"and foremost a paramour of the much-older Elizabeth. Rebuffed at this discovery, she takes lovers among the Russian Army to court its favor. When the old Empress dies seventeen years into their marriage, Peter ascends to the Russian throne and takes steps against his wife. Soon Catherine plots and exercises a coup, beginning a reign as Empress that will leave her known to history as ""Catherine the Great"". Josef von Sternberg described ""The Scarlet Empress"" as ""a relentless excursion into style"". The historical accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of ""a visual splendor verging on madness"". To show Russia as"
"Legends of Catherine the Great During and after the reign of the flamboyant and powerful Empress Catherine II of Russia, whose long rule led to the modernization of the Russian Empire, many urban legends arose, some false and others based on true events, concerning her sexual behavior. Catherine had 22 male lovers throughout her life, some of whom would reap political benefits from their relationship with her, and many of whom were younger than she. In addition to her sexual relationships, her multiple illicit relationships with Russian nobles, and unfounded rumors that she liked to collect erotic furniture, and an"
"originate until some years after Catherine the Great's death, it is most likely the cabinet never existed, and the whole story was simply fabricated as another bawdy tale. Legends of Catherine the Great During and after the reign of the flamboyant and powerful Empress Catherine II of Russia, whose long rule led to the modernization of the Russian Empire, many urban legends arose, some false and others based on true events, concerning her sexual behavior. Catherine had 22 male lovers throughout her life, some of whom would reap political benefits from their relationship with her, and many of whom were"
"started, often took the arm of her son Tsar Alexander I at court functions and ceremonies while his wife Empress Elizabeth Alexeievna (Louise of Baden) walked behind, which caused resentment on the part of the young empress. The same thing happened decades later when Emperor Alexander III died, and the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark) held precedence over Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (Alix of Hesse), which put an enormous strain on their already tense relationship. The power struggle culminated when the Dowager Empress refused to hand over certain jewels traditionally associated with the Empress Consort. There have been four"
"her days in bitterness and ill health, while her brothers Alexander and Semyon made spectacular careers in the diplomatic service. Ruthelma Stevens portrayed her in Josef von Sternberg's 1934 film ""The Scarlet Empress"". Elizaveta Vorontsova Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova () (13 August 1739 – 2 February 1792) was a mistress of Emperor Peter III of Russia. During their affair, Peter was rumored to have intentions of divorcing his wife Catherine (the future empress) to marry Vorontsova. She belonged to the celebrated Vorontsov family that reached the pinnacle of power during the last years of the reign of Empress Elizabeth, when her"
"male lovers. Konstantin and Elizaveta had nine children: Grand Duchess Elizaveta Mavrikievna, or ""Mavra"" as she was known within the Romanov family, was a popular figure, and got on quite well with her nephew, Tsar Nicholas II. She outlived most of her children. In 1905 her daughter Natalia died aged exactly two months. When World War I broke out, she found herself fighting on the opposite side of her native Germany. However, several of her sons, who were trained soldiers, joined the army and fought bravely. One, her son Oleg, was killed in 1914 in Lithuania, where Elizaveta quickly went"
"the Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich in 1865. By then, her fragile constitution was undermined by her numerous pregnancies and by tuberculosis which afflicted her since 1863. To avoid the harsh Russian winters, she spent long sojourns in the Crimea and in southern Europe. During many summers she visited her family in Jugenheim, where she had spent her childhood. Her marriage to Tsar Alexander II started as a love match and was happy for some years, but Alexander II had many affairs and in 1866 he fell in love with Catherine Dolgorukova and had four children with his mistress. Maria Alexandrovna was"
"in her marriage, some said to give her son Kirill a better chance at the throne. As a result of marrying the son of a Russian Emperor, she took on a new style ""Her Imperial Highness""; the couple had four sons and one daughter. In Russia, she lived at the Vladimir Palace situated on the Palace Embankment on the Neva River. Socially ambitious, it was there that she established her reputation as being one of the best hostesses in the capital. An addiction to gambling, which saw her defy a prohibition by Nicholas II on the playing on roulette and"
"Maximilian became a well known womanizer while Maria started a long term relationship with Count Gregory Alexandrovich Strogonov. Court rumors attributed the paternity of her son George to her lover. The Duke of Leuchtenberg developed tuberculosis during mining expeditions in the Urals. Efforts to improve his health traveling to warmer climates abroad were unsuccessful and he died on 1 November 1852. The Grand Duchess was an avid art collector, and after the death of her husband, she replaced him as President of the Academy of Arts. From then on, Maria Nikolaievana devoted herself to her collection with even greater ardor."
