The tsar Ivan IV nicknamed Grozny could send without hesitation to an execution of the most devoted person – treason so frightened him. Such suspiciousness can seem pathological, but it could have the real reasons.
Ivan the Terrible is quite often compared to Henry VIII, but history forcing to remember the fate of the British monarch took place in life of his father Vasily III. Without having waited for the successor from the first spouse Solomoniya Saburova, the grand duke thought of new marriage, and the defining role in it was played by appearance of the young beauty at court. Unlike Henry, Vasily had not to create new church to divorce Solomoniya and to marry Elena Glinskaya – he simply banished the grown hateful infertile spouse to the monastery. Unfortunate it was violently tonsured in the nun under the name of Sofia.
Year went after a year, and the new grand duchess did not please the husband with news of pregnancy. The ticklish situation generated idle talks. Many drew a natural conclusion that not Solomoniya was infertile, and the grand duke, but said also about another: God punishes infertility of the prince who banished the pregnant wife to the monastery. Rumors went that in the Pokrovsk monastery of the city of Suzdal the former grand duchess gave birth to the boy Georgi. It was necessary to pay attention to these rumors, and clerks were sent to the Pokrovsk monastery to understand a situation. The nun Sofia confirmed the fact of the birth of the son, but refused to show it to clerks. Later in the monastery there arrived boyars. This time nuns reported that the baby Georgi died, and even showed a tomb – a small plate without any inscriptions.
Still there is no definite answer to a question whether there was Georgy if yes – that as his fate was. Also Ivan the Terrible knowing about this story and who was interested in it did not know the answer. Interest was not idle: the elder brother, if he really was, had more rights for a throne.
The opening of a tomb which took place in 1934 had to give the answer, but it only raised new questions. Scientists found in a tomb a rag doll in a magnificent silk shirt and the diaper decorated with pearls with which the earth poured. It meant that the tomb was opened not the first time. Considering Ivan the Terrible's interest in this case, it quite could give such order.
News that the child's remains in burial did not appear had to become a hard blow for the tsar – it meant that the potential rival somewhere lives or maybe already began secret fight. It explains why traitors and enemies seemed to the tsar everywhere.
In this story there was one more moment, painful for Ivan IV: contemporaries began to doubt legality of its origin already, 20 years' fruitless marriage of his father with Solomoniya and with Elena Glinskaya was the reason for that from lived 4 years before Ivan was born. It caused suspicion that not Vasily III was his real father at all. This question and after the death of the tsar rose many years later in works of historians until the end to this question was put by the Soviet anthropologist M. Gerasimov and the forensic expert S. Nikitin. The first expert in 1965 recreated Ivan the Terrible's shape on a skull, and the second in 1994 by the same method reconstructed Sofya Paleolog's appearance – Vasily III's mothers. The similarity between the grandmother and the grandson turned out such obvious that all doubts in origin of the tsar disappeared.