The origins of the political alignments at the court of Peter the Great lie in the years of his childhood, in the last years of the reign of his father Tsar Aleksei (roughly, 1667–76). In those final years of his life, Tsar Aleksei began to move away from the balanced court of his earlier years, one that guaranteed some place for all the major factions of aristocrats of Duma rank. Instead, he began to rule through favorites, first running foreign policy through the strengthened Ambassadorial Chancellery headed by Afanasii Lavrent′evich Ordin-Nashchokin. Then he replaced Ordin-Nashchokin with Artamon Matveev in the Ambassadorial Chancellery, but also giving him formal or informal charge of a whole series of important offices. This was a radical departure and it had consequences. The ascendancy of Matveev evoked enormous jealousy and hatred among the boyars toward the new favorite and in turn produced a massive explosion of intrigue and legalized violence after Aleksei's death. The reign of Peter's older half-brother Fyodor (1676–82) and the regency of Tsarevna Sofia (1682–89) were years of almost continuous intrigue and struggle for position among the great aristocrats and officials of Russia. Out of these struggles the Naryshkin faction was born, the faction of the family of Peter's mother Natalia, which finally came to power with the young tsar in the coup d'état of 1689.