Few destinies are more challenging than life in the orbit of a man obsessed with expanding his power at all costs. Such is the fate endured by Ivan Ivanovich (Ivan the Young), eldest son of Russia’s Ivan III (r. 1462–1505) and the narrator of A. Engels’s novel, A Fool for an Heir.

While his father focuses on extending his reach into neighboring principalities and overcoming the legacy of a brutal civil war, little Ivan dreams of becoming a hero like those in the chronicles he reads with his tutor. The sudden, violent death of the boy’s mother forces him into the world of men, where he masters the skills of sword and bow, as well as the art of command. Yet even as Ivan marries and has children of his own, he remains in his father’s shadow.

Appalled by the older Ivan’s attacks against other lands—including some ruled by members of his own family—and by the cruel suppression of dissent both there and at home, Ivan the Younger increasingly feels driven to defend his father’s victims, especially one whom he sees as closer than a brother. He realizes only too late that his focus on the oppressed has blinded him to the presence of a deadlier, more determined enemy as ruthless as his sire.

Although set almost six hundred years ago, this novel derives an uncanny resonance from the war launched by Russia against Ukraine in 2022, where the justification of annexation and subjugation developed by Ivan III still play out in current events.

A. Engels writes historical fiction set in medieval Eastern Europe. A Fool for an Heir is her debut novel.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book—The Merchant’s Tale, cowritten with P.K. Adams—appeared in November 2023.

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