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

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Tsar Dmitri I was murdered by assassins, but he wouledn't be the last to use the name of Ivan the Terrible's son claiming to be the rightful ruler of Russia. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Noble Blood merch— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Just before midnight on May 16, 1606, a courtier and several of his accomplices nervously waited in the palace shadows. With traders potentially lurking in every corner of the Kremlin, speed and stealth were vital, but also nearly impossible considering the group's mission, sneaking 25 horses out of the Tsar's private stable. This was no theft, however, no devious horse heist. The courtier, Mikhail Mulkanov, had been tasked with securing this royal herd by their owner himself,

Zar Dimitri. Mokinov was one of the emperor's closest associates and had helped hatch this escape plan after Dmitri learned of a post-wedding assassination plot against him that was set to kick off in mere hours. Mokanov had tasked an experienced stable hand with gathering the horses. But was that man trustworthy? Could this risky getaway possibly work? The tense moments ticked passed until at last the stable hand delivered the horses as covertly as he could. Mokanov 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 Vasily Schwisky initiated his murderous plan and grotesquely paraded Zar Demetri's supposed body through the streets, Mokanov 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, 25 horses did go missing from Tsar Dimitri's stables. Molkanov also had Dimitri'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 Dimitri survive.

But that poor stable hand, apparently deeply loyal to Dimitri after all, died without admitting a thwarty. thing. Malkinov 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. Mokanov achieved this by not only spinning his yarn that the Tsar and his horses had artfully escaped their enemies, but by also pretending to be Dmitri himself. Mokanov did not. bear much resemblance to Dimitri, but he knew him so well that he could deftly imitate him while traveling among less familiar townsfolk. In spite of these efforts,

Mulkanov is typically not even included by scholars as one of the main, quote, false Dmitri's, because although he elicited considerable Dmitri loyalty in certain localities, Molkinov was already too well known in Moscow and other power circles to continue to play the role. Since the original Tsar Dmitri was seemingly never seen or heard from again, Molkinov essentially served as a stand-in who stoked the fires of rebellion until eventually, you guessed it, the time came to debut a new Dmitri. I'm Danish forts, and this is the same. This is Noble Blood.

How was yet another man, and eventually more after that, able to somewhat successfully assume the same Dimitri identity? Much like franchise movie sequels or knock-off Rolexes, the market for them was clearly there. And to fully understand how Russia's impersonator supply kept up with the Dimitri demand, we must first look at the unstable, situation in Moscow. Following the death of the man who had seized power under the name Tsar Dmitri, Vasili quickly finagled his way into becoming the new Tsar. 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 capital, where many nobles reportedly saw him as a detestable traitor, and he was far less well-liked than Dimitri

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 reluctance 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 royal background, but even putting aside the whole committing regicide issue, any assertion of him being a proper heir was murky at best. Vasily also did not naturally come off as a battle-tested hero or military mastermind. And unlike Tsar Dimitri, with his Jesus-esque resurrecting, Vasili lacked a compelling origin story that was anywhere near as interesting or easy to sell to the masses. Throughout his time in power, Vasily tried to boost his own legitimacy and combat wild rumors about his popular predecessor in numerous ways,

ways which often involved spreading wild rumors about his popular predecessor. He eagerly picked up where Zar Boris had left off by launching a dramatic, dramatic propaganda campaign to discredit Dmitri. Remember Gregory Otrepev, the defract monk, the supposed alter ego of the supposed czar? 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 Dimitri's corpse suddenly appeared at a churchyard,

far from where it had been buried the week 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 Demetri's remains burned in one of the forts Demetri had commissioned, and, according to an apocryful-sounding legend, ordered his ashes to be fired from a king, 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 Dimitri was a tool of the devil,

had impregnated 30 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 former czar, would surely release people from their sacred obligation to support him as a monarch, right? Far from it, Vasili's macabre 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. Roussela'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 Dimitri 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 Tsar. Vasily, on the other hand, had not specifically promised these groups nearly as many legal or financial rewards. So when Mikhail Malkinov, aka Stand-in Dimitri, and his associates traveled throughout the countryside, building up the myth of Dimitri's miraculous escape, many of Demetri's ambitious supporters

quickly backed the cause once again and revived their civil war fighting. As this rebellion neared critical mass in early 1607, an individual emerged in dramatic fashion, claiming yet again to be the true Tsar Dmitri. Russia had not even had to wait a full year to get there exciting, if somewhat slapdash, sequel. The origins of the man who would later be referred to by many as False Dmitri the Second, or Second False Dmitri, are similarly foggy to those of Tsar Dmitri, who we will now refer to as False Dmitri No. 1.

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 Demetri's straight. Apparently, False Dmitri No. 2 was a similar height to False Dmitri I, but only vaguely resembled him. Most accounts described False Dmitri II as well-educated, having been able to write in Russian as well as Poles, which, similar to the prior Dmitri, would have helped him gain support in both countries.

