Byzantine battle standard / Russian History

[ITC]

Part I ends when most of the boyars defect and he abdicates the throne but then the people raise him back to Tsar and I guess he'll end up going east...except first he probably needs to reclaim the land that defected in the west.

Exactly.
In the west there was defeat in Livonian war.

[YuriVII]

@OP Slightly unrelated note, but there are many symbols that Muscovy and the Rus' adopted from Byzantium. Using the icons as battle standards is one of them. The other can be seen in the coat of arms of the Russian Federation (the same as traditional Tsarist coat of arms).. I am sure you are familiar with the Double-Headed Eagle. This was originally Byzantium's coat of arms. When Byzantium fell to the Turks, some monk (I forget his name but he was important) made a quote that the first Rome was Rome, the second was Constantinople, and the third is Moscow. There will not be another. This is the mentality of our coat of arms...also it has two heads one looking East and the other looking West. I find the symbology very interesting considering our history ever since.

[Manuel I Komnenos]

Indeed. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, Muscovy, and later Russia undertook the role of the protector of the Orthodox Christianity and hence was thought as successor to the Byzantine Empire.