Royal Sex: Catherine the Great

Did Catherine the Great really die having sex with a horse? Was she involved in her husband's death? And were her lovers selected for political reasons? In this episode, Kate speaks with Virginia Rounding about the real Catherine the Great. We find out why Catherine's sex life still intrigues so many, and what kind of ruler she was. Virginia is the author of 'Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power’. This episode was edited and produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Please vote for us for Listeners' Choice at the British Podcast Awards! Follow this link https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/voting, and don’t forget to confirm the email. Thank you! Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. You are you, I am me, and this is Betwixt the Sheets. And in case you're new around here, in case you've wandered in thinking, "Betwixt the Sheets, that sounds like some kind of nice home decorating programme." No, you would be wrong. It is not. This is a show about historical smut, and therefore I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults about adulty things, and an adult's way of covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. Do you feel safer? I feel safer. Fair dues, you were warned. Let's do it!

• 1:08Kate Lister?

  It's 1894, and Walenski, a Polish author, is hunched over the final pages of his new text, a biography of Catherine II of Russia. And the final chapter is titled, "Private Life Favoritism." The segment begins, "There is a whole legend in regard to the love affairs of Catherine. We shall try to replace it by a few pages of history." He wrote that quite a while ago now, and a hundred years after Catherine the Great had died, but it was as true then, and it is true now, that her lustful ways will not be contained to a few pages of history.

• 1:49Kate Lister?

  In fact, Catherine's legendary love life has all but eclipsed her skills as a politician and a state leader. Honestly, it's all anyone can talk about. This was a woman who enjoyed a string of younger lovers well into her 60s. Go on, Catherine. And you'd hardly bat an eyelid at an emperor doing such things, but an empress? Well, we can't have that, now can we?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  What do you look for in a man?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Oh, money, of course.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 2:35Speaker 04

  Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, d'ry.

• 2:44Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Catherine the Great is the longest reigning empress of Russia, clocking up an impressive 34 years and four months, where she held court over Russia and its annexed lands. And if you've dabbled in history at all, I imagine you've heard a thing or two about this woman, most notably her fatal equestrian pursuits. But how much of that is really true? Well, today I am joined by Virginia Rounding, who is gonna help us get to know this remarkable woman and the rumours that surround her a little bit better. Saddle up, Betwixters, we're heading off to St Petersburg.

• 3:31Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Virginia Rounding. How are you doing?

• 3:38Speaker 05

  I'm doing very well, thank you, Kate. Nice to be here.

• 3:41Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's fabulous to have you here. You are, well, you're the author of lots and lots of books, but the one that we're focusing in on today is Catherine the Great: Love, Sex and Power. So as a starter question, can I ask you, do you remember when you first heard about Catherine the Great? And what was it that made you want to write this book?

• 4:04Speaker 05

  I guess I first heard about her when I was studying Russian language and literature years ago. And of course, she features not necessarily herself, but she's obviously influenced authors. So she turns up as a sort of recollection of various old people in war and peace and that kind of thing. So I was aware of her existence. And actually, I didn't think, it wasn't originally my idea to write a book on her. I'd written one on French courtesans and was looking around for someone to do a biography on. And it was suggested by my agent that I ought to try Catherine. And actually, I thought, well, she has been done before quite a lot.

• 4:46Speaker 05

  But there was a suggestion that it was time for another woman to take a look at her. Isabelle de Madryagrad has written a very scholarly work on Catherine. In many ways, it can't be surpassed. But it was thought it was time for, now that the attitude towards women and women rulers and women having lovers is quite different, that Catherine needed to be reassessed by maybe a more sympathetic eye in terms of her personal life. So then I got into her and found her absolutely fascinating.

• 5:18Kate Lister?

  So that already suggests that one thing that accompanies Catherine the Great is a whole lot of rumour and a whole lot of stigma and a whole lot of judgement. Would you say that that's fair?

• 5:29Speaker 05

  Absolutely. And a lot of it comes from the very fact she was a successful woman ruler, didn't appear to need a man to help her to rule, and didn't conform to the ways that an 18th century woman was expected to be.

• 5:47Kate Lister?

  I love her already.

• 5:48Speaker 05

  Whereas if she'd been a man, and it would have been no problem to have a string of lovers and that kind of thing, it was what they did.

• 5:55Kate Lister?

  That would have just been a slow Tuesday, wouldn't it? But no, it can't be a woman.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, think of Louis XIV and XV, that's what they did, so.

• 6:03Kate Lister?

  So let's take it right back to Catherine's origin story, because I'm not even sure I know this much about it. Where did she come from? Was she destined for greatness from the beginning?

• 6:13Speaker 05

  No, not at all. She was one of the many young women born into a small principality, what we'd now term as Germany. Then it was a whole collection of different little courts. And she was one of those young women born into the very lesser nobility in sort of Prussia and the areas that subsequently became Germany. So it would have been expected her only route in life was marriage to somebody. And yes, her family would be looking around for somebody, probably another sort of prince, a minor count sort of thing. Certainly wasn't expected she would end up running an empire.

