Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya (Russian: Мария Ильинична Милославская, 1 April 1624 – 18 August 1669) was tsaritsa of Russia as the first wife of tsar Alexis of Russia. She was the mother of tsar Feodor III of Russia, tsar Ivan V of Russia, and princess regent Sophia Alekseyevna.
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Life
Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya was a younger daughter of the noble Ilya Danilovich Miloslavsky (d. 1668) and his wife, Ekaterina Fedorovna Narbekova. Her father was a relative and supporter of Boris Morozov, the influential tutor and favorite of the tsar.
Marriage
In 1647, tsar Alexis I of Russia reached the age required for marriage. The tsar was to choose his bride from a bride-show of hundreds of daughters of the nobility, who were summoned to the imperial court for selection. (This method to select a bride for the tsar reportedly originated from the reign of Ivan III, whose spouse Sophia Palaiologina came from the Byzantine Empire, where this method had once been used to choose a bride for the Byzantine emperor.)
The bridal selection of Alexis I was managed by Boris Morozov, and gathered together almost two hundred daughters of the nobility, among them Maria Miloslavskaya. She had the support of Boris Morozov, who intended to marry her sister Anna Miloslavskaya, and hoped that Alexis I would choose Maria, which would make him the brother-in-law of the tsar. During the selection ceremony, however, the tsar chose Euphemia Fedorovna Vsevolozhskaya by presenting her with a handkerchief and a ring as a symbol of their engagement. Boris Morozov then bribed a courtier to make Vsevolozhskaya faint; he then bribed a court physician to diagnose her with epilepsy. This disqualified Vsevolozhskaya as tsaritsa and resulted in both her and her father being exiled - accused of attempting to hide her illness from the tsar, and thus the first choice of the tsar was annulled.