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Catherine II [a] (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 1729 – 17 November 1796), [b] most commonly known as Catherine the Great, [c] was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III .
Despite Peter the Great's modification of the law to allow nomination of a successor by the monarch, neither he nor his two immediate successors ever nominated an heir, and Catherine I, Peter II, and Anna were all chosen irregularly, after the death of their predecessor.
During Catherine's lifetime, Maria had no chance of interfering in affairs of state, as Paul himself was excluded, but after her husband's accession to the throne, she took to politics, at first timidly, but increasingly resolutely afterwards. [8] Her influence over her husband was very great, and in general beneficial.
Peter II, the son of Tsarevich Alexei, took the throne but died in 1730, ending the Romanov male line. [11] He was succeeded by Anna I, daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother and co-ruler, Ivan V. Before she died in 1740 the empress declared that her grandnephew, Ivan VI, should succeed her. This was an attempt to secure the line of her ...
By February 1786, Kazakov prepared a project for the Grand Palace, and it was approved by the Empress. In March, the dismantling of two buildings began - the chambers of Catherine and Tsarevich Pavel. In November 1796, Catherine the Great suddenly died. At this time, the construction of the Grand Tsaritsyno Palace had been roughly completed.
Rumours of Catherine's private life had a small basis in the fact that she took many young lovers, even in old age. (Lord Byron's Don Juan, around the age of 22, becomes her lover after the siege of Ismail (1790), in a fiction written only about 25 years after Catherine's death in 1796.) [4] This practice was not unusual by the court standards of the day, nor was it unusual to use rumour and ...
Catherine the Great died in 1796, and Paul became Emperor. He decided to enlarge Pavlovsk into a palace suitable for a royal residence, adding two new wings on either side of the main building, and a church attached to the south wing. Between 1797 and 1799, he lavished money and the finest materials on Brenna's interiors.
Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski [c] (11 October [O.S. 30 September] 1739 [nb 1] – 16 October [O.S. 5 October] 1791) was a Russian military leader, statesman, nobleman, and favourite of Catherine the Great. He died during negotiations over the Treaty of Jassy, which ended a war with the Ottoman Empire that he had overseen.