Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians, friends and neighbors. Thank you
Speaker 1: as always for joining us. We always like to say
Speaker 1: nice things about our super producer, Casey Pegram, and we
Speaker 1: do mean these sincerely. But we have a special announcement today,
Speaker 1: one that blew my mind. Actually, another another thing to
Speaker 1: add to the long legend of Casey Shadow here. This
Speaker 1: guy came in to record today's episode on his actual birthday.
Speaker 1: It's true, I'm here and it is my birthday. What
Speaker 1: a guy. My name is No, are you still been
Speaker 1: your Ben? Right? I am several times over Ben Bulan, Yes,
Speaker 1: And this is the first time that we have that
Speaker 1: the three of us have been in the studio together
Speaker 1: in a little while. Shouts out also to Christopher Haciotis
Speaker 1: for pinch hitting there. I checked out that episode. That
Speaker 1: was pretty cool man, Thanks man, I enjoyed it. Christopher
Speaker 1: is a real mention for pinch hitting while you are
Speaker 1: off on adventures. And I alluded a little bit to
Speaker 1: your adventures, but I didn't want to spill the tea
Speaker 1: as it were, as the kids would say, and what
Speaker 1: what what what were you doing? Ben? I was doing
Speaker 1: all sorts of non sketchy things. I traveled to I
Speaker 1: traveled to Japan, to a couple of different towns in Japan.
Speaker 1: One was Nagoya, one was Tokyo, and I was able
Speaker 1: to make it back. I have a couple of cool
Speaker 1: stories about it, but they maybe maybe store as for
Speaker 1: another day, or if we want to knock off early
Speaker 1: this afternoon, maybe we can grab a beer and regale
Speaker 1: each other. Because I gotta tell you, man, I'm coming
Speaker 1: in hot. My body doesn't know what time it is.
Speaker 1: My body has a vague spider sense about what day
Speaker 1: it is. So luckily this is our favorite history show,
Speaker 1: so we don't have to talk about today. And I
Speaker 1: don't think we have to talk about specific times on
Speaker 1: the clock. But we do have to talk about badasses.
Speaker 1: We absolutely do. Ben, How do you like your saints?
Speaker 1: I like my murderous I like my saints the way
Speaker 1: I like my superheroes. So saints often, at least in Catholicism,
Speaker 1: are patrons of one thing or another. So I like
Speaker 1: very specific patronages for saints. And I also, like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell you, I like some Song of Ice and Fires,
Speaker 1: some Game of Thrones, e historical gore when it comes
Speaker 1: to saints. Well, I'm gonna drop a couple of perlatives here,
Speaker 1: and I want you folks out in podcast land to
Speaker 1: use your imagination picture what kind of individual might be
Speaker 1: attached to these. The Missionary to Ukraine. Okay, that doesn't
Speaker 1: sound so exciting. How about the Vikings Saint Queen of
Speaker 1: Russia or my personal favorite, the Scourge of the Drevelans,
Speaker 1: also known as equal to the Apostles. These are all
Speaker 1: titles held by Princess Olga of Kiev, now Sat Olga
Speaker 1: of Kiev, and I love that. I love that string
Speaker 1: of honorifics too. It's very denerous, Targarian. It's very uh
Speaker 1: for the nerds in the crowd, it's very Vigo of Carpathia.
Speaker 1: It's very Zena princess warrior or your princess uh Zeno
Speaker 1: warrior princess. And just to be clear, that's Vigo v
Speaker 1: Carpathian Vego wife. Do you exactly? Oh, you know what?
Speaker 1: It bears up on a rewatch. So, st Olga, unlike Vigo,
Speaker 1: is a real person, and she was born in a
Speaker 1: city in what is today northwestern Russia close to the
Speaker 1: Estonian border. The city's name is gonna be a great
Speaker 1: fodder for all of us on ridiculous historians. It is
Speaker 1: spelled p s k o V. So what do you
Speaker 1: think piscoscov discove? Yeah, I don't know. We're probably gonna
Speaker 1: have a lot of fun with a lot of these
Speaker 1: pronunciations in today this episode. There any uh people with
Speaker 1: Estonian heritage out there, please feel free to write in
Speaker 1: and and shred us new ones for our pronunciation. We
Speaker 1: will do our level best. What do you think should
Speaker 1: we go with scove silent p like the it's for
Speaker 1: that for only for the reason that it's it's more
Speaker 1: fun in my mouth. You know what Visco girls are been?
Speaker 1: What are Visco girls? Diisco girls? It's a sort of
Speaker 1: a meme thing. My ten year old told me about it.
