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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.
In the spring of 1762, conspiring with her lover Grigory Orlov and others in the court and military, Catherine began plotting to overthrow her husband. At dawn on June 28, 1762, Catherine marched with a procession of civilian and military supporters to the Winter Palace, where she was proclaimed heir to the Russian throne by the archbishop of ...
1794 portrait of Catherine the Great by Dmitry Levitzky. Born in 1754, [1] Paul was the son of Emperor Peter III and Catherine the Great. [2] Six months after Peter's accession, Catherine participated in a successful coup d'état against her husband; Peter was deposed and killed in prison. [3] During Catherine's reign, Russia was revitalized.
However, within a matter of months, Paul's mother engineered a coup to depose her husband. Peter soon died in prison, either being killed by Catherine's supporters or due to a fit of apoplexy when exerting himself in a dispute with Prince Feodor, one of his jailers. The 8-year-old Paul retained his position as Tsesarevich, or heir apparent. [5]
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 ...
Ashley's slaying of her husband was nicknamed "The Black Swan Case" because of her history as a ballet dancer. In the film Black Swan , released in 2010, Natalie Portman stars as a ballerina who ...
The Great is a historical and satirical black comedy-drama about the rise of Catherine the Great from outsider to the longest-reigning female ruler in Russia's history. The series is highly fictionalized and portrays Catherine in her youth and marriage to Emperor Peter III of Russia, focusing on the plot to kill her depraved and dangerous husband.
Catherine the Great upheld the order, and when an attempt was made, he was killed and secretly buried within the fortress. [16] Another case was Countess Natalia Lopukhina. The circumstances of Elizabeth's birth would later be used by her political opponents to challenge her right to the throne on grounds of illegitimacy.