24. When Catherine the Great Discovered That Her Husband Was About to Get Rid of Her, She Beat Him to the Punch and Got Rid of Him First
Catherine the Great was born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst into minor German nobility. When she was fourteen years old, she was wed to Grand Duke Peter, grandson and heir to the throne of Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great. To say that it turned out to be an unhappy marriage would be to understate things. In fact, it was a complete disaster of a marriage, as Peter was extremely neurotic, mentally unstable, and probably impotent. The following eighteen years were full of humiliations and disappointment.
In response, Catherine took a series of lovers, and strongly hinted that none of the children born during her marriage were Peter’s. When her husband became Tsar in 1761, he quickly alienated his court and nobles by making little effort to hide his contempt for Russia, and his preference for his native Germany. When Peter started making moves to rid himself of Catherine, she beat him to the punch, and joined a conspiracy that staged a military coup in 1762. Peter was seized, forced to abdicate, then murdered eight days later. Catherine has then crowned Tsarina, and ruled Russia for the next 34 years.
