Feodor I of Russia

Feodor Ioannovich was born on 31 May 1557, lost his mother at three, and grew up overshadowed by his father, Ivan the Terrible. Possibly mentally disabled and of deeply retiring disposition, he became Tsar of all Russia in 1584 but left the actual work of ruling to Boris Godunov, brother of his beloved wife Irina. For fourteen years the country was administered in his name while he focused on piety. When he died on 17 January 1598 without surviving children, the Rurik dynasty — which had held power since the ninth century — ended, Godunov took the throne, and Russia lurched into the catastroph…