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I can honestly say I'm surprised that I'm the first (or at least I think I'm the first) to ask about this topic, considering how many threads there are on the pretender/false Dmitris. Anyway, for those of you who don't know, Dmitri of Uglich was the youngest surviving son of Ivan the Terrible, born to his fifth/seventh wife (depending on whether or not two of his wives are real or legends) Maria Nagaya. After the Tsar's death two-year-old Dmitri and his mother moved to Uglich, an appanage granted to the former by his father, where they lived until Dmitri's mysterious death in 1591. What exactly was the cause of death is still debated to this day by historians; he was either murdered on the orders of Boris Godunov (the brother-in-law and Regent of Feodor I, Dmitri's half-brother) or accidentally stabbed himself in the throat during an epileptic seizure, while playing with a knife. Dmitri's death, followed by his half-brother Feodor's in 1598, ended the main line of the Rurik dynasty and set the stage for the Russian time of Troubles. Later Dmitri would famously be impersonated by three pretenders and backed by the Polish nobility (the first of which even gained the Russian throne for a short time) in an attempt to take control of Russia.

So my question is this: what if Tsarevich Dmitri didn't die in 1591 and instead outlived his brother Feodor? Would Dmitri be enthroned as Tsar or would his semi-legitimate birth (his mother was the Tsar's fifth/seventh wife; in the Russian Orthodox Church all brides after the third were uncanonical, so Dmitri's legitimacy was dubious at best) bar him and allow Feodor's in-laws to gain the throne like OTL? If the former would we see him take his brother's place as puppet to Boris Godunov or would he quickly emerge as his own man? If the Later would we see a Civil war between Dmitri and Boris? Assuming that, one way or another, Dmitri is Tsar, how would Russia develop without the devastating Fifteen years of the Time of Troubles (not to mention the decades of reconstruction)? Finally, would Russia under a surviving Rurik Dynasty differ from Romanov Russia?

BTW Above assumes that the initial report of an accidental death was true and not that Dmitri was murdered. However, feel free to discus a botched/failed assassination attempt as well!
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