A member of the old aristocracy in Russia, next in rank to a prince:[as modifier]:the rise of the boyar class...
From the 15th to the 17th centuries Muscovite boyars formed a closed aristocratic class drawn from about 200 families.
He ruled in an increasingly arbitrary and absolutist fashion, brutalizing the aristocratic boyars in a decade-long period of terror known as the oprichnina.
Easter Sunday of 1459, Vlad invited all of the aristocrats, called boyars, who had played a role in his father's death, to a feast.
Origin
Late 16th century: from Russian boyarin 'grandee'.