• 6:55Speaker 05

  That came about sort of in an unexpected sort of way through personal family connections and then later through her taking control herself.

• 7:05Kate Lister?

  What was her real name? Her name can't have been Catherine the Great. I mean, that's ambitious.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  Her name was Sophie. She was changed to Yekaterina when she became Russian Orthodox, when she'd already moved to Russia as the prospective fiance of the heir to the throne, Peter.

• 7:23Kate Lister?

  And what was her family name? So it was Katerina?

• 7:26Speaker 05

  Well, she was sort of Sophie von Anhalt-Zebst, which is where she came from.

• 7:31Kate Lister?

  Okay. What was the family like? Were they on the make? Were they a good family? Did she have a nice childhood?

• 7:38Speaker 05

  She had a very reserved, slightly elderly father who was serious Lutheran. She was born in Stettin, a small town, and he became the governor of Zebst, where they moved and had a small castle to live in. And he was very upright, concerned about doing the right thing. He had a much younger wife, Joanna, who was rather flighty in certain respects. And it was partly through Joanna that the whole trip to Russia came about because the Empress Elizabeth, who was the Empress of Russia at the time, had in her youth been engaged to be married to an elder brother of Joanna.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  But he died quite young of smallpox. But Elizabeth retained this romantic notion throughout her life, it would have been wonderful. So they had this family connection that Joanna played on. And so Catherine, well, I call her Catherine for ease, but Sophie at the time, was one of those girls that Elizabeth would have heard about when she was looking around for someone to marry and of course produce future sons.

• 8:50Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 05

  To marry her heir, Peter, her nephew that she'd chosen herself. He was the grandson of Peter the Great. And so Sophie and her mother were invited to Russia to see if she was going to be a suitable

• 9:04Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  person for Peter to be betrothed to.

• 9:06Kate Lister?

  That's a lot of pressure.

• 9:08Speaker 05

  Absolutely, absolutely. It was a very common thing. In later years, when Catherine was the empress herself, she did just the same kind of things for her son Paul.

• 9:16Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  She got her envoys around Europe to look for likely girls and would invite them with her mother to be tested out.

• 9:26Kate Lister?

  How old would she have been?

• 9:27Speaker 05

  She was about thirteen, fourteen when this letter arrived. Yeah, she was fourteen when she arrived. But clearly ambitious right from the outset. She was determined to make a go of it.

• 9:39Kate Lister?

  How old was Peter? Let's talk a little bit about him. Who was he?

• 9:44Speaker 05

  He was just a bit older than Catherine. They had met as children briefly through family visits. He was an orphan. His mother and father had both died when he was fairly young. And he was a direct descendant of Peter the Great. It obviously never occurred to him as a child that he might be called upon to take on this mantle. He rather liked the smaller life of a court in Holstein, where he he thought he'd be a duke there when he grew up. So it was a bit of a shock to him to have to go off to Russia. And of course, when Sophie first arrived, he was delighted just to have some company.

• 10:25Kate Lister?

  Oh, bless.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  Because he was lonely. He hoped she'd be something of an ally against the Russian court. But it turned out she was sort of on the wrong side as far as he was concerned.

• 10:36Kate Lister?

  Why do you think they picked, I say they, I'm going to assume it wasn't Peter at the age of fourteen who was making the final decision. Why do you think they picked Sophie slash Catherine to do this?

• 10:47Speaker 05

  I think partly it was a sentimental reason because Elizabeth had this connection to the family through her dead fiancé. So Elizabeth was a very romantic, with a small ass sentimental woman throughout her life.

• 11:01Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 11:01Speaker 05

  So that would be part of it. It would be, was she healthy? Was she a sort of good stock? Was she be able to produce heirs?

• 11:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 05

  Would she be biddable? Would she be prepared to fit in, do as she was told? I think nothing much more complicated than that, really.

• 11:17Kate Lister?

  No, probably not. So obviously she is of good stock and she is healthy. And they do, they do get married. What kind of event was it? Was it a big celebration?

• 11:28Speaker 05

  It was, yes. I mean, there were several celebrations that took place. Once she'd been sort of approved, she had to convert to orthodoxy from Lutheranism, which could have been a big stumbling block. Her father didn't like the idea, but Catherine was quite determined it wasn't going to stand in her way. So she studied really hard. She learnt the church Slavonic that she had to say everything when she was received. So the first big ceremony was her admission into the Orthodox Church with lots of pomp. And then there was a betrothal and then the actual wedding about nine months later. Yeah, it was huge. Processions, carriages, lots of wearing of heavy crowns, meals,

• 12:13Speaker 05

  a whole panoply of things, people everywhere being dressed, absolutely exhausting. At the end of it, she is conducted to the marital chamber. And so is Peter. They're both divested and dressed in sort of nightwear. She is put into bed and then wonders what happens because Peter has disappeared at this point.