Speaker 1: They are sort of basic, you know, quote unquote. So
Speaker 1: they have a particular garb and it's scrunches around their wrists,
Speaker 1: short shorts, clean white van slip ons um, some sort
Speaker 1: of long baggy T shirt and they always have a
Speaker 1: water bottle with bright colored stickers on it that is
Speaker 1: the brand hydro flask. And they laugh like this. I
Speaker 1: think you told me about this at some point. So
Speaker 1: Piscoff kind of sounds like the way this goo girls
Speaker 1: laugh is what I'm getting at. There we go, There
Speaker 1: we go. And their name is probably based on the
Speaker 1: storied history of this of this area. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: based on that plug in, right, it's an app. It's
Speaker 1: a photo editing app for Instagram. Casey on the case.
Speaker 1: Let's let's go back to those names. Viking sat queen,
Speaker 1: missionary to Ukraine, equal to the Apostles of Dragons, mother
Speaker 1: of Dragon's breakroup change, scourge of the Drevelans. The thing
Speaker 1: about Princess Olga is that she earned all of these titles,
Speaker 1: and today's story is about how she got there, about
Speaker 1: how she went from being a princess, and being a
Speaker 1: princess is a problematic, beautiful thing. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people love the stories of royalty, but unfortunately many,
Speaker 1: many princes and princesses end up being historical footnotes. Why
Speaker 1: is Olga difference right, Because you think of a princess,
Speaker 1: you think of a fair maiden, helpless and defenseless, being
Speaker 1: kept somewhere in a tower, you know, relegated to her
Speaker 1: room behind lock and key. Uh, this was not the
Speaker 1: case for Olga. In nine twelve she married a man
Speaker 1: by the name of Igor. Igor they say, you know
Speaker 1: that for a fact, because you've got Russian pals. And
Speaker 1: Igor was the heir to the throne of Kiev. And
Speaker 1: he tell us a little bit about the geography of Kiev.
Speaker 1: Luckily I can uh Kiev now a city in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It's part of something we call the Kievan rules are
Speaker 1: us apostrophe. Uh Kievan Russ was a federation of Finnish
Speaker 1: and East Slavic people in Europe from let's say, around
Speaker 1: the ninth century to somewhere in the century. But this
Speaker 1: this name was a retronym. It was not called Kevin
Speaker 1: Russ at the time. This is a name that we
Speaker 1: we sort of made up later as a species. And
Speaker 1: when we say a loose federation, um, we have to
Speaker 1: be very mindful to realize that this this is a
Speaker 1: somewhat common thing historically in a lot of places. Just
Speaker 1: the problem of communication makes it difficult for a large, uniform,
Speaker 1: uh lockdown empire to exist. And wouldn't this have been
Speaker 1: sort of almost something bordering on tribal kind of like
Speaker 1: you had chieftains rather than elected officials. Sure, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So we see the traces of Russ in the modern
Speaker 1: day because nations like Ukraine, Russia and Belarus all sort
Speaker 1: of claim Kievan as their their cultural d n A.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously bellar ARUs, Russia have the name Russ
Speaker 1: in their own country's name. Uh. The name Kievan Ruce
Speaker 1: comes to us around somewhere in like the eighteen hundred's,
Speaker 1: nineteenth century or so, but as the same meaning as
Speaker 1: the land of the Russ, which is how it was
Speaker 1: called in the Middle Ages and during Olga's time. The
Speaker 1: first stories about the russ from the time that people
Speaker 1: historically arrived in this region is told in the Primary Chronicle,
Speaker 1: which is also known as the Tale of Bygone Years,
Speaker 1: the Russian Primary Chronicle, and this is where we get
Speaker 1: a lot of the information about Princess Olga and her hubs.
Speaker 1: Igor himself, It's right, Igor was a Viking descendant. His father,
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Ruric, was a chieftain.
Speaker 1: Like we said, this was a very kind of tribal society.
Speaker 1: Um and his people were called the Varangians. I don't
Speaker 1: know about that pronunciation. What do you think it reminds
Speaker 1: me of the Farangis from star Trek a little bit
Speaker 1: um but or the variags. They were also called v
Speaker 1: a r y a g s varyags, varyags. There we go.
