The Terem Palace, ca. 1800 NYPL, Slavic and Baltic Division

Ivan IV, "the Terrible" (1530–1584; r. 1533–84), wedded Anastasiia Romanova (1530–1560) in 1547, shortly after his coronation as tsar. When Ivan announced his intention of getting married, two thousand girls came to Moscow to audition. During the smotriny (the tsar's viewing of the candidates), Ivan fell in love with Anastasiia Romanovna because of her beauty, intelligence, and piety. As a wife, Anastasiia managed to subdue Ivan's bad temper and promoted a whole range of reforms in the state. The period ending with the death of his beloved first wife constituted the "good" part of Ivan IV's reign (her kin, the Romanovs, became the next Russian dynasty in 1613). Ivan married six more times, and treated his wives cruelly: one was drowned, three were imprisoned, and two were sent to a nunnery.

Ivan's reign continued the transition, begun under his grandfather Ivan III (r. 1462–1505), from a feudal system of rival principalities to a more modern, centralized, and expansionist state under a powerful monarch. His excesses, however – including the murder of his own son and heir – ultimately triggered a succession crisis and an anarchic period during which foreign invaders and rival domestic factions came close to destroying the Muscovite state.