One of the most striking things I noted about The Tsar’s Bride was the treatment of the two women Liubasha and Martha, specifically the control men in power exert over them.  We learn in the beginning of the film that Liubasha, the boyar Grigory’s mistress, was kidnapped from her family.  One of the other boyars brags that Liubasha addresses him as “Godfather” when he personally beat members of her family.  Striking, too, about this scenario is the fact that Liubasha appears to genuinely love Grigory despite her treatment at his hand.  The one instance that she has agency in the film is when she exchanges Grigory’s love potion meant for Martha with a death potion instead.  However, as soon as this fact is discovered, Grigory instantly kills Liubasha, exerting the final act of control over her body.  The fact that her one independent act is evil and is immediately punished seems to indicate that women cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves; in contrast to the evil actions of many of them men in the film, her act is not that extreme, yet is treated as such.  Like Liubasha, Martha also has her own decisions superseded by those of men in power.  In her first substantive scene, she expresses her genuine love for the boyar Ivan whom she knew as a child.  However, the Tsar spots Martha from afar; soon thereafter, his oprichniki, identifiable by their “black clothes and hats” and “brushes or brooms tied on the end of sticks,” arrive to take her away to him (A Foreigner Describes the Oprichnina of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, 151-152).  Martha’s agency is taken away a second time when Grigory puts his potion into her wine.  It does not make a difference that she does not consume the potion that he initially intended; either one would have resulted in a change of her mental state without her consent.  Unlike Liubasha, Martha never is able to assert herself against these men.  In her final decaying mental state, Martha is praised by Grigory as a “martyr”.  This expression emphasizes the film’s message that female passivity is morally superior to female independence.  The final shots of the movie pan from the bodies of the two women on the floor to the icons that look down on them from the ceiling.  Perhaps this image is meant to convey what God’s punishments are for sin.