Boris came from a boyar family (i.e. they belonged to the nobility). His parents were dead and he was brought up at the court of the Tsar in Moscow. The Tsar who ruled was Ivan IV, known as Ivan the Terrible who really was a very cruel ruler. He ruled for more than 50 years. Boris was very close to the royal family. One of the Tsar’s sons, Fyodor, who was not very intelligent. He married Irina, the sister of Boris. The Tsar killed his eldest son. When the Tsar died he had a son Dmitry who was only two years old. Dmitri was not allowed to become tsar, because he was the son of Ivan’s 7th marriage, and the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church were that no one should be allowed to marry more than three times (of course, no one had dared to try to stop Ivan from all those marriages). So Fyodor became Tsar Fyodor I. He was not bright enough to rule himself. We would probably say that he was mentally disabled, or that he had “learning difficulties”. Boris therefore became regent: he ruled for him. Some boyars were against Boris, but Boris somehow managed to silence them. In some ways Boris did a good job. He made Russia a safer place, fighting back the Tatars in the south and making strong contacts with Europe. He built towns and fortresses, made sure that Western Siberia was firmly under Moscow’s control, and made the head of the Muscovite Church a patriarch. In 1598 Fyodor died and Irina should have become Tsarina, but she refused and went to live in a convent. The boyars voted for Boris to become Tsar.