He took little interest in politics, and the country was effectively administered in his name by Boris Godunov, the brother of his beloved wife Irina.

He died childless and was succeeded by Godunov as tsar, marking the end of the rule of the Rurik dynasty and spurring Russia's descent into the catastrophic Time of Troubles.

[2] Feodor therefore grew up in the shadow of a distant father, with no mother to succor him, and only his older brother Ivan Ivanovich for family solidarity.

[8] Feodor did not play any role in foreign affairs, whereas his brother is mentioned as a participant in military campaigns and political discussions in razriady every year from 1567 until his death.

[10] Feodor and his brother were not given a new title by their father, and in August 1581, the papal envoy in Russia, Antonio Possevino, was ordered to be told by the tsar that Russian documents did not need to be written in the name of both the tsar and the tsareviches because "my son Ivan has not yet been honored with the name of sovereign and my son Fyodor has not attained the age when he can rule the state with us".

[12] On 9 November 1581, Ivan Ivanovich died, with Antonio Possevino asserting in his 1586 book that he had been killed by his father in a fit of rage.

[8] Around the same time, Ivan IV was looking for his eighth wife in England and consulted his physician Robert Jacob about relatives of Queen Elizabeth I who would be suitable.

[a][21] The coronation of Feodor was slightly modified to account for his father's recent conquests and the increasingly Byzantine practice of the tsar's court.

[23] The historian Ruslan Skrynnikov attempted to prove that the Zemsky Sobor (assembly of the land) elected Feodor as tsar, while Aleksandr Zimin rejected the idea.

[23] Another English source from Jerome Horsey described how the boyars "were appointed to settle and dispose his [Ivan the Terrible's] son Fyodor Ivanovich, having sworn one another, and all the nobility and officers whosoever" before a "parliament" met on 4 May.

[30] By the summer of 1584, the two boyar clans had effected a rapprochement, and Luka Novosiltsev, the Russian ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire, referred to Godunov in November as "the ruler of the land, a great and gracious lord".

[21] By the end of the 1580s, Boris Godunov was able to deal with foreign powers independently, using a variety of titles in addition to that of equerry, which he received in 1584.

[31] Feodor's wife Irina also began to play a role in the affairs of the state, although it is not clear if she had any real political power.

[32] In May 1586, the Shuyskys, backed by the metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church and the people of Moscow, organized a petition in the name of the Zemsky Sobor that was addressed to Feodor and urged him to divorce his wife, who was childless.

[21] Feodor rejected the preposition, and Godunov waited until the return of the Russian embassy from Poland on 1 October, where he may have received confirmation of his suspicions that the Shuyskys were in contact with Polish lords.

[37] On the other hand, contemporaries of the Time of Troubles viewed the election of Godunov as immoral due to his perceived role in the death of Tsarevich Dmitry of Uglich.

[41] The veneration of Feodor began shortly after his death and Patriarch Job composed the Tale of the Honorable Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia Fedor Ivanovich.

[42][43] The tale says that Boris Godunov, who built a fort and within it a church dedicated to Sergius of Radonezh, stationed his army there in hopes of saving Moscow from "pagan barbarians".

It was only in 1592, after almost twelve years of marriage and numerous attempts by the court to cure her perceived barrenness (at the time, the wife was always blamed for the infertility of a couple), that Tsaritsa Irina gave birth to a daughter, who was named Feodosiya (29 May 1592 – 25 January 1594) after her father.

The boyar families rival to the Godunov clan attempted to convince Feodor to divorce and re-marry, but he always rejected the idea.