Xenia Godunova

Who was Xenia Godunova?

Xenia Borisovna Godunova was a Russian Tsarevna, daughter of Tsar Boris Godunov, and sister of Tsar Feodor II of Russia.

She was very beautiful and well educated. Among her fiancés were:

⁕Prince Gustav of Sweden, who arrived in Moscow in 1600, but the engagement was broken because of his dissolute life.

⁕John, Prince of Schleswig-Holstein, arrived in 1602, but fell ill and died before the marriage.

Xenia remained a maiden until her father's death in 1605, when her brother Feodor become a Tsar. Some months later, when the Time of Troubles started, her mother and her brother, Feodor, were killed by order of False Dmitriy I.

She was spared, but False Dmitriy raped her and kept her in his palace as a concubine lasting five months. Before the arrival of his bride Marina Mniszech, Xenia was sent to the Voskresensky Monastery in Beloozero and forced to take monastic vows, whereupon she was given the name "Olga". Subsequently, she was transferred to the Assumption Princess Monastery in Vladimir.

In 1606 she sojourned to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius to attend the reburial of her father; vestments she sewed as a nun are on display at that Lavra.