'Simeon Bekbulatovich' (Симеон Бекбулатович) (died
January 5,
1616) (born 'Sain-Bulat', Саин-Булат ) was a baptized
khan of the
Khanate of Qasim. During the
Oprichnina period, by a strange whim of
Ivan the Terrible, he was named the
Grand Prince of the Whole Russia (
1574–
1576). He participated in
Livonian war as a commander of the
Qasim cavalry.
In 1574, after executing a large number of
boyars and
archimandrite of
Chudov Monastery, Ivan IV left
Moscow for his palace in
Alexandrov. At that time he wished to be styled merely "Ivan from Moscow" and had Simeon crowned the sovereign of Muscovy instead of himself. Historians have a number of opinions as to why Ivan did this.
After his short and ephemeral "rule" in the
Moscow Kremlin, Simeon was married to Ivan's cousin and proclaimed a ruler of
Tver and
Torzhok. When
Boris Godunov was elected Tsar in
1598, he viewed the former monarch with suspicion and sent him away from the court.
False Dmitry I, who had even more reasons to fear the puppet monarch, banished him to the
Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery as a
monk.
Simeon Bekbulatovich died in
1616, when the
Romanov dynasty was firmly installed in the Kremlin, and was buried in the
Simonov Monastery in
Moscow. Russian genealogists debate whether he left any male issue by his marriage to Ivan the Terrible's cousin. If he did, their progeny would have been the only living descendants of
Ivan the Great and his wife
Sophia Paleologue and, as such, should have been viewed as potential claimants to the Russian crown.