After several weeks of repeatedly thinking, “Ivan Vorpatril, what a fucking dude,” I remembered that many Russian fairy tales are about a boy or man named Ivan and started digging around on the internet.
Yes! That idiot Ivan is very obviously modeled on Ivan the fool. Youngest of three brothers, he consistently saves the day by not being ambitious, getting the work done and enjoying simple pleasures. He is simple and very lucky.
From Tolstoy’s short story Ivan the Fool:
Ivan the Fool did not enjoy his wealth and power to the same extent as did his brothers. As soon as his father-in-law, the late Czar, was buried, he discarded the Imperial robes which had fallen to him and told his wife to put them away, as he had no further use for them. Having cast aside the insignia of his rank, he once more donned his peasant garb and started to work as of old.
"I felt lonesome," he said, "and began to grow enormously stout, and yet I had no appetite, and neither could I sleep."
Ivan sent for his father, mother, and dumb sister, and brought them to live with him, and they worked with him at whatever he chose to do.
Seeing that Ivan was a fool, all the wise men left the kingdom and only the fools remained. They had no money, their wealth consisting only of the products of their labor. But they lived peacefully together, supported themselves in comfort, and had plenty to spare for the needy and afflicted.
The Story of Ivan the Fool