Speaker 1: And so he actually made the seat of his empire
Speaker 1: or his you know, power stronghold uh at somewhere called Novgorod,
Speaker 1: which was on the Volkov River. So in eight seventy
Speaker 1: nine were it passed away and he gave all of
Speaker 1: this land he held to his pal Oleg because Igor
Speaker 1: was just a little too young to rule, and so
Speaker 1: he was basically, uh you could call this like sort
Speaker 1: of like an early form of a trust. He was
Speaker 1: holding onto this land and this title until Igor became
Speaker 1: of age. Right, so Ruric essentially said, I love my
Speaker 1: kid Igor. He stand up a f but he is
Speaker 1: just too much of a whipper snapper right now. So
Speaker 1: old again Igor moved the capital of l Rus to Kiev,
Speaker 1: and they found the Kingdom of the Kievan Russ. This
Speaker 1: would you know, you know, this is the origin point
Speaker 1: of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and so on. And at its largest,
Speaker 1: it's imagine it's stretching from the Baltic Sea to the
Speaker 1: Black Sea. So from c to Shining Sea. Igor grows up.
Speaker 1: He manages not to die and in en he takes
Speaker 1: the throne. Again. This comes to us from the primary chronicle,
Speaker 1: as you had said earlier. No, this is a very
Speaker 1: tribal socio political time, right. So there you're always playing
Speaker 1: king of the hill and you're always trying to fight
Speaker 1: the next guy or group coming up. So as soon
Speaker 1: as Igor gets the throne in he has to put
Speaker 1: down a rebellion because one of their client states or
Speaker 1: one of their client communities. The Drevelans decided, you know what,
Speaker 1: when Ruric was in play, we understood the game. But Igor,
Speaker 1: you're you're new, you're brand new to this. We don't
Speaker 1: have to respect you. We don't have to pay you
Speaker 1: a tax or a tribute. Igor, you know, forced to
Speaker 1: the point says okay, I'll call your bluff, and he
Speaker 1: fights them and subdues them. This leads to a reign
Speaker 1: of peace until nine five, at which point the same
Speaker 1: tribe rebels again. That's right, So Igor had to take
Speaker 1: care of this second Drevelyan rebellion, and in order to
Speaker 1: do that, he actually had to leave Kiev and go
Speaker 1: to where the fighting was. Um. He succeeded in squashing
Speaker 1: this rebellion once again. Um and he said, look, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys are really testing me. So I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to have some real consequences aside from like, you know,
Speaker 1: massacring their people, which would be higher tributes. You can
Speaker 1: you could equate it to making them pay more taxes.
Speaker 1: I guess right, And he said he pulled a dj
Speaker 1: khalin because he was on his way home, but he
Speaker 1: stopped and he said another one. He sent his the
Speaker 1: majority of his forces back to home base with the tribute,
Speaker 1: and then he came back to the drive lands with
Speaker 1: a smaller force. And this really weirded out the rebellious tribe.
Speaker 1: It's a little weird. Yeah, So they said, okay, let's
Speaker 1: not let them physically get all the way to our town.
Speaker 1: Let's send out some emissaries and say, dude, what is
Speaker 1: going on with you? And then Igor says, you know,
Speaker 1: I refused to comment. So they panic and they they
Speaker 1: send out a force. They send out an army. They
Speaker 1: subdue Egor's forces and they capture them. They take him
Speaker 1: to a place just outside their city, and they tied
Speaker 1: to birch trees to his legs bent they they're like
Speaker 1: bent down to the ground because those are very flexible
Speaker 1: trees um and they I'm not sure exactly how they
Speaker 1: would do it, maybe tying a rope to the top
Speaker 1: and pulling it down to the tippy top of the ground,
Speaker 1: and then probably tying it to the trunk to make
Speaker 1: like a U shape and sat down your shape. And
Speaker 1: then they let them loose, each one of them. And
Speaker 1: you can probably figure out what might have happened there,
Speaker 1: a very unpleasant form of the splits that you know,
Speaker 1: split all the way down, you know, from stem to stern.
Speaker 1: Uh Dude was essentially torn in Twain Byzantine chronicler named
Speaker 1: Leo the Deacon, upon whom a lot of the Russian
Speaker 1: Primary Chronicle is based. This Byzantine writer said that they
Speaker 1: literally tore the guy's body apart when these birch trees straightened.
Speaker 1: And now we're in a situation where history may not repeat,
Speaker 1: but it does rhyme. The king is dead. The king's
Speaker 1: heir in this case, a three year old named Siatoslav,
Speaker 1: is too young to take the throne, just the way
Speaker 1: that Igor was too young to take the throne and
Speaker 1: his father Ruric died. However, this situation is different here
Speaker 1: because you'll recall that Igor married the subject of today's episode,
Speaker 1: Princess Olga of Kiev, and no, what does she do?
Speaker 1: Lots of stuff. I have a quick question, though, quick diversion.