• 12:36Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 12:37Speaker 05

  And so she's sat there sitting in the bed thinking, oh, my mother told me various things were going to happen to me now. What is it and where is he? And eventually one of her servants came in and said, oh, Peter's having his supper. He'll be along in a bit. He arrived, climbed into bed, said, oh, wouldn't the servants think it funny if they could see us in bed together and lay down and went to sleep? So.

• 13:01Kate Lister?

  Oh, dear. Okay.

• 13:05Speaker 05

  Maybe he had no idea what to do, or didn't occur to him he was supposed to do anything. And Catherine turned over and went to sleep as well.

• 13:14Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 13:15Speaker 05

  That was the beginning.

• 13:16Kate Lister?

  This sounds like Marie Antoinette and her husband Louis. Did nobody had told them, did somebody tell them what to do in the end?

• 13:23Speaker 05

  Not for about seven years.

• 13:25Kate Lister?

  Oh my god, oh wow.

• 13:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I mean, similar to Marie Antoinette, yeah, indeed. They didn't. Elizabeth was very concerned, or she wanted Catherine to produce as soon as she could. Obviously, that's what she was there for. And she kept bullying the various people in charge of Catherine's household, because they lived in a separate wing of the various palaces they were in. And make them, make sure they embed together, don't let anybody distract them, keep them together. And she got concerned, maybe Catherine was riding the horse too much, because she was a very good horsewoman and fond. Maybe that was stopping her conceiving, strange idea, but anyway. But no one seemed to have told Peter what to do.

• 14:06Kate Lister?

  Oh dear.

• 14:07Speaker 05

  He enjoyed particularly playing with toy soldiers. I mean, he has been portrayed throughout history, and largely because of Catherine's memoirs, as a complete duff, but actually, he wasn't. I mean, he was a cultured young man, he loved music. He was very attached to his Lutheran upbringing. He found the whole Russian court system very hard to deal with, but he wasn't an idiot.

• 14:30Kate Lister?

  And they're so young.

• 14:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, absolutely, very young. And the longer it went on, this sort of not knowing what to do marriagely, but being pressed into something, the harder it became in a way.

• 14:42Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 05

  I just see that. But yes, at one point, he really got into playing with toy soldiers after they'd gone to bed together. And she would join in, because it made him happy. So they kept all this stuff under the bed, and would get it out and play with it. And then quickly hide it when anyone came in. So it is sweet, but it didn't lead to an heir.

• 15:00Kate Lister?

  No, playing with toy soldiers does not tend to lead to an heir.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Oh dear. So did they have any children then, or was this an unconsummated marriage? No, eventually they did. After about seven years of desperation, the woman who was in charge of their household finally told Elizabeth, actually, the reason they haven't had a child is they don't have sex. Oh, right. They don't know what to do. So at this point, Elizabeth decided they had to actually do something. So she managed to employ a young widow at the court to go and teach Peter what to do. He rather got into it, actually, once she did. Wait a minute, what, what did she do? What did she do?

• 15:48Speaker 05

  Well, she obviously explained what you had to do in bed. And she was an experienced widow, so he just probably lay there and thought, oh, right, this is very nice. Okay. But meanwhile Catherine had had her own sexual awakening. Oh, how'd she know? Because she'd actually fallen in love with a courtier called Sergei Saltikov, who was quite an experienced philanderer, probably. I think he's- How old was she? Oh, by now she was about twenty. This went on for a long time, this unconsummated bit. But yeah, in her sort of late teens, early twenties, she met Sergei. She fell quite madly in love, passionately, because it was the first time she'd actually experienced proper physical love. And he was a bit of a wrung, was he?

• 16:33Speaker 05

  He was ready to take advantage of a situation. Right. He could see she was there. He'd obviously thought she was beautiful. He liked her. But also, he was probably also being encouraged by people in the entourage to do this, because they were getting to a point of thinking, we've got to present Elizabeth with an heir. She won't inquire too closely how it turned up. Oh. So when she did, actually, she had two miscarriages before she had a successful pregnancy. That must be very hard to, no support from anybody. When she finally delivered a son, Paul, it could have been the son of either of them, because Peter had managed to consummate,

• 17:18Speaker 05

  married with her by then, after his lessons from the beautiful young widow. So no one is absolutely sure whether the man who subsequently became Paul the First-

• 17:29Speaker 05

  Was Peter's son, which he was, he believed himself to be, or Sergei's.

• 17:36Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Virginia after this short break.

• 17:44Speaker 06

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• 18:17Speaker 07

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

• 19:12Kate Lister?

  Is Peter Emperor by this point? Is this, the Empress is running around having affairs, or is it?

• 19:17Speaker 05

  No, he's still, this is still while Elizabeth is the Empress.

• 19:21Kate Lister?

  Right, okay.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  So there are Grand Duques, Grand Duchess. Peter is starting to get interested in other women.

• 19:27Kate Lister?

  Oh, is he? Okay, so it's like a whole world has opened up to him now.

• 19:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. He, he never went in for a great many of them, but he, he fell in love with a woman called Elizabeth Valanceova, who was also at the court. Though I think that started fairly soon after Paul was born.

• 19:44Kate Lister?