"of Russia (January to July, 1762), Mikhail Vorontsov was the most powerful man in Russia, as his niece Elizaveta Vorontsova became the Emperor's mistress. Peter's wife Catherine, alarmed by her husband's plans to divorce her and marry Elizaveta Vorontsova, deposed her husband, with great help from her bosom friend, Yekaterina Romanovna Vorontsova-Dashkova, the wife of Prince Dashkov and Elizaveta's own sister. Yekaterina Dashkova's brothers, Alexander and Semyon Romanovich, both became notable diplomats. The latter's son, Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov (1782-1856), became a prominent general who fostered the colonisation of New Russia and led the Russian army in the Caucasus. The Vorontsovs"
"scandals of the age. Her relationship with Potemkin took place in 1777-1779 and ended after her marriage to prince Sergey Golitsyn in 1779. It was possibly ended on her initiative, after she had fallen in love with Golitsyn. It is possible that her firstborn was fathered by her uncle. Her grandmother, Darja Potemkina, is known to have protested to her son against their affair. After their affair ended, her uncle Potemkin had an affair with her sister, Aleksandra. She is described as a beautiful, charming and temperamental blonde. Varvara Golitsyna Varvara Vasilievna Golitsyna, née von Engelhardt (1757–1815), was a Russian"
"Rasputin and the Empress Rasputin and the Empress is a 1932 American pre-Code film about Imperial Russia starring the Barrymore siblings (John, as ""Prince Chegodieff""; Ethel, as Czarina Alexandra; and Lionel Barrymore, as Grigori Rasputin). It is the only film in which all three siblings appear together. The film's inaccurate portrayal of Prince Felix Yusupov and his wife Princess Irina (renamed ""Prince Chegodieff"" and ""Princess Natasha"") resulted in an historically significant lawsuit against MGM and gave rise to the ""all persons fictitious disclaimer"", which has since become standard in Hollywood works of fiction. The impetus for making the film was"
"Empress Maria Alexandrovna, who suffered from tuberculosis, spent much of her time abroad. Alexander eventually turned to a mistress, Princess Catherine Dolgoruki. Immediately following the death of his wife in 1880 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Dolgoruki. His legitimization of their children, and rumors that he was contemplating crowning his new wife as empress, caused tension within the dynasty. In particular, the grand duchesses were scandalized at the prospect of deferring to a woman who had borne Alexander several children during his wife's lifetime. Before Princess Catherine could be elevated in rank, however, on 13 March 1881 Alexander was"
"the Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna had been hurt and dishonored when Tsar Alexander II took Catherine Dolgorukov as his mistress in July 1866. Because Catherine Dolgorukov urged the Tsar passionately to make liberal reforms, she was also greatly disliked by the political conservatives at court. After the death of Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna in June 1880, Tsar Alexander II married Catherine Dolgorukov, and made her three children legitimate. He gave each of them the new name Yurievsky and the rank of Prince or Princess. This caused a rumor at court that the Tsar wished for the newly legitimized Prince George Yourievsky to"
"name"" for Empresses – ruling queens and queen consorts. (""Mother dear-tsaritsa"" (матушка-царица) was only Catherine the Great, most popular). For a list of Russian empresses in the 18th and 19th centuries see Empress of Russia. ""De jure"" tsaritsas in Russia existed from 1547 until 1721. Among the most famous tsaritsas of this period were six or seven wives of Ivan the Terrible, who were poisoned by his enemies, killed or imprisoned by him in monasteries. However, only the first four of them were ""crowned"" tsaritsas, as the later marriages were not blessed with the Orthodox Church and considered as cohabitation."