Speaker 1: Just want to ask you, why do you think he
Speaker 1: doubled back? Why do you think Igor doubled back and
Speaker 1: sent his men home? He didn't say, he didn't say.
Speaker 1: We'll never know. Bizarre, what a what a weird move.
Speaker 1: Maybe he forgot his keys, he already won. Maybe he
Speaker 1: was hungry, Maybe he needed to use the restroom. You know,
Speaker 1: I I don't know much about Kiva and Ruler's choice
Speaker 1: of washroom facilities, so I I assumed at this point
Speaker 1: in history people just went off a decent distance into
Speaker 1: the woods. But you would think, yeah, yeah, I I
Speaker 1: don't know. I find that interesting. And I was find
Speaker 1: an issue that he mocked them essentially and said, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to tell you why I came back. It's
Speaker 1: a very odd turn of events that ultimately led to
Speaker 1: this guy dying in a very brutal and horrific way.
Speaker 1: There's definitely more to this story, and you know, history
Speaker 1: is written by the winners, so it is possible maybe
Speaker 1: that they asked him to come back, or he felt
Speaker 1: he had to for some reason, I mean obviously felt
Speaker 1: like you had to. But when Olga learns this information,
Speaker 1: she's hit with a lot of stuff at once. Right,
Speaker 1: she sure was, Ben, I mean she here's the thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: these uh dre Vans Drevians. Yeah, we've seen it spelled
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways. Drev Leon's d r e
Speaker 1: v l y A n s or. That's right. They
Speaker 1: thought that they had the upper hand here, right, because
Speaker 1: they figured, oh, she's just a like I like, I said,
Speaker 1: that misperception or scary stereotypical perception of what a princess is.
Speaker 1: She's some kind of demure aristocrat who they can just
Speaker 1: boss around. Now there's a woman in charge quote unquote
Speaker 1: that they can use to kind of do whatever they
Speaker 1: want with. They're basically thinking this is a strategic victory
Speaker 1: for them um as a people, that maybe they can
Speaker 1: get the upper hand and force her to mary one
Speaker 1: of their prince mal prince mao. That's right, that that
Speaker 1: would uh make it so they didn't have to pay
Speaker 1: these taxes anymore, are these tributes, and also potentially make
Speaker 1: it where they were by default ruling the region, ruling
Speaker 1: the roost, right the Kievan rusts right. We do have
Speaker 1: to remember that the idea of marrying for love and
Speaker 1: for for personal individual romantic feelings is you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not as common back back in the day, right,
Speaker 1: so it makes more sense. It's kind of a standard
Speaker 1: operating procedure for communities to attempt to align one another
Speaker 1: through strategic marriage, thus also upping their own street cred.
Speaker 1: Right in this region, they send twenty of their top
Speaker 1: notch guys, probably Prince Mel's favorite personal reps to persuade
Speaker 1: Princess Olga to marry the guy who was in charge
Speaker 1: of her former husband's murderers. Again, this sounds crazy, but
Speaker 1: it is not super unusual in these times. Princess Olga
Speaker 1: plays into this sort of shrinking violet assumptions that these
Speaker 1: people have about her. She welcomes them into her house,
Speaker 1: treats them like official, you know, guests of the state.
Speaker 1: She does the version of rolling out the red carpet,
Speaker 1: wherein she orders her forces to carry the men in
Speaker 1: their boats so they don't have to even walk themselves,
Speaker 1: as if they were some sort of like Palin Quinn
Speaker 1: or like a litter or something like that. Right, really
Speaker 1: giving them the royal treatment. But she had she had
Speaker 1: something else in mind, didn't she, Right, So they take
Speaker 1: these boats, her people take these boats to the courtyard
Speaker 1: of the castle. There is a giant trench that has
Speaker 1: been pre dug, and they put the boats with the
Speaker 1: men in them into the trench. Maybe this is just
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's just a weird party, they might
Speaker 1: be thinking. But what happens next? Yeah, I kind of
Speaker 1: feel like they probably would have some of them would
Speaker 1: have been mortally injured already in that situation. If you're
Speaker 1: in a wooden boat and you just get chucked into
Speaker 1: a pit, you know, maybe you land upside down on
Speaker 1: your neck or something like that, and and and get
Speaker 1: a mortal, mortal injury. But that wasn't gonna be enough.
Speaker 1: These people were already obviously very uncomfortable, whatever the case
Speaker 1: might be, whether they died or not. Um and she
Speaker 1: had them all buried alive. And it had to have
Speaker 1: been a serious pit, right, I mean, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it would have taken a long time to fill in.
