The first Russian Tsar of the House of Romanov, Mikhail was born on 22nd July (O.S. 12th July) 1596 in Moscow, Russia. He was the son of Feodor Nikitch Romanov (Patriarch Filaret) and Xenia Shestova (“great nun” Martha). He is the grandson of Nikita Romanovich Zakharyin-Yuriev, a prominent boyar of the Tsardom of Russia, and the brother to the first Russian Tsaritsa Anastasia, wife of Ivan the Terrible. As a young boy, he and his mother had been exiled to Beloozero in 1600.
At the age of 16, the poorly educated Mikhail was unanimously elected Tsar of Russia by a national assembly in 1613. His mother protested, believing and stating that her son was too young and tender for so difficult an office, and in such a troublesome time. He, too, wasn’t eager to accept such a role. His parents had suffered greatly during the Time of Troubles — his mother had been forced to become a nun and his father a monk. He eventually accepted the Russian throne, thus ending the Time of Troubles.
Mikhail Romanov was not particularly bright nor healthy. Short-sighted and suffered from a progressive leg injury, which resulted in his not being able to walk towards the end of his life. He was soft-natured, gentle and pious who gave little trouble to anyone and effaced himself behind his counsellors. His reign saw the greatest territorial expansion in Russian history. In 1645, fell ill and died on 23rd July, a day after his 49th birthday.
“On these difficult days, a boy was brought on a sledge across the dirty March roads to the charred walls of Moscow - a plundered and ravaged heap of ashes, only freed at great cost from the Polish occupants. A frightened boy elected tsar of Moscow, at the advice of the patriarch, by impoverished boyars, empty-handed merchants and hard men from the north and the Volga. The boy prayed and wept, looking out of the window of his coach in fear and dejection at the ragged, frenzied crowds who had come to greet him at the gates of Moscow. The Russian people had little faith in the new tsar, but life had to go on..." — Alexei Tolstoy
