Sophia alekseyevna biography

Early Years

Born in 1657, Sophia lived in a terem in her early childhood, but somehow persuaded her father, Tsar Alexis, to break with tradition and allow her to share the lessons of her younger brother Fedor.

Together they studied under an eminent scholar, Belorussian monk Simeon Polotsky, who found Sophia to be ‘’a maiden of great intelligence and the most delicate understanding, with an accomplished masculine mind.’’ Securing an education at such an early age proved to be one of her greatest triumphs as it laid the foundation for her later life. 

She was nineteen when her father, Tsar Alexis, unexpectedly died, and her younger brother, fifteen years old at the time, became Tsar Feodor III.

Sophia took the opportunity to further break with tradition.

Throughout the reign of her little brother, she began to emerge from the terem to attend councils of state and gradually became included in conversations and decisions, allowing her political views to mature and her