Sex and the City of Ladies by Lisa Hilton

Author:Lisa Hilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-08-12T11:09:14+00:00

FOUR

Catherine the Great (1729–96)

Princess Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg saw nothing worth recording about her childhood in her father’s province of the Holy Roman Empire, though it remained one of her charms as Empress that she retained some elements of her earthy German upbringing (including a fondness for darning and an interest in the bowel movements of her loved ones). She was introduced to her future husband, Grand Duke Peter, heir to the Romanov dynasty, in 1739, at the age of ten, and refused to allow the fact that they loathed one another on sight to interfere with her ambitions. Having been singled out as the future bride of the Tsar, her name, religion and native language were as dispensable as her emotions. Her objectives from the start were popularity with the Russian people and the favour of her husband’s aunt, the Grand Duchess (soon to be Empress), Elizabeth.

Catherine, as she was re-baptised in Eastern Orthodoxy, was to benefit from an extraordinary anomaly in the laws of succession that governed inheritance within Europe’s royal families. In 1722, her husband’s great-grandfather Peter the Great had promulgated a new law under which the ruler of Russia was required to nominate a successor, whether or not that successor was a member of the Romanov dynasty. This was true autocracy, endowing the Russian Tsars with ‘a prerogative claimed by no other contemporary monarch’. Remarkably, in the period between the Petrine succession law and the Pauline revocation of it in 1797, which restored male primogeniture, women governed Russia. Equally remarkably, this approximate century saw Russia’s emergence as a major territorial, political, economic and cultural power. Peter the Great was succeeded by his widow, Catherine I in 1725, then his cousin, Anna of Courland, who reigned from 1729 to 1740, after which a male Tsar, Ivan VI was proclaimed at two months old. His mother, Anna Leopoldovna, acted as regent for scarcely a year, and in 1741 Peter the Great’s daughter (Catherine’s mother-in-law) Elizabeth seized the throne.

The marriage between Catherine and Grand Duke Peter was celebrated in 1745, and though there is considerable dispute as to when (and indeed if) it was consummated, Catherine produced an heir, Paul, in 1754. Three years later, she gave birth to a daughter, Anna, who died very young, and who was definitely not Peter’s. In April 1762, Catherine had another son – Aleksey – by her lover Grigory Orlov. The boy was given the title of Count Bobrinsky.

The timing of Aleksey’s birth is pertinent, in that it may have been a factor in cementing Catherine’s plans for a coup d’êtat. The Empress Elizabeth had died in January that year, leaving her nephew Peter as sole Emperor. Peter, a heavy drinker, declared in his cups that he intended to divorce Catherine and marry his mistress. In the last months of her pregnancy, Catherine had to consider her future. The marriage was loveless, without even the polite pretence of respect or fidelity. There were rumours that Peter planned to have her arrested and confined to a monastery, or worse.

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