If you’re a monarch and you haven’t ordered the execution of a family member, can you even call yourself a proper royal? Take Elizabeth I, for example, who beheaded a number of her cousins, or Cleopatra, who ordered that three of her own siblings be murdered. Familicide is par for the course in the royal families of yesteryear, yet you might not know the story of Catherine the Great, who came to power through a mix of military intrigue and murder. With HBO depicting Catherine’s rise to power in Catherine the Great, we investigated the true story behind how Russia’s longest-reigning female empress seized power.
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Who was Catherine the Great’s husband?
Born Karl Peter Ulrich in 1728, Peter III was the grandson of two emperors: Peter the Great of Russia and Charles XII of Sweden. After the death of his parents, Peter was raised and educated in the Swedish court, where during his grooming for the Swedish throne, he proved an abjectly miserable student. However, Peter loved military parades and dreamed of becoming a world-famous military leader.
At age fourteen, Peter was summoned to Russia by his aunt Elizabeth, who became empress and proclaimed him heir to the Russian throne, christening him Pyotr Fyodorovich. Peter resented Russia and hated Russian Orthodoxy; he often complained bitterly that the Russian people would never accept him as their ruler. Empress Elizabeth shielded Peter from government affairs, likely because she believed he was intellectually incapable of participating.
At age 17, Peter married Princess Sophie Frederica Auguste, a 16-year-old Prussian princess with whom Empress Elizabeth arranged a politically advantageous match. When Princess Sophie converted to Russian Orthodoxy, she took the name Yekaterina, anglicized as Catherine.
Heritage ImagesPeter III
How does the HBO show address this topic?
Catherine the Great picks up Catherine’s story soon after her rise to power through the military coup that deposed her husband from the throne. In the early days of Catherine’s rule, her reign was threatened by pretenders to the throne and by a former tsar, Ivan VI, who ruled Russia for a year during his infancy. Catherine the Great sees Catherine visit Ivan in prison to tighten the conditions of his incarceration, ordering his guards to kill him should he attempt to escape or should rebels attempt to free him.
The fact that Ivan even draws breath is destabilizing to Catherine’s rule, as some argue that a former tsar has a more legitimate claim to the throne than a deposed tsar’s foreign-born wife. Members of Catherine’s court whisper about Ivan’s rumored existence, as well as about Catherine’s role in her husband’s assassination—and Catherine’s son Paul is none too pleased with her, either. Like members of the court, Paul believes that Catherine was directly involved in the death of his father, and he resents her deeply for it. Meanwhile, those involved in the assassination of the deposed tsar implore Catherine to reward them for their role in bringing her to power, claiming that she “owes” them for what they’ve done. Though the show never comes down firmly on whether or not Catherine ordered her husband’s assassination, it sees her co-conspirators refer to a “deal,” implying that Catherine was involved to some degree in a nefarious scheme, even if she wasn’t directly implicated in a murder plot.
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What was Catherine the Great’s marriage like?
Catherine and Peter were a poor match in every dimension but political expediency. Catherine was a cultured woman with a prodigious intellect; meanwhile, Peter was a drunkard and a simpleton. Catherine took numerous lovers during the unhappy marriage, and when she wrote her memoirs later in life, she alleged that her son Paul, the future emperor of Russia, could not have been Peter’s child, as by her account, they never consummated the marriage.
How did Catherine the Great seize power from Peter III?
When Peter inherited the throne in 1762, Catherine became empress consort. Peter only reigned for six months, as his political vision was hugely unpopular with the Russian aristocracy. Once on the throne, Peter allied Russia with Prussia, its longtime enemy, and waged war against Denmark to regain his native land of Holstein. Among military officers and members of the court, such foreign policy was viewed as treasonous.
Peter also instituted domestic reforms that seem downright democratic by today’s standards, including the enforcement of religious freedom, the disbanding of secret police forces, and the forbidding of landowners to kill the serfs farming their land. However, such reforms alienated Peter from the aristocracy, and his open derision for Orthodoxy distanced him from the Orthodox church.
Traditionally, historians have believed that the groups alienated by Peter came to Catherine, arguing that the tsar must be overthrown to protect the Russian way of life. When Peter left the capital on vacation, Catherine met with members of the military, imploring them to protect her from her husband, whom many viewed as erratic and dangerous. When Peter returned, Catherine had him arrested and forced to sign a document of abdication. Some historians increasingly believe that it was Catherine who masterminded the coup, as she feared that Peter planned to divorce her. Whatever the case, Catherine was declared the sole ruler of Russia, while Peter was exiled to Ropsha, a settlement outside of Saint Petersburg (then the capital city of Russia).
How did Peter III die?
Eight days after his abdication, Peter was assassinated at Ropsha by Alexei Orlov, younger brother to Catherine’s then-lover, Grigory Orlov. The cause of death is unclear, though the official autopsy report indicates that he died of hemorrhoids and an apoplectic stroke. Another theory argues that he died through injuries sustained from a drunken brawl with a bodyguard where he was held captive at Ropsha. Others argue that he may have committed suicide.
Did Catherine order Peter III’s execution?
Probably not, though it’s hard to come to a definitive conclusion. Many historians believe that Catherine intended only to exile Peter, not to have him assassinated. No evidence exists to support Catherine’s complicity in the assassination, though the Russian public by and large held her accountable, casting a pall over her reign. Even so, Catherine proved to be much savvier about coups than her late husband, squashing dozens of uprisings to reign for over three decades until her death.
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