September 1689
In 1664, a Russian diplomat named Grigory Kotoshikhin fled Moscow, first heading for Poland and then continuing on to Sweden (he had been selling the Swedes information for years, so he was welcomed there with open arms). Kotoshikhin understood that he was expected to share the latest news, so he wrote a book in Stockholm that described contemporary Russian life in great detail. Naturally, he started from the top and described the life of the tsar and those around him. The fugitive also described what life was like for certain members of the court who were virtually never seen—the tsar’s daughters and sisters.
The royal sisters as well as daughters, the tsarevnas, have a variety of private quarters and they live like hermits, see hardly any people, and people hardly ever see them; they are constantly engaged in prayer and fasting, and their faces are bathed in tears, because, although they have every royal pleasure, they do no have the pleasure that is given by Almighty God to people, that they might copulate and bear children. It is not the custom to marry them to the princes and boyars of their own state, since princes and boyars are their kholopy [servants], and it is not the custom to give them in marriage to the princes of other states, because such men are of a different faith, and tsarevnas cannot renounce their own faith, and furthermore, they know neither the language nor the politics of other states, and it would be shameful for them to live there.
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