Dmitry Donskoy

Dmitry Ivanovich inherited Moscow's throne at nine in 1359, became Grand Prince of Vladimir four years later, and spent two decades navigating the suffocating vassalage his ancestors had endured under Mongol overlords. In 1380 he did what no Russian prince had dared: he gathered an army and rode out to meet the Tatars at Kulikovo, on the Don River, and won decisively. The victory didn't end the yoke - that took another century - but it cracked the myth of Mongol invincibility and made Moscow the center of Russian resistance. He died in 1389 at thirty-eight. The Orthodox Church canonized him; history gave him the nickname Donskoy, "of the Don."