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his eldest son or, failing sons, to his next brother (withone temporary exception).In 1598 tsar Feodor, Ivan the Terrible's only survivingson, died, without living issue or any male bloodrelatives, "entrusting the sceptre'' after him to his wife.Although no woman had ever before occupied the throne,she was accepted, but immediately resigned and tookthe veil, directing the Patriarch of Moscow to arrangeas to her successor. This delicate and entirely noveltask he successfully accomplished by summoning anassembly of the land, which elected as tsar his ally andher brother, Boris Godunov, 1 who had been the real (andan efficient and enlightened) ruler of the land during thereign of the failing tsar Feodor. The election wasconcerted by the partisans of Boris; yet the sanction ofthe assembly of the land was not a formality, but consideredby Boris to be essential for his position. Theelection was not accompanied by the imposition of anyconditions. Significantly, this new but necessary departurefrom family succession to the throne wasofficially buttressed by copious citation of Byzantineparallels.But it was fifteen years before Muscovy could findwhat proved to be a dynasty. Boris's little son did notsucceed him. Two pretenders (each claiming to be ason of Ivan the Terrible), one magnate (Shuisky), onePole (Vladislav, the son and heir of king Sigismund III),succeeded or disputed each other as tsars. At last, afterthe recapture of Moscow from the Poles, the assemblyof the land elected (1613), not a foreigner and not amagnate, but Michael Romanov, of middle noble rank,who linked up with the old dynasty through being arelative of Ivan the Terrible's very popular first wife.Shuisky had had to swear conditions, at least to themagnates, if not to the whole land. Vladislav, a foreignerand a Catholic, had had to accept conditions from whatclaimed to be an assembly of the whole land. Michael,on the contrary, was elected (almost certainly) without1 He is the subject of two of the great creations of Russian art,Pushkin's tragedy (1825) and Musorgsky's opera (1873) based on it.There is a translation in the Nonesuch edition of Pushkin (1936).82