Sentencing His Son to Death

When Peter the Great's son and heir was on trial for treason, the emperor instructed the jury to treat him as they would any other man. If he were to be convicted, the sentence would be death. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250840578/anatomyalovestoryand its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story' https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250861016/immortalityalovestory See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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• 0:00Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:35Dana Schwartz?

  Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Listener discretion advised. The year is 1718, and the Russian jurists are about to hand down their verdict. The charge is incredibly serious: treason against the Tsar, Peter the Great, punishable by death. Some of the members of the jury are sweating, but they're all pretending not to. They've been instructed that they should treat the accused in exactly the same way that they would treat any man who comes before them. They should not play nice or go gentle on him.

• 1:17Dana Schwartz?

  They've been promised that they won't be punished, even if they find him guilty. But the jury has reason to be a little anxious about the situation, because the accused, the man standing trial for treason against the Tsar of Russia, is the Tsarevich, the son of the Tsar. And so, the jury handed in their verdict. Tsarevich Alexei, 28 years old, the heir to the Russian throne, the only one of Peter's many children who had survived to adulthood, was guilty. Everyone in the courtroom knew what that meant: a sentence of death.

• 2:02Dana Schwartz?

  The jurors all prayed that the emperor would not rescind his promise and decide to kill them after all. But they also knew that the ultimate fate of Alexei did not rest with them. Peter the Great would have to sign off on any punishment himself. If he wanted his own son and heir killed, then he would have to approve it with his own hand. Surely, some in the room believed, he would never approve it. Yes, Peter and Alexei had had their struggles. The boy was weak, the son of Peter's unloved first wife.

• 2:42Dana Schwartz?

  Alexei was an endless chooser of flight over fight, too eager to voluntarily abdicate his place in the succession. But Peter had also given him chance after chance before. Alexei was his own flesh and blood after all. Surely Peter would not allow that flesh and blood torn tortuously apart on his watch. But then again, Peter the Great didn't get that nickname for nothing. Great and terrible are terribly close words when we speak of Russian monarchs. And if we've learned one thing over the course of this podcast, it's that when it comes

• 3:27Dana Schwartz?

  to royal families, the royal wins out over the family with chilling frequency. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The emperor, who would later be known as Peter the Great, came to the throne as Tsar Peter I in 1682, when he was only 10 years old. He was co-ruler with his older half-brother Ivan V. But Ivan was at least partially paralyzed, blind, and likely cognitively impaired. They were both basically dominated by Peter's older half-sister Sofia, who was regent.

• 4:13Dana Schwartz?

  All this meant that even though Peter was officially czar, he didn't grow up in the palace. He hung out with his mother, who was more open to Western influence than the Russian monarchs. In 1689, when Peter was seventeen, his mother arranged his marriage to a woman named Eudoxia Lupkina. Peter never seemed to love his wife, but one year later, on February 28, 1690, their son and heir, Alexei Petrovich, was born. Peter set off fireworks in celebration. Then, in 1696, Peter's half-brother Ivan died, leaving Peter as sole czar of Russia.

• 4:57Dana Schwartz?

  Naturally, he had Sofia, the former regent, banished to a convent, which was the Russian ruler's common solution for unwanted sisters, wives, and generally pesky women. Peter was known for a ton of innovations in Russia that we don't have the time to list in full. But he established the Empire of Russia, so he was the first Russian ruler to be not only czar, but also emperor. He developed Russia's military might, and he was considered a modernizing and westernizing force. He modernized and even designed the Russian written alphabet, and in 1702,

• 5:41Dana Schwartz?

  established the first Russian newspaper. He also founded the city of Saint Petersburg and moved the capital there from Moscow. He was a strange man. I can only give you some of the strangest highlights. Though, standing at an almost unheard-of six foot seven, he preferred to live in little houses with small ceilings called domiki.

• 6:08Dana Schwartz?

  His Cabinet of Curiosities was famous for its bizarre and grotesque collection of human and animal fetuses with birth defects. He once held a grand event known as "The Most Drunken Sninod of Fools and Jesters." In an effort to force Russian men to accord with the shaven-faced fashion of Europe, he instituted a beard tax on any Russian who wore a beard. If you paid it, you received a coin engraved with an actual image of a beard and mustache to prove that your style was allowed. A hipster mustache-loving dream.