  Was it a happy marriage? It's difficult to say, isn't it? When they're arranged like this and it's all about political alliances and especially looking back at this distance, but did they get on? Were they happy together?

• 19:57Speaker 05

  To begin with, they did to some extent because it was them against the power structures. The older people, so they had the young court, as it was called, of the grand youth and the grand duchess, the two of them, and all their entourage. So in the sense of they're having that separate establishment and constantly feeling under threat from Elizabeth and the all the power play going on. They were allies.

• 20:23Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 20:24Speaker 05

  At least to begin with, and they sort of got on. Peter had hoped Catherine would be more of an ally than she turned out to be because she was determined she wasn't going to suffer from his inadequacies. So she could see pretty fairly early on that he wasn't going to be a brilliant occupier of the throne himself without a lot of propping up. So she didn't mind the idea of propping him up, but she wasn't going to let him wreck the whole enterprise. So she was building up her own power circle, her own circle of allies.

• 20:56Kate Lister?

  She's smart, isn't she?

• 20:57Speaker 05

  She's very smart. She's smarter than him, which he's aware of. So that doesn't help.

• 21:03Kate Lister?

  So she's not supposed to have ended up being the Empress of Russia then, like.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Absolutely not, no.

• 21:08Kate Lister?

  How did this happen then?

• 21:10Speaker 05

  Well, sort of gradually. I mean, the British played their part in the sense that.

• 21:15Kate Lister?

  Of course we did. Sorry about that, everyone.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  She became very close to the British ambassador, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who in a way was her political mentor.

• 21:26Kate Lister?

  Is he nice? Do we like him or is he a boo character?

• 21:29Speaker 05

  We like him. On the whole, we like him. Yeah. He became very influential after the birth of Paul. I mean, for one thing, I mean, several things came into play. Clearly after the birth of her son, Catherine had a very hard time. She had probably postnatal depression, which she certainly was depressed. Yeah.

• 21:47Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow.

• 21:47Speaker 05

  It was increased by the fact she was left on her own pretty much. The child was taken away and raised by Elizabeth.

• 21:53Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 21:54Speaker 05

  Because she saw him as as a future emperor, right from the moment he was born. So she was going to raise him.

• 21:58Kate Lister?

  I'm liking Elizabeth less and less in this story.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's not an easy character by any means. Catherine learnt quite a lot from her, but even so. And so her son was taken away, she was left. Feeling ill, depressed, and she spent some time, a few months, more or less, holed up in her apartments, thinking, I'm not going to come out until I feel all right. She read a lot, she thought a lot, and her husband, I mean, having succeeded in getting this child, he wasn't very interested in her after that, he was off playing on his own, doing. Playing with his tin soldiers with other women. Yeah, and playing with real soldiers, he as well, he liked doing drill and that kind of stuff. Oh, did he, right.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, wearing a uniform. So he was off doing other stuff, even Sergei Saltikov wasn't being very attentive, he'd also sort of disappeared. So Catherine was after her own devices. She did a lot of self-education at that point and realised if she was going to make her way in this strange world of Russia, she had to do it on her own. And at that point, she began to be befriended by Sir Charles, the British ambassador, who taught her a lot about statecraft and how to prepare. But together they talked about her being empress. Really?

• 23:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, and initially it was thought of, well, that they knew it would be a very unstable time once Elizabeth died, because Peter the Great had changed how the rules of succession worked. It was up to the existing Tsar to choose the new one. So they knew it was going to be possibly unstable. Elizabeth had designated Peter as her heir, but there were all kinds of machinations going on, and if he turned out to be completely inadequate, anything could happen. So initially Catherine, with Sir Charles's help, envisaged him taking over, but her being a very important supporter in the background

• 23:55Speaker 05

  and pulling in various strings of influence and so on. As it became clear that that might not happen, they began to think, well, perhaps you could be the empress. So, so it really began in those years.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  And gradually she built up all sorts of influences in different circles. And this took place over, over several years. I mean, Yeah. We're talking more than a decade because Oh, it's a long game, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. It was in seventeen sixty one that Elizabeth finally died, at which time the young Paul was eight years old or so. So did Peter ever get a crack at this? Or was he just? Yeah, he got about six months. Right. So as soon as Elizabeth died, it all actually appeared to be quite automatic. He did become the Tsar. He just took over. He then had a disastrous six months. Because he had no, unlike Catherine, he, he got very little political instinct.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  He knew what he wanted, but he couldn't let things happen diplomatically. He had to do it straight away. So for instance, he always hated the Orthodox Church. He decided they were not going to be like that anymore. The, the priests would have to shave their beards off. And they'd all have to do what he said. Peter. And this weren't going to do that. It was in the middle of, well, towards the end of the Seven Years' War. With Prussia, he capitulated because he was very fond of Prussia and of Frederick the Great. So he gave away vast tracts of Russian territory and told the army to stop fighting. Well, that didn't go down very well either, as you can imagine. So No. He kind of messed things up pretty fast. Okay. In that six months. But the further complication, by getting fairly speedily through this period,

• 25:33Speaker 05

  we have missed out one lover who was of Catherine's, who was Stanislav Poniatowski, a young Polish man, friend of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, who also played a part in her education by helping her become more cultured in a way. He was a very elegant, educated young man. Artistic type? Yeah, he expanded her experience in various ways and they, and they were, yeah. And, and they also had a child, a daughter. It's all completely hidden. Though eventually. Peter found out about it, but it was managed by his lover, Elizabeth Vlachosova, that they should have a foursome and all get along terribly well.

