During my travels down the rabbit hole, I found myself perusing a list of Russian monarchs, where I noted the existence of Vasily the Squint, a disputed claimant to the title of Grand Prince of Moscow from 1434-35. “That’s an interesting nickname,” I thought. “I wonder how he came by it?” So I looked it up and it turned out that the way he came by it is either because his brother Dmitry refused to accept his rule, allied with the man his dad had deposed – Vasily the Squint’s cousin, Vasily II the Dark – and together they fought a war, deposed our Vasily, defeated him, imprisoned him, then blinded him; or because he was cross-eyed.