri iterations. The third's popularity act actually grew to the point that several higher up nobles in the agitated political scene in Moscow once again had to publicly back him this time, though their hearts just weren't that in it. In secret, several of the men trying to seize power at the Kremlin saw the Third as a nuisance and work together to have him captured and hanged in sixteen twelve, but that only

paved the way for False Dmitri the fourth. Kidding mostly, there were a few rumors over the years about Dmitri resurrections, but some of these might have been due to erroneous reporting or accounting, and we have now covered the most influential branches of our dense Dmitri tree. After several more

years of fighting and fierce political jostling. The time of the troubles essentially came to an end in sixteen thirteen, when Russia started to accept the Romanov dynasty as legitimate and citizens went about trying to rebuild their war torn country. Although the odd and tragic period of the false Dmitries was relatively brief, their collective story continues to fascinate why.

In addition to having served up numerous uniquely absurd details, the procession of impostors brings up intriguing questions of identity on an individual scale and for Russia as a whole. It's important to remember that at this time, the Russian population was extremely widespread and largely illiterate. Accurate salient news was hard to come by, so two institutional constants that citizens put their trust in were the sovereignty of Russia

and the Russian Orthodox Church. At various points, the figure of Zar Dmitri offered them a chance to actively fight for both. So to say Russian people were repeatedly embarrassingly duped is perhaps not giving them enough credit. Given the information and resources available, combined with the fact that so many of them were in grave debt and or starving, it's understandable for them to put their faith in a hopeful,

battle tested legend supposedly capable of near christlike miracles. Beyond these loftier motivations, it's possible that some Russians support of Zar Dmitri revealed a very practical desire for stability. Power struggles meant bloodshed and steep taxes. Even for those skeptical of the rumors of miraculous escapes, the regal and righteous seeming Zar Dmitri, whoever he was, may have been significantly preferable to lesser known usurpers, if only for the sake

of having a semblance of order, stability, and tradition. As for Dmitri, he was both a person or series of people, but also an enduring idea. As a symbol, Dmitri galvanized the masses and for centuries to come inspired creative works of fiction, theater, music, and poetry. In some ways, Dmitri was also an aspirational fantasy. For a brief period in Russia, there was basically an open casting call for an emperor.

You could be a peasant, a beggar and alleged demon, accommodating former monk, and be plucked from obscurity and given the keys to the Kremlin. It's basically Russian American idol Czar. Dmitri's narrative was a classic rags to riches tale, so intent icing that it begged to be repeated again and again. And can we fully scoff at those involved, considering we've all probably fantasized about sitting on a throne at some point, maybe deep down we all have a little Dmitri in us.

That's the end of the second part of the deja vu filled story of the False Dmitries. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about one more supposed Dmitri who baffled Russia. In these False Dmitri chronicles, the Dmitries are all intriguing, but just like in any decent series of comic books or action movies, every legendary hero needs a worthy foil, and in Vasily Shwisky, this story has a fascinating antagonist and case study in contradiction.

In analyzing Vasily's battles against various Dmitri incarnations, it's hard not to picture Vasily as everything from a cunning schemer to a ridiculous arch villain shrieking at his underlings for failing to dispatch his death defying rival. The time of the Troubles may have been a pinnacle for pretenderism, but it was also a heyday for hypocrites, perhaps none bigger

than Vasily. For instance, after spending years promoting falsehoods about how Dmitri was a dark sorcerer in the League with Satan, when Vasily feared that he was losing the war to false Dmitri the Second, he allegedly looked into dark sorcery himself. In an even wilder turn of events, There is actually one more type of false Dmitri we have not yet discussed, one whose inclusion is debatable, since he never sought to rule, but whom Vasily had no one but himself to blame

for creating. After usurping the throne, Vasily sought to further discredit false Dmitri the First by having the body of the young boy Dmitri, the one who died when he was eight years old, dug up under the guise of honoring him as a martyr. He had the exhumed Tsarevich paraded around while spreading propaganda that the amazingly well preserved body of this true Dmitri could perform miracles and emitted

a sublime fragrance. The only problem with this plan, every part of it accounts claim that the spectacle fooled no one. Not only did the body smell like a dead body, everyone was almost certain that Vasily had actually ordered a boy of the same age to be killed and used as a replacement. In other words, the man who had spent an extraordinary, very amount of time playing a game of Whack a Dmitri perplexingly created a retroactive false Dmitri himself,

although allegedly this one was already dead. And not only did Vasily keep trying to pass off this false dead Dmitri as legitimate, he made him a saint, which technically also made him the first canonized but now mostly non

canonical Dmitri. As much as Vasily hated his zombie like nemesis, having dealt with him at every stage from boy to boy saint to man to czar to stand in czar to reluctant tzar to quickly multiplying horde of cheap knockoff czars, perhaps we should credit Dmitri's clearly obsessed opposite number as having actually done more to immortalize the Dmitri persona than any other person in history. Noble Blood is a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey.

Noble Blood is hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hit, and Julia Melaney. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer rima il Kaali and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.