'Feodor II of Russia' (
Russian: Фёдор II Борисович) (
1589 -
July 20 1605) was a
tsar of
Russia (1605) during the
Time of Troubles. He was born in
Moscow, the son and successor to
Boris Godunov. His mother was one of the daughters of
Malyuta Skuratov, the infamous favourite of
Ivan the Terrible.
Physically robust and passionately beloved by his father, he received the best available education for those days, and from childhood was initiated into all the minutiae of government, besides sitting regularly in the
council and receiving the foreign
envoys. He seems also to have been remarkably and precociously intelligent, and the first
map of Russia by a native, still preserved, is by his hand.
[1]
On the sudden death of Boris the sixteen-year-old was proclaimed tsar (
13 April 1605). Though his father had taken the precaution to surround him with powerful friends, he lived from the first moment of his reign in an atmosphere of treachery. On 1 July 1605 the envoys of
Pseudo-Demetrius I (or
False Dmitriy I) arrived at Moscow to demand his removal, and the letters which they read publicly in the
Red Square decided his fate. A group of
boyars, unwilling to swear allegiance to the new tsar, seized control of the
Kremlin and arrested him.
On 20 July Feodor was strangled in his apartment, together with his mother. Officially, he was declared to have been poisoned, but the Swedish historian Peter Petreius stated that the bodies, which had been on public display, showed traces of a violent struggle
[1]. Although aged 16 at best, Feodor was known to be physically strong and agile and apparently it took four men to overpower him.
[2]

''Assassination of Feodor II'' (1862).
References
★
1. Peter Petreius de Erlesund: ''Historien und Bericht von dem Groszfürstentumb Muschkow'', Leipzig, 1630
2. R. G. Skrynnikov: ''Boris Godunov'', Moscow: Nauka, 1978/1983 and Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International Press, 1978/1982, ISBN 0-875-69046-7