Following Gudonov’s unexpected death on April 13, son and successor assumes the throne as Fyodor II.

His mother Maria Grigorievna Skuratova-Belskaya is one of the daughters of Malyuta Skuratov, the infamous favorite of Ivan the Terrible.

Fyodor, physically robust and passionately beloved by his father, has received the best available education possible, and from childhood has been 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, creating a map of Russia, which is still preserved.

(It will be edited with some additions by Hessel Gerritsz in Amsterdam, in 1613, and reedited until 1665.)

Though his father had taken the precaution to surround him with powerful friends, he lives from the first moment of his reign in an atmosphere of treachery.