Full Name=Ivan IV Vasilyevich ("Ivan the Terrible"); Profession=First Tsar of Russia, Grand Prince of Moscow, monarch and statesman, ruler who transformed Muscovy into the Tsardom of Russia through military expansion and harsh internal consolidation of power. Nationality=Russian; Born=25 August 1530 (Julian calendar), corresponding to early September 1530 in the Gregorian calendar but historically recorded as 25 August. Birthplace = Kolomenskoye, a royal estate near Moscow in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy (present-day Russia); Generation=16th-century Early Modern Russian ruling generation of the Rurikid dynasty, emerging in the post-Mongol period when Muscovy was centralizing power and laying the foundations of the Russian state; Chinese Zodiac=Tiger (Metal Tiger, determined by applying the standard 12-year remainder method to his birth year 1530, whose remainder of 6 corresponds to Tiger and whose final digit 0 corresponds to the Metal element); Zodiac Sign=Virgo, as all individuals born on August 25 fall under the Western zodiac sign of Virgo; Age in 2026=496 (he would be 496 years old in 2026 if still alive, though he actually died in his early fifties in 1584); Marital Status= Married multiple times, traditionally eight wives in total with four marriages canonically recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church, reflecting a turbulent marital history that exceeded even that of Henry VIII in number of spouses. Children: Historically documented to have at least eight children, including daughters Anna Ivanovna and Maria Ivanovna; early sons Dmitri Ivanovich (who died in infancy) and the heir Ivan Ivanovich whom he later killed in a violent outburst; Eudoxia Ivanovna; and the surviving son Feodor I who succeeded him as Tsar, as well as later sons Vasili Ivanovich and Tsarevich Dmitri Ivanovich of Uglich, making a total of around eight known offspring, though many died young. Description=Ivan IV Vasilyevich was born the grandson of Ivan III (“Ivan the Great”) and inherited the throne of Muscovy as Grand Prince at around three years old after the death of his father Vasili III, growing up amid vicious boyar factional struggles that shaped his suspicious and often cruel temperament; as an adult he was formally crowned the first “Tsar of all Russia” in 1547, symbolically elevating the status of his realm and asserting autocratic authority rooted in both Byzantine and Orthodox concepts of sacred kingship; his long reign combined important institutional reforms—such as the Sudebnik legal code revision, the convening of the Zemsky Sobor (assembly of the land), creation of local self-government organs, and establishment of the Streltsy firearm infantry—with aggressive territorial expansion that brought the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan under Russian control and opened routes into Siberia, transforming Russia into a vast multiethnic empire; at the same time he unleashed the infamous Oprichnina in the 1560s, a policy that split the realm into a crown-controlled domain and the rest, empowered black-clad oprichniki to carry out mass executions, expropriations, and terror against boyars and urban populations (notably in Novgorod), and devastated the economy and demography of many regions; his personal life was marked by deep religious feeling, bouts of repentance, and extreme volatility, including periods of apparent remorse interspersed with paranoia, brutal punishments, and the notorious episode in which he struck his heir Ivan Ivanovich in a rage, fatally wounding him and symbolically dooming his own dynastic line; despite his cruelty, he remains one of the most studied and mythologized rulers in Russian history, emblematic of the tension between state-building autocracy and destructive tyranny and a central figure in historical, literary, and astrological analyses of power, madness, and destiny; Cause of Death=Died in Moscow on 28 March 1584, having suffered years of declining health; when his tomb was opened centuries later, forensic examination revealed abnormally high mercury levels in his remains, suggesting either extensive mercury-based medical treatment (likely for conditions such as suspected syphilis) or possible poisoning by associates such as Boris Godunov, so modern historians generally agree that he died suddenly during leisure (traditionally while preparing or playing a game) but regard the precise medical cause—stroke, heart failure, or mercury-related poisoning—as unresolved and debated.