• 26:14Kate Lister?

  And did they?

• 26:15Speaker 05

  They did for a bit, yeah.

• 26:16Kate Lister?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:17Speaker 05

  There was also fear that he might suddenly turn and one didn't want him to know too much. And eventually Stanislas had to go back to Poland. But the complicating factor in seventeen sixty one, when Elizabeth died, was that various of Catherine's supporters thought she might stage a coup immediately, but she couldn't because she was five months pregnant.

• 26:38Kate Lister?

  Damn it. Well done Catherine.

• 26:39Speaker 05

  By Grigori Alov, yeah. So she was extraordinary. She spent hours praying alongside Elizabeth's dead body, wearing voluminous clothes, so nobody noticed anything. And she managed to have, a few months later, she had a son who was farmed out to people who looked after him. Amazing, really, really impressive.

• 27:00Kate Lister?

  She's there crying and weeping and wailing at the grave of this woman.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  Oh, she's very dignified. She's very, yeah, exactly, while she's pregnant with.

• 27:09Kate Lister?

  I love that. So Peter gets his go at being a czar. He's not great at it at all.

• 27:15Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 27:16Kate Lister?

  Does she stage a coup? Like, once she's had the baby, she had a bit of maternity leave, now I'm ready for a coup.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, pretty much, that's right. And the lover she now has, Grigori Alov, has four brothers who are all in various guards regiments. They're pivotal to this whole thing because they can bring the guards regiments, who are fundamental in St Petersburg, along with them.

• 27:40Kate Lister?

  Oh, look at that.

• 27:41Speaker 05

  And then there are other circles of courtiers and people who know what's going on. And so an expectation is arising that there will be a coup. Another thing Catherine's done throughout her time is concentrate on good PR. That's where Peter was rubbish. So even this thing of mourning the late Empress Elizabeth, the people liked that. She did it in the right way. He was having a party straight away practically, so.

• 28:08Kate Lister?

  Is Catherine's choice of lovers, do you think this is politically motivated? I mean, it helps if you happen to be knocking off a guy whose brothers happen to be in key positions in the army.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't think it's in, well, I think it's very mixed. It's very hard to say, actually. She definitely, well, the appealing thing is about Catherine, and she genuinely falls in love repeatedly.

• 28:30Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 28:31Speaker 05

  So the first thing is that she sees some young man and she's attracted and then she falls for them.

• 28:36Kate Lister?

  In there.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  The political element is partly other people. It'd be people in the background thinking, how can we help her stage a coup? She could do with support from the guards. Oh, look at these brothers. How about that?

• 28:49Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 05

  Oh, look, why don't we just arrange for him to be walking along some point when she's coming? And suggest to him, bow nicely. So.

• 28:58Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  I think sometimes, I can see it throughout the course of her relationships. There is manipulation from outside going on.

• 29:06Kate Lister?

  So it's not like she's a mercenary. It's not like she's like, you know, giving out sexual favors to, you know, get army support. That's just a nice coincidence.

• 29:15Speaker 05

  I think to her it can seem like that, or it could begin as, I like this man. Oh, and it could be useful as well. So that is certainly there, but I don't think she wouldn't wake up one morning and think, no, I need someone in the army who am I going to get?

• 29:29Kate Lister?

  Okay, yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  So this coup was planned, but then it had to be brought forward because one of her supporters was arrested and they feared he might speak under torture, probably. So they, she was actually in bed on her own, I believe, at one of the summer palaces when one of the Olaf brothers arrives and says, get dressed, we've got to do it now.

• 29:53Kate Lister?

  This is a proper coup. This is not, Peter, just go over there for a bit and I'll consolidate more and more power. And he's like a proxy ruler. This is like a stayed or planned, we're going to get him out of the way.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:05Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 30:06Speaker 05

  We just didn't quite know when. But yes, when it was done, they were ready to go. So she's taken in a carriage into St Petersburg. A hair's done on the way that they meet their hairdresser and he gets in the carriage and sorts her out on the way.

• 30:21Kate Lister?

  Yes, I like that. Good touch.

