 Many wives were chosen by bride-show (the custom of beauty pageant, borrowed from the Byzantine Empire), when hundreds of poor but handsome noblewomen gathered in Moscow from all the regions of Russia and the tsar chose the most beautiful.This deprived Russia of the benefits of royal intermarriage with European monarchs, but protected from inbreeding, as well as from the political influence of foreign princesses (Catholic or Protestant).The only foreign wife of a Russian tsar in this early era (except Mnishek) was Maria Temryukovna, a Circassian princess, who converted to Orthodoxy.