Speaker 1: There would have had to have been no way for
Speaker 1: them to claw their way out, or it would have
Speaker 1: been very difficult. I'm trying to picture the scene, and uh,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of something you might have seen like Caligula. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing though. The flaw in this plan,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure many of the more Mackavellion of us
Speaker 1: listening can can immediately identify, is that there's no one
Speaker 1: alive to send word back to Prince Mal and co.
Speaker 1: So she has anticipated this, Olga. Olga has not only
Speaker 1: anticipated this, but she is taking it to a further extreme.
Speaker 1: She picks one of her emissaries to send word back
Speaker 1: to Prince Mal and says, you know what, water under
Speaker 1: the bridge, brohim, I accept your proposal for this marriage
Speaker 1: stuff caveat Asterix. I'll only accept if the Drevians send
Speaker 1: part of their company, like a big piece of their army,
Speaker 1: to be my escort back to your neck of the woods.
Speaker 1: Seems legit. Maybe would have been a little suspicious that
Speaker 1: their twenty men had not returned yet. Yeah, maybe they
Speaker 1: were just being feted and uh and fed and entertained.
Speaker 1: And she she has some logic here for the prince.
Speaker 1: She says, after all, you know, we we want everybody
Speaker 1: in the land to see what a big deal this is, right,
Speaker 1: so send me send me to you in style don't
Speaker 1: I deserve it? And what does Prince Mal do? He
Speaker 1: seems pretty into it, Sure did. He complied instantly and
Speaker 1: sent some of his top chieftains to escort her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they show up right, and they were met with
Speaker 1: another rolling out of the red carpet, as it were,
Speaker 1: and she says, hey, guys, you're clearly very dusty from
Speaker 1: your journey. Why don't you come into one of our
Speaker 1: our famed bath houses and uh and have yourself as
Speaker 1: sh fitz. Have you ever heard that a sch fitz?
Speaker 1: I've heard it. I don't know if that's what she said,
Speaker 1: but I totally get the gist. Yeah, they say it
Speaker 1: on the Sopranos a lot. So when you go in
Speaker 1: and have like a have a steam bath, that's a Schwitz,
Speaker 1: I like. But yeah, so they're they're and they're thinking
Speaker 1: they're gonna have a nice a little soak, possibly a
Speaker 1: steam bath whatever whatever they got um, and she locks
Speaker 1: the doors behind them, and she burns everyone in that
Speaker 1: bath house alive. The building collapses like she she kills
Speaker 1: another group of people. And so now you think, okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's just sort of assume Prince Mal's perspective here
Speaker 1: He's got to know something's up at this point. After all,
Speaker 1: a good poorsche of his army, his martial forces, has
Speaker 1: been buried alive. The chieftains, the ruling class, his personal picks,
Speaker 1: his selects have also been burned alive. Don't really he
Speaker 1: doesn't know any of this though, right right, He doesn't
Speaker 1: know that they have not returned, right, So you have
Speaker 1: to at least be thinking about the first group. Kind
Speaker 1: of weird that none of those guys got back. So
Speaker 1: Olga is not done yet. She says. It's not enough
Speaker 1: to kill his top notch army folks, is not enough
Speaker 1: to kill the essentially the ruling class of this tribe.
Speaker 1: I want to get rid of all of them. So
Speaker 1: she says something along the lines of, like my dear fiance,
Speaker 1: I will soon be arriving at the Drivean capital of
Speaker 1: escort Aston and asking them to arrange a funeral feast
Speaker 1: where we can more nova the death of my husband
Speaker 1: eagle in the city. Yeah, and that perspective comes from
Speaker 1: an article on history Answers dot co dot uk. In
Speaker 1: the article olgav Kiev one st do not want to
Speaker 1: mess with That is completely accurate. So dude is still
Speaker 1: mall still very very much in the dark about what's
Speaker 1: happened to his men. He gets this message which goes
Speaker 1: on that she wishes for him and his men to
Speaker 1: prepare vast quantities of mead, which is like a fermented
Speaker 1: honey beer kind of situation. You may well remember from
Speaker 1: Bayo Wolf. You ever had mead before, ben, Yeah, multiple times.
Speaker 1: Tastes like it's cool. You can definitely taste the honey notes.
Speaker 1: And usually I've needs not a not a regular weekli
Speaker 1: or monthly thing for me, but usually run into it
Speaker 1: at some really cool cultural events. They're a bunch in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I would love to take you guys at some point.
Speaker 1: Do they have it at medieval times? They probably have
Speaker 1: something they call mead. It might be bud light or
Speaker 1: Miller light, the beer that's so good you can drink
Speaker 1: it with your mouth. Do they make mead light? Do
Speaker 1: you think? Uh, maybe they call it like mead zero.
