Ivan the Terrible: The Tsar Who Went Through 7 Wives — By Divorce, Murder, or Convent
The Orthodox Church forbade a fourth marriage. He had seven.
Key Facts
What Happened
Ivan IV of Russia — 'Ivan the Terrible' — had seven wives between 1547 and 1581, despite the Russian Orthodox Church absolutely prohibiting any marriage beyond the third. His first wife, Anastasia Romanovna, was by all accounts his true love. Her death in 1560, which Ivan believed was caused by poisoning from his boyars (nobles), triggered a psychological transformation that turned the ambitious young tsar into a paranoid, violent tyrant. Modern forensic analysis of Anastasia's remains confirmed abnormally high levels of mercury, supporting the poisoning theory.
His second wife, Maria Temryukovna, a Circassian princess, died in 1569 under suspicious circumstances. His third wife, Marfa Sobakina, died just fifteen days after the wedding in 1571 — her death was so sudden it was widely attributed to poisoning. After this, Ivan should never have been permitted to marry again under church law, but his power allowed him to override religious authority. His fourth wife, Anna Koltovskaya, was sent to a convent when she failed to produce children. His fifth, Anna Vasilchikova, was also forced into a convent within a year.
His sixth wife, Vasilisa Melentyeva, was caught in an alleged affair and forced to witness her lover's execution by impalement before being sent to a convent herself. His seventh and final wife, Maria Nagaya, survived Ivan but was later forced into a convent after Ivan's death by Boris Godunov. The pattern is unmistakable: Ivan treated marriage as disposable, discarding wives through death, forced religious imprisonment, or exile when they no longer served his purposes.
Ivan's marital history represents perhaps history's most extreme pattern of serial spousal abuse enabled by unchecked power. The Russian Orthodox Church's inability to enforce its own marriage laws against the tsar demonstrated how institutional protections fail when one party holds absolute authority. Modern domestic violence researchers would recognize Ivan's behavior as a textbook pattern of escalating control, isolation, and violence.
Legal Breakdown: Serial marriage as a pattern of domestic abuse
Serial Marriage as Abuse Pattern
Ivan's pattern of acquiring, controlling, and discarding wives mirrors what modern domestic violence experts call serial intimate partner abuse. Each new wife entered an increasingly dangerous situation. Today, a pattern of multiple marriages ending in abuse or suspicious circumstances would trigger law enforcement investigation and protective interventions.
Institutional Failure to Protect
The Russian Orthodox Church's prohibition on fourth marriages should have protected Ivan's later wives, but institutional authority collapsed in the face of state power. This parallels modern concerns about restraining orders that go unenforced, custody agreements that are violated without consequence, and legal protections that exist on paper but fail in practice.
Forced Religious Confinement
Sending unwanted wives to convents was the Muscovite equivalent of forced institutionalization — a tactic that continued into the modern era when inconvenient spouses were committed to asylums. Today, false claims of mental illness during divorce proceedings remain a form of abuse, though legal protections make involuntary commitment significantly harder.
What This Means for Your Divorce
- →Research your partner's relationship history — patterns of failed marriages may indicate abuse
- →Institutional protections only work if they are actually enforced
- →If you are being isolated or controlled by a spouse, reach out to domestic violence resources
- →Serial abusers rely on each new partner not knowing about the previous ones
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