• 6:51Dana Schwartz?

  Not only are mustaches special, they're also exclusive. He had two wives. First was Eudoxia, whom he was never wild about. In 1698, after nearly ten years of marriage, he had her banished to surprise a convent. Then Peter officially married his second wife, Catherine I, in 1707. Of course, Peter also had many mistresses, including the famous British actress of Drury Lane, Letitia Cross. Between his two wives, Peter had fifteen legitimate children, although only three of them survived to adulthood.

• 7:35Dana Schwartz?

  But even when you look at that claim with modern eyes, it's heartbreakingly short-term. Only one child by Catherine I, Elizaveta Petrovna, lived past her twenties. It is hard to imagine the grief of Catherine, who had twelve babies and watched ten of them die as infants or as very young children.

• 8:01Dana Schwartz?

  And it is hard to imagine what Peter the Great must have been thinking in autumn of 1715, when he was contemplating his heirs for the Russian throne. He had only one living son at this point, Saravich Alexei, the daughter of Eudoxia. Four other sons had died as infants. Alexei and his father had always had a strained relationship. After setting off fireworks and celebrations for little Alexei's birth, Peter largely lost interest in the boy. After all, he was the son of Peter's unloved first wife, Eudoxia. When Alexei was eight, his father sent his mother off to a convent,

• 8:46Dana Schwartz?

  wrenching him away from her. Alexei was a somewhat sickly boy, cowardly and uninterested in military action. Not qualities that particularly excited Peter about an heir. Alexei was so afraid of his father that he once shot himself in the hand to avoid having to see him. Classic Alexei, though, he missed, burning himself badly, and then he lied to his father that it was an accident. He wrote that he, quote, "would rather be a galley slave or have a burning fever than have to go to see a Russian ship launched." His mother-in-law said that,

• 9:31Dana Schwartz?

  quote, "it is quite useless for his father to force him to attend to military matters, as he would rather have a rosary than a pistol in his hand." In other words, in his father's eyes, he was just kind of a bummer. But Peter, nonetheless, wanted his son to become a man he could trust as his successor. Starting when Alexei was 12, Peter took the boy along with him on various military sieges as preparation for his future as a military leader. When Alexei was seventeen, Peter put him in charge of the defense of Moscow. But Alexei never took an interest in his father's warring.

• 10:16Dana Schwartz?

  He was meek. He accepted Peter's idea that he marry a German princess, Charlotte, in seventeen eleven, when he was twenty-one and she seventeen. Alexei doted on their daughter Natalia, but he drank so often and so much that he largely ignored his wife Charlotte, leaving her to a bedroom where the rain came through the roof in a storm. Peter had to reprimand his son to take some care of his wife. So by seventeen fifteen, it was clear to Peter that his son Alexei was a weak candidate to be his heir to the empire.

• 11:01Dana Schwartz?

  But in the autumn of seventeen fifteen, there was reason to think that Peter's outlook might change. Two reasons, in fact, because there were not one, but two heavily pregnant women in Russian court. On October twenty-third seventeen fifteen, Alexei's wife Charlotte gave birth to their second child, a boy. He was named Peter Alexovich. And one week after that, on November ninth seventeen fifteen, Peter the Great's wife Catherine also gave birth to a son, Peter Petrovich.

• 11:42Dana Schwartz?

  The baby survived his first days, and then weeks, and then months of life. Peter wrote, "God has sent me a new recruit." So by the time seventeen sixteen dawned, Peter the Great found himself in a very different position than he had been at the beginning of seventeen fifteen. There were now two little Peters in Russia, both legitimate heirs to his throne, which meant that suddenly, when it came to the Russian line of succession, Peter the Great had other options.

• 12:20Dana Schwartz?

