Terrible tsarinas

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Terrible Tsarinas she would drop her lover without regret and come running back to Russia.

This suggestion seemed to be convincing. Golitsyn then pressed his point, saying, “We agree on Anna Ivanovna. But we should trim her wings a bit!” Golitsyn had in mind subtly reducing the ruler’s powers and extending those of the Supreme Privy Council; everyone agreed. The representatives of Russia’s oldest families, brought together in a conclave, saw this initiative as a God-sent occasion to reinforce the political influence of the old- stock nobility vis-a-vis the hereditary monarchy and its temporary servants. By this juggling act, they could relieve Her Majesty of a share of the crown, even while pretending to help her adjust it on her head. After a succession of Byzantine discussions, the initiators of this idea agreed that Anna Ivanovna should be recognized as tsarina, but that her prerogative should be limited by a series of conditions to which she must subscribe beforehand.

Upstairs, the members of the Supreme Privy Council removed to the grand salon in the palace, where a multitude of civil, military and ecclesiastical dignitaries awaited the results of their deliberations. Learning of the decision taken by the supreme advisers, Bishop Feofan Prokopovich timidly recollected the will of Catherine I according to which, after the death of Peter II, the crown should revert to his aunt Elizabeth, as a daughter of Peter I and of the late empress. Never mind that the child was born before the parents were married: her mother had transmitted to her the blood of the Romanovs, he said, and nothing else counted when the future of Holy Russia was concerned! Dmitri Golitsyn, indignant at such a speech, shouted, “We will not have any bastards!”1 Shocked by this attack, Feofan Prokopovich swallowed his objections; the discussion moved on to a consideration of the “practical conditions.” The enumeration of the limits to imperial