• 30:23Speaker 05

  And then she arrives in the city, guards regiments are lined up, ready to greet her. So are the church dignitaries. This is organised. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And so she's blessed and it's a largely bloodless coup. Did Peter know it happened? Where's he? He is out at one of the other summer palaces with his lover and his entourage, having fun. Messages come through. She's in St Petersburg, your wife, we think she might be staging a coup. Oh, sorry, she's not doing that. Oh, she'll be fine. Then he's, they decide to go off to the palace she's supposed to be in. And Peter Hoffmann plays here to have a look for her. Allegedly, he goes into the house, looks under the bed in the wardrobe, thinks perhaps she's playing some funny game.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  But she's not there. And eventually it dawns on him it's true. And he tries to rally support by the, some troops who are faithful to him. But he, it doesn't succeed. And he, they get into a galley and go off and try to dock at Kronstadt. And they're told, no, no, you can't come. But I'm the czar. Never heard of your mate. Yes, or worse, being arrested and, and brought along in ignominy and his sword removed. And there he is, he is told to abdicate. Does she kill him? Does he, or does he? No, oh, he doesn't, not immediately. And it's, she would never accept responsibility that she might have done or been involved.

• 31:47Speaker 05

  But initially, he is taken off and held in a secure prison. Wow. With guards. And he's told he can have his violin. He'd like to have his mistress, but that's not allowed. It's one of the Alaf brothers who's been deputed to be in charge of him. There's some kind of brawl. He dies and Catherine is informed about it. The official version is he died of a severe attack of hemorrhoids. I don't know. Okay. That would work. Okay. But in fact, when he is displayed in death for his funeral, the sort of scarf round his neck to cover up probable strangulation. So something happened.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  And the Alaf brother involved wrote a note to Catherine, which was discovered much after she died. Do you know, Virginia, I don't think it was hemorrhoids. You know, you might write about that.

• 32:46Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 32:47Speaker 05

  But it never was determined and never has been the extent of Catherine's involvement. It's unlikely, I think, that she said, kill him.

• 32:57Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 32:58Speaker 05

  She didn't say, don't kill him. And he would have been a danger, not himself necessarily, but a focal point for opposition. So it was safer with him out of the way.

• 33:09Kate Lister?

  Yeah. I'll be back with Virginia after this short break.

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• 33:51Speaker 07

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• 34:47Kate Lister?

  Why is she called Catherine the Great? I mean, I was just, I guess this depends on who you ask, because certainly Peter wouldn't have called her Catherine the Great. But so she's come to power, Peter has tragically died of hemorrhoids, it's awful.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Sounds really sad, yes.

• 35:04Kate Lister?

  It seems like Russia was ready for this and wanted this. So was she, was everything as good as they thought it was gonna be?

• 35:12Speaker 05

  In certain respects, it was certainly better.

• 35:15Kate Lister?

  It was pretty bad though, wasn't it?

• 35:17Speaker 05

  It was pretty bad. It wasn't necessarily better for those at the very lowest end of society, which is most of them.

• 35:24Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 05

  It was better for courtiers, it was better for what we might call civil servants, it was better for, in certain respects, for the people with land. It was a more civilized era than what had gone before. And there were certain things didn't happen. She didn't like torture to be used in interrogations or in general. There was a lot less of it than before. There wasn't much capital punishment. There was a bit, but not a lot.

• 35:53Kate Lister?

  That's good.

• 35:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. There was more education, especially for girls.

• 35:57Kate Lister?

  Hurrah Catherine, well done. Okay, our guys are sounding good.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, there was tolerance of other religions, but that went hand in hand with acquiring more land and more subjects. But provided they were loyal to her and to the empire, they could largely live the way they wanted. So she didn't call herself great. I mean, it was a title bestowed on her by history. And when she wrote her own sort of epitaph fancifully, she just called herself, here, here lies Catherine the Second, who did her best for Russia.

• 36:33Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's quite modest.

• 36:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, she she was a strange mixture. Part of her was modest. She wanted to do a good job. She she did believe in the Enlightenment ideals of education, culture, art, categorization, learning things. She loved to educate herself and other people. She was horrified about the extent of the lack of knowledge in Russia. But but there are lovely stories of her when she first came to power. They're having a meeting of her various dignitaries and saying, well, I want a map of what territory we have. A map. We haven't got one of those. Well, go and get one.

• 37:11Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  They had to go out to the Academy of Sciences and get a map. And one of her major works was to bring together or attempt to bring together all the disparate laws and conventions and actually have a proper system of law. So these are the aspects in which she is great.

• 37:29Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 37:29Speaker 05

  She is civilizing in a way that subsequent generations might find more difficult. Yeah, post-colonialism and what kind of thing. And it's, she is a contested, difficult character. But the idea of expansion of Russian spheres of influence, of pushing back against Europe, but being part of it. She's very competitive, but she hated to be condescended to reasonably enough by British ambassadors and so on.

• 37:59Kate Lister?

  Did she ever get married again?

• 38:00Speaker 05

  It's possible that she married her great lover, Pachomkin, secretly. But she never married officially in any way, because rather like our Elizabeth the first, she didn't want to compromise her own power by ceding it.

• 38:17Kate Lister?

  But she did fall in, I mean, she's doing amazing things on the political stage, slightly.

• 38:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:23Kate Lister?

  Power grabby.

• 38:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:25Kate Lister?

  But she's also falling in love an awful lot.

• 38:29Speaker 05

  Yes, that's what's interesting, I think. It's this need for love, and it's not just sex by any means.