  The story of what happened next between Peter the Great and his oldest surviving son Alexei can be told in a set of fantastic letters that we still have between father and son. The whole story is there. Alexei’s wife, Charlotte, died 10 days after giving birth to Alexei’s son. On her funeral day, Peter the Great gave his son a letter. “A declaration to my son,” it read. “You, my son, reject all means of making yourself capable of governing well after me. I say your incapacity is voluntary, because you cannot excuse yourself with want

• 13:04Dana Schwartz?

  of natural parts and strength of body, as if God had not given you sufficient share of either. And though your constitution is none the strongest, yet it cannot be said that it is altogether weak.” Peter articulated a philosophy of governing and his personal disappointment in his son. He articulated his sadness that his son didn’t care about war, and described his belief that the Russian people would follow a leader like Alexei into forgetting about the importance of war. Peter said that physical sickness has nothing to do with a sovereign’s inclination toward

• 13:44Dana Schwartz?

  or interest in war, and gave the example of his even sicker brother Ivan the Fifth, who was nonetheless interested in war, unlike Alexei. The letter ends, “I am a man, and consequently, I must die.” Peter wonders if Alexei is up to the succession, and expresses that he is not, and offers him a bit more time to see if he can rise to the occasion. If he doesn’t, Peter says then, “I will deprive you of the succession, as one may cut off a useless member.” Harsh words, especially to get on the day of your wife’s funeral.

• 14:26Dana Schwartz?

  But to me, the most important and interesting part in the letter comes after, also the most fateful and tragic. “Do not fancy that. I only write this,” Peter said, “to terrify you.”

• 14:44Dana Schwartz?

  To me, it's clear that Peter's great disappointment with his son is all about desire. He just wants his son to want the throne. "Don't want to be disinherited," Peter is saying. "If you want to rule, if you want to be interested in war, that is enough." And the tragedy is that Peter the Great and his son Alexei really were, in this, ship's passing in the night. It's like they simply could not hear each other. If what Peter cared about most was Alexei wanting the throne, then the last thing Alexei

• 15:25Dana Schwartz?

  should have done was accept the threat of his removal from the line of succession. Alexei went running to his advisers, and on their counsel, he wrote back to his father, saying that if you "will deprive me of the succession to the crown of Russia by reason of my incapacity, your will be done. I even most urgently beg it of you." It's like these two men just cannot see each other. It's not an incapacity that Peter hates in his son. He gives the positive example of his actually much weaker and more incapacitated brother.

• 16:05Dana Schwartz?

  It's that very proclivity to accept meekness and powerlessness. And that was exactly what the ever-disappointing Alexei did. In the meantime, Peter was getting sick, and Alexei was basically just hoping to outlive his father and have this whole affair be over. But de-escalation is not a thing in the Russian court. Peter writes back to Alexei, escalating. "Accept the emperorship," says Peter, "or else become a monk."

• 16:40Dana Schwartz?

  Peter hopes that threats will make Alexei finally snap and want power. But he doesn't see his son just as his son does not see him. All threats do is make the boy even meager. "I will embrace the monastical state and desire your gracious consent to it," Alexei writes back to Peter. It really is kind of hard to avoid the conclusion that Alexei really would have been a kind of weak ruler who didn't really want to rule. But at this point, Peter is getting really angry at his weak son, and Alexei is getting pretty afraid of his father.

• 17:25Dana Schwartz?

  He really doesn't seem to want the throne. The one thing he actually seems to want is to be with his mistress, a woman named Aphrosina. So in consultation with his advisors, Alexei decides to do something really foolish. He runs away. He dresses his mistress as a boy page, and they get out of Dodge. The pair land in Vienna, and Alexei asks his brother-in-law, Emperor Charles VI, to conceal him there.

• 18:01Dana Schwartz?

  It really wasn't the most intelligent move. He kept on doing exactly the things that would most disappoint his father, and a disappointed Peter was soon an enraged one. Of course, the situation couldn't last long. Though Charles VI did agree to let Alexei hide at court, the disguise started failing pretty shortly thereafter. Aphrosina was pregnant, so her disguise as a boy page fell apart.

• 18:34Dana Schwartz?