Speaker 1: I like it anyhow, So she says, um, please, you
Speaker 1: must prepare are these vast quantities of mead quote that
Speaker 1: I may weep over the grave of my husband and
Speaker 1: hold a funeral feast for him. And Mel's like word,
Speaker 1: I get it, you know, she's keeping it real. You've
Speaker 1: got to have these sort of closures in life, and
Speaker 1: she's being, you know, very reasonable about all this. You know,
Speaker 1: in these our crazy times, what what can we be
Speaker 1: except for human? So he says totally and gives Olga
Speaker 1: and her crew her entourage safe passage into the territory,
Speaker 1: into the town, and once she arrives, she holds this huge, opulent,
Speaker 1: opulent being a comparative term opulent funeral for Igor who
Speaker 1: has passed. A lot of people show up, a lot
Speaker 1: of the townsfolk, a lot of the important individuals of
Speaker 1: the time. This is a c and be seeing sort
Speaker 1: of thing, kind of the way that the Infinity Mirrors
Speaker 1: exhibit at the High Museum was. However, maybe they trust
Speaker 1: Olga a little bit too much. Maybe they should have
Speaker 1: thought a little more carefully about the context, because they
Speaker 1: totally chill acts, they rage, they get wasted, they're super drunk.
Speaker 1: But Olga, it turns out, and the forces that she
Speaker 1: brought with her are not drunk. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they were play acting and you know, doing that
Speaker 1: thing where someone buys you a shot and you had
Speaker 1: enough and you don't want to be rudes. Maybe you
Speaker 1: just kind of do a pretense sip and then you know,
Speaker 1: hide it. Maybe there was some of that going on.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe no one else but me does that. Um,
Speaker 1: but they definitely got away without being noticed that they
Speaker 1: weren't drinking, cause that would be very suspicious, right yep.
Speaker 1: Then they got away with it. They waited until the
Speaker 1: Drevans were uh drink, drank drunk, and then Olga said, okay,
Speaker 1: kill him. According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, around five
Speaker 1: thousand Drevlins died that day or Drevians would have been
Speaker 1: an absolute slaughter, some real red wedding stuff. So wait,
Speaker 1: as Billy was wont to say, there's more, Yeah, there's more.
Speaker 1: It's what you might consider her coup de graw, her finale,
Speaker 1: her big finish Act four of this Revenge Chronicle, because
Speaker 1: this wasn't enough for her. She wanted more. She really
Speaker 1: wanted to wipe out all of those that had anything
Speaker 1: to do with the death of her beloved husband. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there obviously were some survivors. Five thousands seems
Speaker 1: like a lot because this wouldn't have been a population
Speaker 1: of millions. I mean again, these were kind of smaller clans, right,
Speaker 1: that's correct. Yeah, this was not a huge metropolis the
Speaker 1: way we would understand one today. So the surviving Dravans,
Speaker 1: they were super freaked out, essentially, and they begged and
Speaker 1: begged and begged, please don't kill us. We will we
Speaker 1: will pay with whatever we have. We can't give you
Speaker 1: an army to serve you yet, give us a few generations.
Speaker 1: But here's what we have. We have, honey, we have furs.
Speaker 1: Please take these, leave us with our lives. At this point,
Speaker 1: Olga says, you know what, maybe this time I'll be cool.
Speaker 1: Give me three pigeons and three sparrows from each of
Speaker 1: your houses. And she says, I don't want to impose
Speaker 1: a heavy tribute like my husband Igor, because I know
Speaker 1: this siege and all these terrible things that I've done
Speaker 1: to you have left you in a really bad spot.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just give me, uh, three pigeons three sparrows
Speaker 1: from each of your house. Not sketchy at all, um,
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, this sounds like the stuff of legend.
Speaker 1: I have a hard time believing this happened in this
Speaker 1: exact way, but this is what the chronicle tells us.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm willing to suspend disbelief for the time being.
Speaker 1: But this is genius. So she takes these birds, these
Speaker 1: pigeons and sparrows, and she has each one of her
Speaker 1: um militiaman. Her soldiers take one and attach a string
Speaker 1: to their little bird feet um and in that string
Speaker 1: there would be a piece of sulfur which is tied
Speaker 1: up in a small piece of cloth. And then as
Speaker 1: the sun goes down, Olga tells her men to release
Speaker 1: these creepy birds all at once. And we should mention
Speaker 1: you didn't think it was a little weird maybe listeners
Speaker 1: that uh, everyone just happened to have these birds. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a thing. They were like pets are kind
Speaker 1: of familiars, like it was very much. They would, you know,
Speaker 1: occupy people's houses. Well, they also would make eggs, so
Speaker 1: there's a source of food there. Yeah, and they lived
Speaker 1: in different parts of houses. Right. So the birds fly
Speaker 1: to their various nest. The pigeons fly to the coats,
Speaker 1: and coats are a shelter for mammals or birds, especially pigeons.
