Introduction: The history of a story -- Permutations: victim, villain, scavenger -- Trauerspiel and counterhistory in a time of palace coups -- The rebel, the sycophant, and the epigones -- Arbitrariness and expedience meet legality, or the fatal flaws of the well-tempered autocrat -- The fin de siecle's diminished Dmitrys -- Conclusions and reintroductions: the re-resurrection of tsarevich Dmitry.
