Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas suggested having tsarevich Peter marry not Elizabeth, but his own daughter, Maria Alexandrovna, who - according to him - combined beauty of the soul and that of the body. If he married her, Peter would be the happiest of men.

Admittedly, since 1721 she had been promised to Peter Sapieha, palatine of Smolensk, and she was said to be madly in love with her fiance. But that detail did not stop Catherine. If everyone’s feelings were taken into account before asking for the blessing of a priest, no one would ever marry anybody! The tsarina abruptly decided to break the engagement of these turtle doves, since it stood in the way of her wishes, and to marry the tsarevich Peter Alexeyevich and the young Maria Alexandrovna Menshikov.

In compensation, Peter Sapieha would be offered one of Her Majesty’s great-nieces, Sophia Skavronska. Meanwhile, moreover, Sapieha had been admitted to the very accessible bed of Catherine, on several occasions, and she was thus able to verify the virile qualities of the man she intended for her young relative. Sapieha, who knew how to get along in life, did not protest against the switch in fiancees; Catherine and Menshikov were pleased to think they had settled the matter so handily. Only the unfortunate Maria Alexandrovna was left to cry over her lost love and to curse her rival, Sophia Skavronska.

At the other end of the business, Anna and her husband, Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein, were equally dismayed by the possibility of a marriage that, under the pretext of promoting the interests of Peter Alexeyevich, would in fact serve to reinforce the hegemony of his future father-in-law, Menshikov, and would put even more dis tance between the throne and Peter the Great’s two daughters. Considering themselves to have been sacrificed, but for different reasons, Anna and Elizabeth threw themselves at their mother’s feet and begged her to give up the idea of this scandalous engagement that, all things considered, was satisfactory