False Dmitry I

The real Dmitry of Uglich, youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, likely died in 1591 at age eight. The pretender who took his name told a story of switched bodies and monastery exile, then fled to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth when Boris Godunov tried to seize him. Polish nobles doubted him but backed him anyway. He invaded Russia in 1604, and when Godunov died suddenly mid-war, disaffected boyars deposed the new tsar and opened the gates. On 21 July 1605 he entered Moscow; the dead boy's mother accepted him as her son. His openness to Catholicism and foreigners grated the boyars, who killed him on 17 May 1606 in the Moscow Uprising. His widow would later recognize a second pretender as her husband returned.