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great intelligence and the most delicate understanding, with an accomplished masculine mind." Together with a younger monk, Sylvester Medvedev, Polotsky taught his pupil theology, Latin, Polish and history. She became acquainted with poetry and drama and even performed in religious plays. Medvedev snared Polotsky's view that the Tsarevna was a student with "marvelous understanding and judgment."
    Sophia was nineteen when her father died and her fifteen-year-old brother became Tsar Fedor II. Soon after Fedor's coronation, the Tsarevna began to emerge from the obscurity of the terem. Increasingly throughout his reign, she was seen in circumstances hitherto wholly unknown to women. She attended sessions of the boyar council. Her uncle Ivan Miloslavsky and the leading minister, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, included her in their conversations and decisions, so that her political views matured and she learned to judge the character of men. Gradually, she came to realize that her intellectual attainments and strength of will matched and even surmounted those of the men around her, that there was no reason, except her sex and the unbroken tradition in Muscovy that the autocrat be a man, to bar her from supreme power.
    During the last week of Fedor's life, Sophia stayed at his bedside, acting as comforter, confidante and messenger, and became deeply involved in affairs of state. Fedor's death and sudden elevation to the throne of her half-brother, Peter, rather than her full brother, Ivan, were terrible blows to Sophia. She genuinely mourned Fedor, who had been her classmate and friend as well as her brother; further, the promise of a Naryshkin restoration at court meant the end of any special status for her, a Miloslavsky princess. She would certainly have less contact with high officers of state like Prince Vasily Golitsyn, whom she had come to admire. Worse, because she and the new regent, the Tsaritsa Natalya, disliked each other, she might even be sent back to the terem.
    Desperately, Sophia sought another solution. She hurried to the Patriarch to complain of Peter's quick election to the throne. "This election is unjust," she protested. "Peter is young and impetuous. Ivan has reached his majority. He must be the tsar." Joachim said that the decision could not be changed. "But at least let them both rule!" begged Sophia. "No," decreed the Patriarch, "joint rule is ruinous. Let there be one tsar. It is thus pleasing to God." For the moment, Sophia had to retreat. A few days later, however, at Fedor's funeral, she made her feelings public. Peter, accompanied by his mother, followed the bier in the procession to the cathedral. Walking along, Natalya heard loud noises behind her and turned to find that Sophia had joined the procession without the moving canopy which traditionally screened a daughter of a tsar from the public. In the open, only partially veiled, Sophia was weeping theatrically and calling on the crowd to witness her grief.
    Sophia's act was unprecedented, and at the crowded cathedral Natalya retaliated. During the long burial service, Natalya took Peter by the hand and walked out. Later, she explained that her son was exhausted and hungry and to have remained would have been bad for his health, but the Miloslavskys were scandalized. The situation was made worse by Natalya's arrogant younger brother Ivan Naryshkin, only just recalled to court. "The dead," he said, referring to the entire Miloslavsky clan, "should bury the dead."
    On leaving the cathedral, Sophia again gave vent to her grief, now mingled with bitter rage. "You see how our brother Tsar Fedor has suddenly gone from this world. His enemies have poisoned him. Have pity on us orphans. We have no father, nor mother, nor brother. Our elder brother, Ivan, has not been elected tsar, and if we are to blame, let us go live in other lands which are ruled over by Christian kings."
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    THE REVOLT OF THE STRELTSY
    Throughout the first half of Peter's life, the key to power