Sofia Paleolog

The second wife of the Grand Duke Moscow Ivan III Vasilyevich Zrechanka Sophia Paleologist (mind 1503) belongs to the number of brightest women in the history of medieval Russia. Its image is laid by legends and speculation. What was not attributed to its influence at the Moscow yard! It as if she forced her spouse to end the humiliating dependence on the horde, introduce sophisticated Greek and European customs, invite the best European masters to Moscow to restructure the Kremlin! And it as if she poisoned the heir to the throne - Prince Ivan the young, the son of Ivan III from the first marriage! But reality, as it always happens, is very different from the legends. Rather, you should pay attention to another. The biography of Sofia owns the history at once of three different worlds - Russian, Greek and Italian (for it was in Rome that the family of the seasisian despota Foma Paleologist was refuge and it was in Rome that the project of the marriage union "Despina" with the Moscow Grand Duke was born) And her marriage with Ivan III is primarily important in that he contributed to the consolidation of the relations of the Russian state with Europe.
On bizarre turns in the biography of Sofia Paleolog, about the environment of the "Despins" and the role of arriving with her Greeks in the history of the Moscow state of the second half of the XV century and is told in this book. The author relies on a wide range of sources, including not previously known