Terrible tsarinas

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Elizabeth’s Triumph and again, she made appointments with him and then broke them, and one day when he complained to her about Bestuzhev, whose ostracism of France was close to an obsession (according to the Fernchman), she set him in his place with a few sharp words. “We do not condemn people before proving their crimes!”6 However, the day before La Chetardie’s departure, she sent him a snuffbox studded with diamonds, with her portrait in miniature in the middle.

The day after this necessary separation from a character who charmed and irritated her by turns, Elizabeth was as sad as if she had lost a dear friend. While La Chetardie was stopped at a stagehouse along the way, an emissary from Elizabeth caught up with him. The man handed him a note in a sealed envelope, bearing only the words: “France will be in my heart forever.”7 That sounds like the wail of a lover who has been forsaken - but by whom? By an ambassador? By a king? By France itself? Her feelings must have been quite confused, by now. While her subjects may have been entitled to dream, that innocent diversion was off limits for her. Abandoned by someone whom she had always claimed was of no importance, it was time to come back to reality and to focus on the succession to the throne, rather than thinking about her life as a woman.

On November 7, 1742, she published a proclamation solemnly dubbing Duke Charles Peter Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp Grand Duke, crown prince and Imperial Highness, under the Russian name of Peter Fyodorovich. She took this occasion to confirm her intention not to marry. In fact, she was afraid that if she married a man of lower rank, or a foreign prince, she would be letting down not only the brave men of the Leib-Kompania but all the Russians who were so attached to the memory of her father, Peter the Great. Better to remain unwed, s he thought. To be worthy of the role that she intended to play, she would have to forego any