- Simeon Bekbulatovich
Simeon Bekbulatovich (Симеон Бекбулатович) (died
January 5 ,1616 ) (born Sain-Bulat, Саин-Булат ) was a baptized khan of theKhanate of Qasim . During theOprichnina period, by a strange whim ofIvan the Terrible , he was named the Grand Prince of the Whole Russia (1574–1576). He participated inLivonian war as a commander of the Qasimcavalry .In 1574, after executing a large number of
boyars andarchimandrite ofChudov Monastery , Ivan IV leftMoscow for his palace in Alexandrov. At that time he wished to be styled merely "Ivan from Moscow" and had Simeon crowned the sovereign of Russia instead of himself. Historians have a number of opinions as to why Ivan did this.After his short and ephemeral "rule" in the
Moscow Kremlin , Simeon was married to Ivan's cousin and proclaimed a ruler ofTver andTorzhok . WhenBoris Godunov was elected Tsar in 1598, he viewed the former monarch with suspicion and sent him away from the court.False Dmitry I , who had even more reasons to fear the puppet monarch, banished him to theKirillo-Belozersky Monastery as amonk .Simeon Bekbulatovich died in 1616, when the
Romanov dynasty was firmly installed in the Kremlin, and was buried in theSimonov Monastery inMoscow . Russian genealogists debate whether he left any male issue by his marriage to Ivan the Terrible's cousin. If he did, their progeny would have been the only living descendants ofIvan the Great and his wifeSophia Paleologue and, as such, should have been viewed as potential claimants to the Russian crown.
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