At the court of the first tsars of the Romanov dynasty, traditional elements of Russian life coexisted with theater and parsuns, baroque poetry and garden art. Each of them nurtured the tree of Russian statehood and was capable of extraordinary actions. Mikhail Fedorovich, submissive to his mother, separated from his chosen one, but then, contrary to the will of his powerful relatives, he did not marry for eight years. “The quietest” Alexey Mikhailovich hunted bears with a spear, was a dandy and a graphomaniac. The intellectual Fyodor Alekseevich knew about the Copernican system, studied Latin, wrote verses and loved horses. The book by Doctor of Historical Sciences Lyudmila Chernaya tells who they imitated, what they adopted and what the Moscow sovereigns abandoned; why they chose wives of humble birth; what people and things surrounded them in war, at palace receptions, on vacation in country residences, on pilgrimages to monasteries, on hunting; how the court fought against the habit of foreign diplomats taking with them precious cups from the royal table.