This Crown Is Mine: History of Pretenders for the Crown, Civil War, and Foreign Invasion in Seventeenth-century Russia

by Levin, Benjamin

• ISBN13: 9781469795720
• ISBN10: 1469795728
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-04
• Publisher: Author Solutions

Summary

In the early 17th century, Russia went through a foreign invasion and the nation's first civil war - a time so horrible that it acquired its own name in Russian history: "The Times of Troubles". Internal and external forces came together to create a storm of such magnitude that it threatened the very existence of the nation. The country lay in ruins and a foreign army occupied Moscow. For a while it seemed that Russia would never become an independent nation again, but the Russian people found enough strength and courage to stop the civil war and unite against foreign invaders. Two young people played a most important role in these events - a pretender to the Russian throne who called himself Tsarevich Dmitry, son of the late Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and Marina Mnishek, the girl with whom he fell in love while on the run from then Russian Tsar, Boris Godunov. Dmitry invaded Russia with a small band of adventurers and defeated Godunov. He and Marina were married and crowned in the Kremlin. Two weeks after their marriage, Dmitry was killed in a riot and Marina was exiled to the far North. But she escaped, and took part in a civil war herself. Twice she came to the walls of Moscow with an army and two different men by her side, fighting for her crown. This is a true story how a young man of uncertain ancestry and a young woman from a family of Polish nobility forced history to engrave their names into the list of Tsar's families of Russia. In their adventures, fights, travels, love stories, and turns of fate throwing them into the depths of despair and raising them to the heights of power and wealth, this couple lived more exciting lives than millions of other human beings put together.

Excerpts

The Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible - famous for his glorious deeds against external enemies as well as horrible crimes against his own people – died in 1584, leaving the nation bloodied and traumatized. In 1604, a young man who called himself Tsarevich Dmitry (supposedly the murdered-in-childhood son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible) appeared in Poland and led a small band of adventurers on a seemingly impossible quest – to conquer Russia and reclaim his crown. Helped by circumstances and luck, within a year he was crowned as Tsar Dmitry I. While in Poland, he met and fell in love with a young girl, Marina Mnishek. They married in the Kremlin, and she became Tsaritsa in her own right, crowned according to all the rules of protocol. Two weeks later Dmitry was killed in a riot. Marina spent the next two years in exile in the harsh conditions of the Russian North. Then, instead of going back home, she returned twice to the walls of Moscow with two different men, fighting for the crown that she felt was rightfully hers. For ten years - between her 16th and 26th birthdays - she led an adventurous life, transforming herself from a sheltered, selfish teenager into a fighter and a leader. The book strives to open a window into that turbulent period for an intelligent, serious audience, interested in human history as much as in romance and adventure. My goal is to describe life as it was - full of evil and noble deeds, triumphs of human spirit and failures of human nature, break-downs of civil order, and heroic efforts to restore it. Marina and Dmitry were, in large measure, the cause of that disaster and its most pitiful victims. Their life story - their love, their victories and defeats, their happiness and sufferings – is especially amazing because it really happened.