Terrible tsarinas

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The Extravagant Anna cut down was still rearing its head.

As for Anna Leopoldovna, she suffered like a martyr, knowing she was only a puppet with her aunt pulling the strings.

What distressed her most of all was the prospect of what awaited her in bed, after the candelabra were extinguished and the dancers had dispersed. An expiatory victim, she understood very well that while all these people were pretending to be happy over her good fortune, nobody was in fact concerned about her feelings, nor even her pleasure. She was not there to be happy, but to be inseminated.

When the so-dreaded moment arrived, the highest ladies and the wives of the leading foreign diplomats accompanied Anna Leopoldovna, in procession, to the bridal suite to participate in the traditional “bedding of the bride.” This was not exactly the same ceremony as that which Anna Ivanovna had imposed on her two buffoons, condemned to freeze all night in the “house of ice”; and yet, the effect was the same for the young woman, forcibly married. She was shaken to the bone, not by cold but by fear, at the thought of the sad destiny that awaited her with a man that she did not love. When the ladies in her retinue finally withdrew, she gave in to deep panic and, giving the slip to her chambermaids, she fled to the gardens of the Summer Palace. And there, in tears, she spent the first night of her married life.

Hearing of this scandalous marital truancy, the tsarina and Buhren called in the poor girl and, preaching, reasoning, begging and threatening, demanded that she carry through at the first opportunity. Sequestered in the next room, a few young ladies of honor observed the scene through a crack in the door. At the height of the discussion, they saw the tsarina, flushed with anger, slap her recalcitrant niece full in the face.

The lesson bore fruit: one year later, on August 23, 1740, Anna gave birth to a son. He was immediately baptized as Ivan