His handwriting apparently even looked like False Dmitri I's, 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 II, consistent facts are hard to come by. Some sources pinpoint him as a Jew named Bogdan. This is largely based on the fact that Hebrew writings and a copy of the Talmud 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 II 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 zon. who was certainly alive and had in no way been cremated and shot out of a cannon. So that would make False Dmitri II 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-Dimitri identity, the general consensus among many historians seems to be that false Dmitri the second did not want to be Tsar 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 Dimitri, he needed training and then a big unveiling. In May 1607, the town of Stardub 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 Tsar Dimitri had been like in person. In a carefully engineered event surprisingly similar to an episode of undercover boss, False Dmitri II arrived to town under an alias and asks around as to what people thought of Tsar Dmitri, and if they'd want him back in power again. And then, aha, in a flashy public display, he revealed himself to be Tsar 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 II then continued to gain support, but his rise also came at a great cost.

His military forces slogged through bloody battles, seizures, and starvation as they fought against Tsar Vasili's army. Facing steep obstacles preventing them from sweeping into Moscow, False Dmitri II 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 czars, two capitals, and two armies. Along the way, false Dmitri II's 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 II and looked to the person on your left and then to your right, at least one of them would have been an imposter, if not all three of you. During this time, Tsar Vasily tried to speed up peace negotiations by releasing key prisoners to appease False Dimitri II's Polish supporters, including the wife and father-in-law of False Dmitri I. Vasili strictly ordered False Dmitri I'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 II, where they could declare him to be Marina's miraculously surviving husband. So, naturally, after getting captured by rebels, Marina and her dad met up with False Dmitri II, 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 II, and by 1608, more than half of Russia recognized him as Tsar Dmitri. But this upswing also brought many more Dmitries. 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 10 more copycats claimed to be Tsar Dimitri. These fellows do not typically even make it into the top tier of scholars' False Dmitri lists,

since many of them barely scratched the surface of plausibility or garnered any traction at all. Still, all this Dimitri duplication led many Russians to lose faith in False Demetri, 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 pseudo-sarviches 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 II'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 II lost the support of his advisors, and by letting his soldiers looting and pillaging go unchecked, he lost the support of townsfolk. False Dmitri II 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 11, 1610 while they were out sleigh-riding. In addition to costing false Dmitri II his life, this bloody chapter of Russian history also sealed Tsar Vasili's fate. Plagued by backlash over his handling of this civil war, Vasili was ousted, forced to be a monk, and imprisoned. He died a couple years later.

What a grim 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 Tsar-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 traitor. He purportedly ended up as a beggar in Novgorod when, sometime in 1611, he, or purportedly those who put him up to it, revealed his identity to be Dimitri, and he attracted some broader support. Like the first false Dimitri,

the third was said to be a great speaker and gained popularity among Cossack groups who had backed prior Dimitri iterations. The third's popularity 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 worked together to have him captured and hanged in 1612. But that only paved the way for false Dmitri the fourth. Kidding. Mostly. There were a few rumors over the years about, Demetri 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 Demetri tree. After several more years of fighting and fierce political jostling,

the time of the troubles essentially came to an end in 1613, 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 Demetri's 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 Zardiv, 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-Christ-like miracles. Beyond these loftier motivations, it's possible that some Russian's support of Tsar Dimitri 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 Tsar Dimitri, 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 Dimitri, he was both a person, or series of people, but also an enduring idea. As a symbol, Dimitri galvanized the masses, and for centuries to come, inspired creative work. 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, an alleged demon accommodating former monk, and be plucked from obscurity and given the keys to the Kremlin.

It's basically Russian-American idol. Zar Dmitri's narrative was a class. classic rags to Rich's tale so enticing 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 Dimitri in us. That's the end of the second part of the deja vu-filled story of the false Demetri's, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about

one more supposed Demetri who baffled Russia. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging. in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot.

He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Swiskie, this story has a fascinating antagonist and case study in contradiction. In analyzing Vasili'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 pretenders. but it was also a heyday for hypocrites. Perhaps none bigger than Vasili. For instance, after spending years promoting falsehoods about how Dimitri was a dark sorcerer in 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 Zarm. Sarovic paraded around while spreading propaganda that the amazingly well-preserved body of this

true Dimitri 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 Vasili 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 amount of time playing a game of whack a Dimitri, perplexingly created a retroactive false Dimitri himself, although

allegedly this one was already dead. And not only did Vasily keep trying to pass off this false dead Dimitri as legitimate, he made him a saint, which technically also made him the first canonized but now mostly non-canonical Dimitri. 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 quickly multiplying horde of cheap knockoff czars, perhaps we should credit Dimitri's clearly obsessed opposite number as having actually done more to immortalize the Dimitri persona than any other person in history. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Rima Il Kali and executive producers Aaron Manky, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks dad on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.