Terrible tsarinas

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Machinations around the Throne to face with this cavalier who was devouring her with his eyes, that Peter lost his temper and went back to get drunk. But which one was he really jealous over? Ivan or Elizabeth?

Aunt and nephew were only reconciled after Easter. Forsaking Dolgoruky for once, Peter took Elizabeth along on an extended shooting party. The expedition was expected to last several months. A 500-person retinue accompanied the couple.

Wild fowl as well as large game were the quarries. When the time came to track a wolf, a fox or a bear, valets in silver-trimmed green livery did the job. They would attack the animal with rifles and spears, under the interested eyes of the Masters. After a perusal of the hunting spectacle, a banquet would be held in the open air, followed by a visit to the merchants who came from far and wide to display their fabrics, embroideries, miraculous ointments and costume jewelry.

A piece of alarming news caught Peter and Elizabeth by surprise in the midst of all this revelry: Natalya, Peter’s sister, took sick; she was spitting blood. Was she going to die? But no, she recovered; instead, Elizabeth’s sister in Kiel, Anna Petrovna, Duchess of Holstein, gave her close relatives more serious concern.

She had caught cold while watching the fireworks during her churching. Pneumonia, the doctors declared; and in a few days, she was gone. The poor thing was only 20 years old; and she left an orphaned son, Charles Ulrich, just two weeks old. Everyone around Peter was dismayed. He alone expressed no regret at her passing. Some wondered whether he was still capable of human feeling. Was it the excessive indulgence in forbidden pleasures that had desiccated his heart?

When the body of his aunt, of whom he used to be so fond, was brought back to St. Petersburg, he didn’t bother to go to the burial. And he didn’t even cancel the ball that was habitually given at the palace at that time. A few months later, in November