#tsar alexei
Tsar Alexei I Mikhailovich
When boyars missed his dawn church services he registered their names and had them collected with hands bound behind their back and, wearing their robes, tossed into the river where they might easily have drowned or died of cold. “This is your reward”, he laughed, “for preferring to sleep with your wives instead of celebrating the lustre of this blessed day.” He relished this despotic bullying, writing to his friends, “I have made it my custom to duck courtiers every morning in a pond. The baptism in the Jordan is well done. I duck four or five, sometimes dozen, whoever fails to report on time for my inspection.”
But these games were deadly serious. He put the old boyars in their place. When he had to promote a military bungler like Prince Ivan Khovansky, nicknamed the “Windbag”, the tsar did so “even though everyone called you a fool”. He indulgently remprimanded the Whispering Favourite Khitrovo for keeping a harem of Polish sex slaves and he was infuriated by the whoremongering of his own father-in-law Miloslavsky: Alexei told him either to give up sex or to marry fast.
Simon Sebag Montefiore: The Romanovs
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