The boyars held the most important jobs in the army. They met in a group called the duma and gave advice to the ruling prince or, in later times, the tsar. In the 13th and 14th centuries they were rich landowners who could advise the prince, but they were free to go and work for another prince if they wanted to.

Why is boyars so important?

In Medieval Russia, the Boyars represented an aristocratic tier of society as well as a powerful group with the privilege of advising the Tsar on administrative issues. Russian people in those days summed up the Boyars' function by saying, “The tsar said it, the Boyars did it”.

Are boyars nobility?

A boyar or bolyar was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Bulgarian, Russian, Wallachian, Moldavian, and later Romanian, Lithuanian and Baltic German nobility, second only to the ruling princes (in Bulgaria, tsars) from the 10th century to the 17th century.