Vasili IV of Russia

Vasili IV Ivanovich Shuisky came to power in 1606, ascending after the murder of False Dmitri I into a Russia already unraveling. His reign ran through the Time of Troubles, that stretch of famine, pretenders, and civil fracture that nearly unmade the state. He was the only Shuisky to become tsar and the last of the Rurikid dynasty's Yurievichi branch to hold the title. By 1610 his rule was over. He died two years later, on 12 September 1612, the end of a bloodline that had lasted centuries.