His mother Maria Grigorievna Skuratova-Belskaya was one of the daughters of Malyuta Skuratov, the infamous favourite of Ivan the Terrible.

Though his father had taken the precaution to surround him with powerful friends, he lived from the first moment of his reign in an atmosphere of treachery.

On 11 June (N. S.) 1605 the envoys of False Dmitriy I arrived at Moscow to demand his removal, and the letters that they read publicly in Red Square decided his fate.

[1] A group of boyars, unwilling to swear allegiance to the new tsar, seized control of the Kremlin and arrested him.

Officially, he was declared to have been poisoned, but the Swedish diplomat Peter Petreius stated that the bodies, which had been on public display, showed traces of a violent struggle.