• 38:37Kate Lister?

  And who was, what did you say his name was? It began with P there. You said it, the love of her life.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, Patyomkin.

• 38:43Kate Lister?

  Patyomkin. Who was he?

• 38:44Speaker 05

  He was another guards officer. He'd first appeared in her life at her accession when he was, he appeared and gave her his sword pommel, but that.

• 38:56Kate Lister?

  That'll do it.

• 38:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. She didn't fall for him then, but I think maybe he imprinted his self on her mind. He was, he was a stormy character. He was very devout. One of the ways he got her interest was that when she tried to say, come to court and be with me, I can't, I'm in a monastery, I'm going to be a monk. And partly he knew how to play her. Part of it was sincere, I think. But he decided, okay, give up being a monk and he would go off and be Catherine's lover instead. So, but he was, unlike many of her younger, later lovers, he was also very ambitious and very clever. He did want to share her power, which she found very difficult. And they had a very stormy relationship. She fell madly in love with him,

• 39:40Speaker 05

  more than with any of her previous ones. But now she'd ended the relationship with Alorf, and she had had a rather insignificant beautiful young man for eighteen months, and she didn't know quite what she'd done that for, really. But Patyomkin was serious and deep, and they had huge rows. People used to hear lots of doors slamming and that kind of thing.

• 40:01Kate Lister?

  It would have been so difficult, because if you're the king or the emperor, you're allowed to have mistresses, that's just part of the deal. But because of the patriarch and because women were restricted to thrones, they had, the mistresses could never wield hard power. They couldn't go on to war councils and they couldn't pass laws. They had a softer power. But with Catherine the Great, these men.

• 40:23Kate Lister?

  They could perhaps wield a much more hard power.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  Well, they certainly wanted to. I think that's where I'd say, I think they were called upon to play the mistress role. And later, the younger men actually did that. Pachomkin wasn't going to be a mistress.

• 40:41Kate Lister?

  No.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  He really couldn't cope with that idea. But conversely, Catherine was quite clear, she was the empress. And when she said, okay, go now, I've got work to do, she tried to treat him like a royal mistress.

• 40:53Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  And ultimately, what they had to do was find a power base for him that would enable him to work closely with her but not be in competition. So he became her envoy to far-flung parts of the empire. He was involved in conquering territory.

• 41:12Kate Lister?

  Did he, they stay together for the rest of her life?

• 41:15Speaker 05

  They were always together in one sense. He was the closest person to her. But he was often at a great geographical distance, building up her empire for her elsewhere and being given titles, honours himself.

• 41:31Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  He took other women for sure. And he, what he tried to do to make her sexual life work, but still himself be in it while not completely in it, was he sort of procured her first lot of lovers.

• 41:48Kate Lister?

  Well, now that's an interesting turn of events.

• 41:50Speaker 05

  So he kept the power, but also made sure she was happy.

• 41:54Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 41:55Speaker 05

  So certainly the first lover that she had after Pachomkin, Zabodorsky, was someone he chose. And he was almost like their, in some kind of weird ways, like their son, because he's younger than both of them. But he fulfilled the role of Catherine's secretary and lover, but under Pachomkin's kind of command.

• 42:13Kate Lister?

  So he's gonna choose them kinda young, dumb, full of cum and stupid, right?

• 42:17Speaker 05

  Not necessarily dumb, but well, biddable.

• 42:21Kate Lister?

  Like, that's what Madame Pompadour did when she didn't wanna have sex with Louis anymore, wasn't she? She, she found young, kinda silly girls.

• 42:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, ones she could feel in control of and not threatened by.

• 42:31Kate Lister?

  Ah.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  So that was very much Pachomkin's idea.

• 42:35Kate Lister?

  Interesting.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  But they had to be acceptable to Catherine, so they had to not be completely dumb. What they had to be was teachable, because the other thing about her was she loved educating. So to have a young man, handsome, he could do things in bed, we don't know about that. That's kept quiet, we just have to imagine. But they also had to be capable, but they also had to be prepared to learn, to enjoy with her things like her art collection. Where part of her day would be walking around her newly acquired artworks in the galleries she'd had designed and looking at them, or, or going through the covers and covers of little cameos,

• 43:17Speaker 05

  beautifully crafted little gems with pictures of gods and goddesses and classical mythology of them. And she'd love to pore over these in the afternoon alongside one of her young lovers.

• 43:30Kate Lister?

  Does she also have erotic furniture? I've heard that.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  Uh, yes, she did, there was an exhibition at Saskia Silo a few years ago where it was all collected. We don't know what she used them for erotically, but yeah, she liked to have things, interesting things around her.

• 43:47Kate Lister?

  Yeah, and she's taken much younger lovers into her sixties, this lady.

