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I think it goes without saying that Ivan the Terrible was a complicated man. On the one hand, he was intelligent, devout and strong-willed. On the other, he was prone to paranoia, rages, and bouts of mental instability. While he certainly accomplished a lot, his achievements are overshadowed in the popular imagination by his atrocities, at least in the West.

That being said, his reign started out very well. While Ivan seems to have been troubled, mercurial and volatile from a young age, his worse tendencies are generally agreed to have been kept in check by his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna, whom by all accounts he deeply loved. So the first thirteen years of his rule were excellent for the Tsardom of Russia.

Then the tsarina died and everything went to hell. Her 1560 death deeply hurt her husband, caused him to have a severe emotional collapse, and probably had adverse effects on his personality and mental health. Ivan blamed the boyars for Anastasia's death, saying she had been poisoned by them. Modern forensics suggest that she probably really was poisoned.

You've probably already figured out what my question is: what if Anastasia didn't get poisoned?
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