Speaker 1: Like Mike Tyson, notorious pigeon Lover, amongst other things, he
Speaker 1: has pigeon coats. And then the sparrows fly under the
Speaker 1: eaves where they tend to build their nests so they
Speaker 1: can stay away from the rain. Then you had porches, um,
Speaker 1: I guess, which just just you know, the front of
Speaker 1: a person's house. And then you had hay mows, which
Speaker 1: were uh just stacks of hay and barn situations. And
Speaker 1: that's when the dove coats, the coops, the porches, the eaves,
Speaker 1: the piles of hay all catch ablaze. According to the Chronicle,
Speaker 1: there is not a house that escapes this conflagration. And
Speaker 1: because the houses all caught fire uh at roughly the
Speaker 1: same amount of time, it was difficult to extinguish everything.
Speaker 1: People fled from the city and then Olga, who had
Speaker 1: her eye on it, said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: catch those folks running for the woods. Dude. This is
Speaker 1: like the tiny bat bombs. Remember the bat bombs in
Speaker 1: uh in Japan. The idea was that they would roost
Speaker 1: in the eaves and the and all these houses all
Speaker 1: the same time and then the bombs would go off.
Speaker 1: That didn't work so well. This seems to have worked
Speaker 1: better than the bat bombs. If you guys want to
Speaker 1: check that episode out. Might be a fun companion piece.
Speaker 1: Um and like you said, Yeah, those little bits of
Speaker 1: sulfur ignited all of these very very flammable nesting spots,
Speaker 1: and boom, the whole town went up like uh, like
Speaker 1: flash paper, and the few who escaped were running into
Speaker 1: the woods. What happened next? So here's the heavy metal
Speaker 1: part of this. This this is where things build the
Speaker 1: same way that one of my favorite songs in the
Speaker 1: Hall of Mountain King builds. It just gets more and
Speaker 1: more nuts because while this city is burning down, Princess
Speaker 1: olgav Kiev orders her forces to take it, and they
Speaker 1: capture the surviving elders of the city. She kills some
Speaker 1: of them and then others she gives to her crew
Speaker 1: to serve as slaves for the rest of her their lives,
Speaker 1: and then the ones left she says, remember me and
Speaker 1: pay tribute. This is insane. We also know that she
Speaker 1: did more than this, so this is like one amazing
Speaker 1: revenge story, right. But it's not really the end of
Speaker 1: her story because she was still regent for a long
Speaker 1: time before her son ascended to the throne. And at
Speaker 1: this point, this is where a lot of us are
Speaker 1: probably asking ourselves, Hey, the title equal to the Apostles
Speaker 1: sounds kind of weird for someone who is best known,
Speaker 1: at least according to you Ben and you know, as
Speaker 1: as as a a bloody revenge artist. The thing is
Speaker 1: that she turned a religious leaf about what about a
Speaker 1: decade after her revenge against Prince mal and her husband's murderers.
Speaker 1: Because these folks would have practiced paganism, I guess to
Speaker 1: for to use kind of a blanket term, right, Well,
Speaker 1: they were definitely yeah, Christians would definitely call them pagans,
Speaker 1: and Christianity was not seen as a beneficial force to
Speaker 1: the Kievan Russ. But Olga visited Constantinople and she met
Speaker 1: Christians there and whatever the substance of their conversation may
Speaker 1: have been, it impressed her and soon after she converted.
Speaker 1: This was weird because her own country, Kievan Rus hated Christianity,
Speaker 1: hated the culture of it, hated the spirituality of it.
Speaker 1: They just, from top to bottom they thought it sucks.