• 43:53Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely, yes, and one of them in particular, she was absolutely devoted to a young man, man called Alexander Lanskoy, who fulfilled all her desires in that he was young. Very teachable, very adoring of her. And she thought every time, like a young girl, each new relationship, she thought this is the one, this is going to last forever. She certainly thought it with Alexander Lanzskoy. He died young of diphtheria and she was completely devastated. Because normally after each relationship ended, there'd be one waiting in the wings and she'd move on. But she couldn't move on for six months after Lanzskoy. She was just flattened. And Paul

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Pachomkin had to be summoned from wherever he was, conquering new bits of empire, to come and console her and look after her and get her through.

• 44:45Kate Lister?

  She really did love them, didn't she?

• 44:47Speaker 05

  Yes, she did. Yeah. And some of the stories are very sad in that as she grew older, the young men would be in it for what they could get out of it. There'd be families pushing forward a young man. She would fall for them. And there was one called Rimsky-Korsakov, ancestor of the composer, who had an affair with one of her maids, with the Countess Bruce. And there's another who, towards the end of his relationship with Catherine, finally admitted he was actually going to marry one of her entourage. And at first, she's devastated. And then she quickly says, well, all right, you need to go. But here's a palace who to live in, here's lots of money,

• 45:29Speaker 05

  here's lots of serfs. So no wonder their families pushed them forward because they came out of it pretty well. So she was unfailingly generous.

• 45:39Kate Lister?

  I could honestly talk to you about this one all day, but I'm not allowed to. But one thing I've got to ask you, we have to, you must be so sick of this question by now, can we talk about how Catherine died?

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Yes, she died of a stroke.

• 45:52Kate Lister?

  There we go, everybody. She died of a stroke. That's what happened.

• 45:56Speaker 05

  There were no horses involved.

• 45:57Kate Lister?

  What is that story?

• 46:00Speaker 05

  Oh, it's terribly, it has, it's the kind of story that unfortunately, when you hear it once, you never forget, even though you know it's not the case.

• 46:08Kate Lister?

  I think that, like, when you hear that, like, it's so ridic, she died having sex with a horse. That's the story.

• 46:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, the story is that the horse was held up in some kind of harness above her to make it possible, and the harness collapsed. But somebody made it up.

• 46:24Kate Lister?

  Do we know who made it? And how long that rumour's been going around for?

• 46:28Speaker 05

  Been going around since very soon after her death. I think it probably comes back to old, good old fashioned misogyny. It was, women can't live like this. How dare she get away with it? So they had to come up with some kind of story to discredit her, but it's very hard to forget.

• 46:45Kate Lister?

  You don't get powerful women without some kind of nonsense being spoken about them somewhere.

• 46:49Speaker 05

  No, but actually her death is very touching, her actual death. She'd, by then, Pachomkin had died. So she was a bit of a shadow of her former self without him. He died five years before her. She had a young lover, but Zuborov, he took advantage of her. He was the only one who really did that, had his own separate sort of court. And began to leak power away from her, at least within the court. But yes, she, she got up in the morning, she went off, got up early as usual, made her own coffee so as not to disturb anybody. Went to the W C, wherever they had her little bathroom.

• 47:26Speaker 05

  And then, was there a long time? And one of her maid servants thought, this is a bit odd what's going on, tried to open the door and she couldn't because she'd fallen and was wedged against the door. So they, they had to get help to get her out. So she'd had a stroke.

• 47:39Kate Lister?

  Hmm.

• 47:40Speaker 05

  Very sad.

• 47:41Kate Lister?

  No horses involved.

• 47:43Speaker 05

  No horses, purely natural causes, no horses. Glad to know.

• 47:47Kate Lister?

  As someone that studies this woman and someone that, that wanted to try and push through the myths, the obvious myths, that like, like the horse that we get from. As a final question then, what is it that you would like people to know about Catherine the Great?

• 48:03Speaker 05

  I think her own epitaph, the fact that she saw herself as a servant of Russia. The fact that she was a great civilizing influence. She was a friend of Voltaire, of Diderot, the French Enlightenment philosophers. She believed in doing her best. We might now see some of that as misguided and yes, she had appetites. But that she was serious, also really good company.

• 48:33Kate Lister?

  Oh, I love that.

• 48:34Speaker 05

  With her little smile, people who spent time with her often loved it. Her courtiers, her, her close servants loved her. And there's a lovely portrait of her by Bara Vikorsky where she's just wearing rather homely, grandmotherly clothes, a, a long coat where she walked around her gardens with her greyhounds. And they're massive gardens, obviously, but. So alongside the Empress, the powerful woman, there's this very human figure.

• 49:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  Who likes to have friends and who like to work hard.

• 49:07Kate Lister?

  Virginia, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. You have been marvellous.

• 49:14Speaker 05

  My pleasure. Oh, thank you, Kate. It's been very nice to talk to you. They're always good to talk about Catherine.

• 49:20Kate Lister?

  What a legend.

• 49:23Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Virginia for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. If you would like us to explore a subject or if you just fancy saying hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. We have got loads of Queenian empressy sex this month, including Queen Victoria and Marie Antoinette. And watch out for an upcoming episode on Cleopatra and another one on Elizabeth the First. Oh, we do spoil you, don't we? This podcast was edited and produced by Sophie G and the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheet, history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit.