Second-foremost bogatyr of the Russian bylina cycle (after Ilya Muromets); the bylina-canonical bogatyr of noble-origin (Riazan boyar lineage), diplomatic-courtesy (Dobrynya is the foundational bogatyr-of-refined-manners archetype), and dragon-slaying. The bylina-Dobrynya partially conflates with the historical Dobrynia (the maternal uncle of Vladimir the Great per the Primary Chronicle s.a. 970, the chief military-political adviser who participated in the Christianization of Kievan Rus') — the historical-legendary blend characteristic of the bylina cycle. The canonical Dobrynya-and-the-Serpent-Gorynych narrative — slaying the three-headed dragon at the Sorochinskaya mountains with the "Cap of the Greek-land" (a magical cap from Constantinople), rescuing Vladimir's niece Zabava Putyatichna — is structurally the most-Indo-European-comparative of the bylina cycle, paralleling the dragon-slaying narratives of Indra-Vrtra, Zeus-Typhon, Thor-Jörmungandr, Heracles-Hydra, and others. The Dobrynya-as-courteous-emissary archetype (in contrast to Ilya's peasant-warrior directness) provides the bylina cycle with social-class-and-temperament differentiation among the bogatyr trinity (Ilya, Dobrynya, Alyosha Popovich), encoding Slavic polytheistic social-stratification through the heroic-narrative conventions.