← Back to the front page

The Sibling Rivalry That Wrecked an Empire, and Other Self-Destructive Royal Family Episodes

Khalid Elhassan January 5, 2020 33 min

Wars of the Roses - Battle of Bosworth Field — The Wars of the Roses, during which the Plantagenet Dynasty destroyed itself. Encyclopedia Britannica

Peter the Great, on horseback to the right, supervising the suppression of the Streltsy. Wikimedia

33. The Ruler Who Left the Corpse of His Sister’s Lover Dangling Outside Her Window

Russian Emperor Peter the Great ascended the throne as a child, so his elder Sophia ruled as regent on his behalf. When Peter grew up and sought to rule in his own right, Sophia resisted surrendering her power. So he locked her up in a monastery. Ten years later, in 1698, a lover of Sophia led the Streltsy Regiments – a sort of medieval Russian Praetorian Guard – in a failed uprising while Peter was out of the country.

Peter rushed back to Russia, but the rebellion had already collapsed by the time he returned home. Upon reaching Moscow, he brutally broke the Streltsy, who were tortured and executed by the thousands. Peter took a hands-on approach, and played an active part in the executions, personally chopping off the heads of rebels with an ax in Moscow’s Red Square. He also strung up the bodies of executed Streltsy outside Sophia’s monastery, and left the corpse of her lover dangling from a rope directly outside her window.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.