"attract people, and called ""The Aspasia of the North"". In 1803, she made an attempt to have Alexander divorce his spouse and marry her, but she failed. She accompanied the tsar to the Vienna Congress in 1815, which gave him bad publicity. She had at least four illegitimate daughters by Alexander. Three of them (two named Yelizaveta and one named Zinaida) died in infancy, and the other, Sofia, lived to aged 16. She also had a son, Emanuel, who wasn't admitted by her husband and was possibly also the tsar's child. Her children were: Alexander was persuaded to leave her"
"her middle ones: Alexander, Vladimir, and Alexei. Princess Dagmar, the Tsarevich's fiancée who was with the Romanovs during Nicholas's final days, was quickly engaged to Maria's next oldest son, the future Emperor Alexander III, whom she would marry the following year. In 1866, Alexander II and Maria Alexandrovna celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. With the passing of the years, they grew apart, particularly after the birth of their last son and the deterioration of her health. While the Empress remained in love with her husband, Alexander II had many affairs, but they did not threaten their marriage. From the mid-1850s"
"our children."" Fearing that she might become the target of assassins, the Tsar had moved Catherine and their children to the third floor of the Winter Palace by the winter of 1880. Courtiers spread stories that the dying Tsarina was forced to hear the noise of Catherine's children moving about overhead, but her rooms were actually far away from those occupied by the Empress. Though the Tsar had been unfaithful on many occasions in the past, his relationship with Catherine began after the Empress, who had had eight children, stopped having intercourse with her husband on the advice of her"
"famous artists she had known: Nikolai Gumilyov , Georgy Ivanov , Osip Mandelstam , Zinaida Gippius , Dmitri Merezhkovsky , Andrey Bely and Ivan Bunin among others. These two books caused much controversy among the Russians in France but still ""might be regarded as a priceless document of the time, even if full of aberrations and frivolous twists of fantasy,"" according to poet and Russian poetry historian Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Her marriage to Georgy Ivanov, though it lasted 37 years, ""had little to do with the usual concepts of conjugal life,"" according to her biographer Ella Bobrova. An example of their"
"between her only daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia, with Frederick Francis III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Maria Pavlovna's brother. Anastasia carried some bitterness about her upbringing and relationship with her mother - her daughter Cäcilie recounts that at a party to celebrate her engagement, when she committed some infraction she was sent to bed by Olga like a naughty child. There was also an incident involving an apricot tree, which belonged to Anastasia but whose fruit she was not allowed to eat. In his journals, Alexander Polovtsov, State Secretary during Alexander III's reign, left an unsympathetic portrayal of"
"Polish noblewoman Marina Mnishek also became tsaritsa of Russia by her marriage to an impostor False Dmitry I and later with the False Dmitri II. Many wives were chosen by Bride-show (the custom of beauty pageant, borrowed from the Byzantine Empire), when hundreds of poor but handsome noblewomen gathered in Moscow from all the regions of Russia, and the tsar chose the most beautiful. This deprived Russia of the benefits of royal intermarriage with European monarchs, but protected from inbreeding and degeneration, and also from the political influence of foreign princesses (Catholic or Protestant). The only foreign wife of a"
"likely resulted from injuries suffered during his torture. Alexei's mother Eudoxia had also been punished; she was dragged from her home and tried on false charges of adultery. A similar fate befell Peter's earlier mistress, Anna Mons, in 1704. In 1724 Peter had his second wife, Catherine, crowned as Empress, although he remained Russia's actual ruler. All of Peter's male children had died. By his two wives, he had fourteen children. These included three sons named ""Pavel"" and three sons named ""Peter"", all of whom died in infancy. In the winter of 1723, Peter, whose overall health was never robust,"
"with deep blue eyes and dark hair, had a happy childhood. Irina was often called Irène, the French version of her name, or Irene, the English version. Her mother sometimes nicknamed her ""Baby Rina."" The Romanovs, heavily influenced by the French and English, spoke French better than Russian and often used the foreign versions of their first names to refer to each other. Her husband-to-be, Felix Yusupov, was a man of many contradictions: a man from a very wealthy family who enjoyed dressing in women's clothing and had sexual relationships with both men and women, scandalizing society, but he was"
"1776, he allegedly selected a candidate-lover for her who had the physical beauty and mental faculties to hold her interest (such as Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and Nicholas Alexander Suk). Some of these men loved her in return, and she always showed generosity towards them, even after the affair ended. One of her lovers, Pyotr Zavadovsky, received 50,000 rubles, a pension of 5,000 rubles, and 4,000 peasants in Ukraine after she dismissed him in 1777. The last of her lovers, Prince Zubov, was 40 years her junior. Her sexual independence led to many of the legends about her. Catherine kept her illegitimate"
