Terrible tsarinas

1.

Cited in Waliszewski: L’Heritage de Pierre le Grand [The Heritage of Peter the Great].

2. Hermann: Geschichte des Russichen Staats, quoted by Waliszewski, op. cit.

3. The duke of Bourbon succeeded Duke Philippe of Orleans as Regent, after the latter’s death in 1723.

4. Reported by Hermann, op. cit., and quoted by Waliszewski op. cit.

5. Remarks quoted by Daria Olivier: Elizabeth I, Imperatrice de Russie.

Among all those who could have laid claim to the throne, the one who was least well-prepared for this frightening honor was the one who had just been given it. None of the candidates to succeed Catherine I had had a childhood so bereft of affection and guidance as the new tsar, Peter II. He never knew his mother, Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, who died bringing him into the world, and he was only three years old when his father, the Tsarevich Alexis, succumbed under torture. Doubly orphaned, he was raised by governesses who were nothing but vulgar maidservants in the palace and by German and Hungarian tutors of little knowledge and little heart. He soon turned inward and exhibited, as soon as he reached the age of reason, a proud, aggressive and cynical nature. Always inclined to find fault and to rebel, the only person for whom he felt any tenderness was his sister Natalya, who was fourteen months older than he; he appreciated her vivacious temperament.

Out of atavism, no doubt, and in spite of his youth, he liked to get drunk and enjoyed the basest of jokes; he was astonished