Speaker 1: Christianity was a conquering force. I mean, there was a
Speaker 1: real drive to snuff out any pagan societies and convert
Speaker 1: them to Christianity. So for her, this warrior queen, to
Speaker 1: convert voluntarily is more than a little suspicious. If you
Speaker 1: ask me, but who knows. Well, yeah, the chronicle claims
Speaker 1: to know, because in the chronicle the authors say that
Speaker 1: Olga's conversion, or her epiphany that turns her into a
Speaker 1: Christian was part of a ruse kievan ruse right, a
Speaker 1: kievan ruse uh in this case, our usc to avoid
Speaker 1: marriage to the emperor at the time, Constantine the Seven,
Speaker 1: because when she visited his court in Constantinople, she said
Speaker 1: they could not possibly marry because he was a Christian
Speaker 1: and she was a Pagan, but she would undergo baptism
Speaker 1: if it pleased him. So she was baptized by the
Speaker 1: patriarch of Constantinople, and she managed to evade marriage the
Speaker 1: Constantine because he stood by as her godfather during the baptism.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty serious godfather right there. So why is
Speaker 1: she known as a saint? Well, she knew when violence worked,
Speaker 1: and she apparently also knew when the strategy of the
Speaker 1: open hand worked. She began and missionary efforts in modern
Speaker 1: day Ukraine. She set up hospitals, and she used public
Speaker 1: announcements to teach people about the Christian faith. Everything that
Speaker 1: we know about missionary work tends to indicate that people
Speaker 1: are more likely to believe in the religion, you are
Speaker 1: pitching to them if they associate it with good things
Speaker 1: happening to them. Right, So, if if someone sets up
Speaker 1: a hospital for you or feeds the poor in the
Speaker 1: hungry and then says, by the way, I'm doing this
Speaker 1: because of this religion, you are more likely to agree
Speaker 1: with them than you would if they said, oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, we killed everyone important in your community because
Speaker 1: our religion is so great, catching more flies with honey
Speaker 1: and all that. So indeed, it took a little while,
Speaker 1: but the kingdom of kievan Ruth did eventually become a
Speaker 1: Christian one. It took about ten years after Olga's death.
Speaker 1: She also, of course given a Christian burial that her
Speaker 1: son Vladimir took the throne of Kiev what is now Kiev,
Speaker 1: and made Christianity the official religion. And again remember this
Speaker 1: is uh. You know, Constantinople would have been sending out
Speaker 1: um emissaries and folks that were gonna try to convert
Speaker 1: the unwashed pagan masses of Kiev and Ruse to Christianity.
Speaker 1: But she succeeded where those folks failed, and that is
Speaker 1: what got her that sainthood. And thus we finally arrive
Speaker 1: at the reason Princess Olga of Kiev is now known
Speaker 1: as Saint Olga of Kiev, equal to the Apostles, Viking,
Speaker 1: Saint Queen of Russia, Missionary to Ukraine, Scourge of the
Speaker 1: drev Unds. What a ride ride, you know, sometimes it
Speaker 1: occurs to me. I'm like, people are out here changing
Speaker 1: the world, and I fell asleep when I got back
Speaker 1: from the airport trying to put on a pair of pants. Well,
Speaker 1: you were very jetlagged, and I'm sure you had adventures
Speaker 1: that kept you up. Um, so we'll give you a
Speaker 1: pass on that, Ben, that is a real image, though,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you was there on one leg in or
Speaker 1: uh you know, I when I when I woke up,
Speaker 1: I would I would give myself a hard one point
Speaker 1: five and putting on the pants in terms of leg applied,
Speaker 1: I think my left my left leg made it about
Speaker 1: to where that the knee would be and then it
Speaker 1: was game over. You know, you can't win them all.
Speaker 1: I got I got pants on today at least, so
Speaker 1: one step closer to st hoodie. I can attest that.
Speaker 1: And it is also game over for this episode, but
Speaker 1: not the show, as you would say, Ben, this has
Speaker 1: been a really interesting one. I would love to see
Speaker 1: this made into a rollicking film like It's got all
Speaker 1: the all the stuff. I would watch it too as
Speaker 1: maybe one of those extended music videos. I'm really into that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would it would be a great It would be
Speaker 1: a great anime too, although my thinking is probably a
Speaker 1: little color. Thank you so much for checking out the
Speaker 1: show as always. Happy New Year once again to super
Speaker 1: producer okay E c Pegram. Thanks to Christopher Hasiotis. Thanks
Speaker 1: to our almost said revenge associates, our research associates Gabe
Speaker 1: Losier and Ryan Barrish. Thanks to Alex Williams who composed
Speaker 1: our theme. Thanks to Jonathan Strickland, the notorious Quister, for
Speaker 1: not showing up today. That's always a good day in
Speaker 1: the studio. Um, and thanks to you Ben for for
Speaker 1: being a friend and for making it back and forgetting
Speaker 1: your pants on and looking ship shape despite your sleeplessness
Speaker 1: and jet laggery. Thanks to you as well, doll Peak
Speaker 1: behind the Curtain. We have one more episode to record,
Speaker 1: so I am gonna go shotguns and coffee. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a plan. See you next time, folks. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.