Maria Nagaya
It has been suggested by historian-genealogists N.V. Myatlev and Anatoly Gryaznoy that Maria Feodorovna's mother was a daughter or sister of Prince Vasily Semenovich Funikov-Kemsky and brought the fiefdom of Zvenigorod to the family as her dowry.
Maria Feodorovna's uncle, Afanasy Nagoy [ru], was the Russian ambassador to the Crimean Khanate and a close confidant of Tsar Ivan IV.
(Men were permitted to take three wives, and Ivan had gained special permission to marry for a fourth time by claiming that he had not consummated his third marriage.)
Contemporary English diplomat Jerome Horsey claims that Ivan married Maria Feodorovna after repudiating his previous wife in order to pacify his son Ivan Ivanovich and the boyars, who were worried by rumors that the Tsar planned to flee to England.
Upon the death of Ivan IV in 1584 and the accession of Feodor I, Maria Feodorovna, her son (now the heir presumptive), and her brothers were immediately removed from court by the regency council (which had been appointed to rule by Ivan IV on account of Feodor's physical and mental frailty).
Jerome Horsey writes that she was supplied with a fitting number of attendants, dresses, jewellery, food, horses, and other necessary possessions.
A later account, the ‘New Chronicler’ alleges that the Nagoys were the victims of a conspiracy by Boris Godunov, who exiled or imprisoned the late Tsar's favourites and confiscated their wealth.
They feared that the family would act against Tsar Feodor to place their young relative, Tsarevich Dmitry on the throne and thereby grab power for themselves.
According to some sources, Feodor also forbade priests to commemorate Tsarevich Dmitry in religious services due to his illegitimacy (his parents' marriage being invalid in the eyes of the church).
Based on an account by the contemporary Dutch merchant and diplomat Isaac Massa, Maria Feodorovna was taken into Godunov's bedroom in secret at night.
According to Massa, Maria Feodorovna then stated that she had been informed that her son was smuggled abroad, but that the people who told her this were no longer alive.
On 18 July 1605, Maria Feodorovna made a ceremonial entry into Moscow, where she recognized False Dmitry I as her son.
He relayed to King Sigismund III of Poland, as well as to Marina Mciszech's father, that Maria Feodorovna considered Dmitry I a ‘deceiver’.
Her gravestone, preserved in the Kremlin reads, ‘[i]n the year 7116 [1608], on the 28th of June, the servant of God, nun Tsarina Maria Feodorovna of Tsar Ivan of All Russia, passed away’.
