Terrible tsarinas

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Catherine’s Reign: A Flash of Flamboyance monarchy.

As if the sempiternal gossip were not enough to poison the atmosphere at the palace, now people began talking again about that imp of a grandson of Peter the Great, whom they insisted had been wrongfully shunted aside. Issue of the unfortunate Alexis, who had paid with his life for having the audacity to oppose the policies of “The Reformer,” he was staggered to learn that his name had cropped up in the debates over the succession. The innocent’s adversaries maintained that he must share the paternal forfeiture and that he was permanently excluded from the prerogatives of the dynasty. But others claimed that his rights to the crown were inalienable and that he was very much in a position to mount the throne… under the tutelage of his close relations. His partisans were recruited primarily among the old stock nobility and the members of the provincial clergy.

Here and there, spontaneous uprisings were beginning to be seen in the countryside. Nothing serious, yet: timid gatherings in front of churches, secret meetings at the end of mass, the name of young Peter proclaimed by the crowds during festivals on his name day. Chancellor Ostermann, seeking to defuse the threat of a coup d’etat, suggested marrying the tsarevich (who was not yet 12 years old) to his aunt Elizabeth, aged 17. No one bothered to consider whether that arrangement would suit the interested parties. Even Catherine, usually so sensitive to the inclinations of the heart, did not stop to ask herself what kind of future might await the couple that, at her initiative, would be formed by a scarcely pubescent boy and a young woman already going to seed. However, while the age difference hardly struck the unrepentant matchmakers as an insurmountable obstacle, they recognized that the Church was likely to oppose this consanguineous union. After long discussions, the idea was put aside. Moreover, Menshikov had a better suggestion. With self-serving audacity, he now