"Tsar was ill with typhoid, the little girl covered a miniature portrait of him with kisses every night. Maria's siblings were Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, Grand Duchess Tatiana of Russia, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, and Tsarevich Alexei of Russia. Maria's Russian title (""Velikaya Knyazhna"" Великая Княжна) is most precisely translated as ""Grand Princess"", meaning that Maria, as an ""Imperial Highness"" was higher in rank than other Princesses in Europe who were ""Royal Highnesses"". ""Grand Duchess"" is the most widely used English translation of the title. However, in keeping with her parents' desire to raise Maria and her siblings"
"one. The ""Infidelity” movie starring Elena Lyadova speaks of Asya, a woman, who seems at first glance to be hopelessly crushed by family life. However, it turns out that she as well as her husband, has three lovers. In general, one of the “mainspring” of the series is that its characters are not what they seem. During the premiere of the pilot episode of ""Infidelity"" every fourth Russian aged 18 to 30 years was watching the TNT. In addition, this project was the most successful in the history of the channel in terms of the number and the level of"
"with Louise of Baden, later Empress Elizabeth, who was deeply unhappy in Russia. In her memoirs, written with the direction of the empress, she described the life at the courts of Catherine the Great and Paul I. In 1818, for health reasons she made her second trip to France. Returning briefly to Russia in 1820, she again come back to France. She returned to Paris and died there in 1821, and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Her memoirs were later published in France. In marriage, Varvara had four children: <br> Varvara Golovina Countess Varvara Nikolayevna Golovina ""née"" Princess"
"which were released by Rasputin and which circulated throughout society. ""My dear, precious, only friend,"" wrote Anastasia. ""How much I should like to see you again. You appeared to me today in a dream. I am always asking Mama when you will come ... I think of you always, my dear, because you are so good to me ..."" This was followed by circulation of pornographic cartoons, which depicted Rasputin having relations with the Empress, her four daughters and Anna Vyrubova. After the scandal, Nicholas ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg for a time, much to Alexandra's displeasure, and Rasputin"
"but the expression of his countenance, which I could now very closely examine, is sad. Whether it is satiety, or the loneliness of despotism, or fear of a violent death, I know not, but it was a visage of, I should think, habitual mournfulness."" At home, Tsarina Marie Alexandrovna was suffering from tuberculosis and was spending increasing time abroad. In 1866, Alexander II took a mistress, Princess Catherine Dolgorukya, with whom he would father three surviving children. The affair, in the face of the tsarina's declining health, served to alienate the rest of his adult children, save his son Alexei"
"restless and soul tortured man such as her husband. In 1803, Alexander began a love affair that would continue for more than fifteen years with the Polish Princess Maria Czetwertynska, wife of Prince Dmitri Naryshkin. Princess Maria Naryshkina flaunted her liaison at Court in a tasteless, blatant fashion. Elizabeth Alexeievna, for her part, found solace in her relationship with Adam Czartoryski, who had returned to Russia at Alexander I's ascension to the throne. This liaison ended when she started a love affair with a handsome staff captain, Alexis Okhotnikov (1780–1807). All the correspondence between Elizabeth and Alexis Okhotnikov (and some"
"influence over her husband. On the night of Paul I's assassination, Maria Feodorovna thought to imitate the example of Catherine II and tried to proclaim herself Empress, but did not press her claims. During the reigns of her sons Alexander I and Nicholas I, Maria Feodorovna retired to live at Gatchina and Pavlovsk, but kept the highest female position at court. This custom of precedence of the Dowager Empress over the wife of the reigning monarch was introduced with her and it was unique to the Russian court. She outshone the wives of Alexander I and Nicholas I as she"
"mingle in society Countess V. Golovin and her daughters. Her name is often found in the correspondence of the Empress Elizabeth Alekseievna and notes Golovina Countess and her daughter, the Countess of PN Fredro. She was married to Lieutenant General Prince Constantine Ksaverevichem Lubomirski (1786–1870), and had a son and six daughters. Eudokia (1793–1797) Alexander Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1793–1866), was married to Princess Anna Mikhailovna Scherbatova, died in Nice. Emmanuel (1802–1825), is buried in the Volkov Lutheran Cemetery in Saint Petersburg. Dolgorukov IM temples of my heart, or a dictionary of all those with which I have been in various ways"
"known under her Russian name Matryona) had been publicly whipped in 1718 and exiled to Siberia after Peter the Great had learnt about her brother Willem's affair with his wife Catherine. Sergei Saltykov (1726–1765) Count Sergei Vasilievich Saltykov (; c. 1726 – 1765) was a Russian officer (chamberlain) who became the first lover of Empress Catherine the Great after her arrival in Russia. In her memoirs, Empress Catherine II implies very strongly that he was the biological father of her son, Paul I of Russia. It was reported that Paul is ""almost certainly the child of her lover."" However, Paul"