  Peter found out that Vienna was hiding his son, and now the Russian and the Viennese emperors are both realizing that this could escalate to an international crisis. So everyone had to proceed with delicacy. Peter sent an emissary named Tolstoy, not the famous writer, to get Alexei back by any means, including outright duplicity if necessary. Naturally, Peter continued to threaten Alexei via letter. Not that his strategy of threats ever worked. He wrote, quote, "If you return, I will love you better than ever. But if you refuse, then I declare you traitor,

• 19:18Dana Schwartz?

  and I assure you I will find the means to use you as such." Again, threats never worked with Alexei. But the key was the girl, the mistress that he loved, because Alexei did truly love her. "All he wants," Alexei told Tolstoy, "is to get to marry Afresina and go live in a country cottage together with her." Would his father agree to that? It's a nice dream, but Alexei had noble blood running through his veins. As any listener of this podcast might already know, retiring to a cute cabin with a wife that you love

• 20:01Dana Schwartz?

  is not really a likely option for an heir to a throne. Peter the Great promised that Alexei could marry the mistress. Alexei was not smart enough not to believe him. In an earlier letter to his son, Peter had quoted the Bible. King David said, "All men are liars." This kid did not have the strategic mind he would have needed to find a way out of his predicament. He could not out-strategize his father. And so Alexei agreed to go back to Russia. The historian Robert K. Massey, one of the most helpful sources for this episode,

• 20:44Dana Schwartz?

  quotes the response to Alexei's choice. Quote, "He will have a coffin instead of a wedding."

• 20:53Dana Schwartz?

  In February 1718, the Kremlin was full, as Alexei publicly confessed to running away to Europe, and he renounced his claim to the throne. Peter accepted, pardoning his son on condition that Alexei share all of his co-conspirators. It was the beginning of a brutal, bloody retribution that Peter enacted on seemingly everyone except Alexei at first. Peter found his ex-wife, Eudoxia, who was living in a monastery, but not as a nun. Her lover was tortured. Her brother was killed, along with four others condemned to death

• 21:36Dana Schwartz?

  for having helped Alexei flee to Europe. And Alexei seemingly didn't care. As the people who helped him were investigated, tortured, or killed, all he seemed to want to do was marry Afressina, who, by the way, he wasn't physically with. Due to her pregnancy, he did not bring her back to Russia with him upon his return from Europe. But he wrote her loving, longing letters, desperate for her in their separation. Well, she kind of isn't writing that sort of letter back. Secretaries write her letters back to him. Once, she adds and asks for caviar.

• 22:21Dana Schwartz?

  But the worst for Alexei is yet to come. Peter the Great did, for once, unlock the keys to his son. He found Afressina. And without subjecting her to any torture at all, she betrayed her lover. "Yes," she said, "Alexei wanted Peter dead. He spoke of it often." She repeated the claims to Alexei's face. It's hard to imagine how much this must have pained him. The one thing he seemed to genuinely love in this life, the one thing he seemed to actually fight for. Who knows what he felt when he saw his beloved Aphrosina again,

• 23:06Dana Schwartz?

  and had to watch her sell him out? His dreams of a country cottage shimmered before him, and then they were wiped out in an instant. Maybe whatever will he had left to live, left him at that moment.

• 23:24Dana Schwartz?

  After Aphrosina's confessions, there was nothing else for it. Alexei went on trial. Peter called both an ecclesiastical court and a secular court. “Do not be moved,” he told them, “by the fact that you are to judge the son of your sovereign; for we swear to you that you have absolutely nothing to fear.” Of course, Peter had also promised Alexei that he could marry Aphrosina and go live a cottage-core life with her, but nonetheless, Peter's orders to the jury were clear. Anyone else on trial would have been tortured to extract a confession. And so was Alexei. He was struck 25 times with a knaut,

• 24:10Dana Schwartz?

  a kind of whipping torture, on June 19. Five days later, he received 15 more blows. His back was bleeding. The whipping torture had killed stronger men than Alexei. He confessed to having wished for his father's death. And on June 24, the jury did what it had to do after such a confession. It found Alexei guilty of rebellion against the emperor. So Tsarevich Alexei, heir to the Russian throne, was condemned to death. But it was up to Peter the Great to decide whether to allow the sentence to be carried out.

• 24:51Dana Schwartz?

  In a tragic, or perhaps gracious, twist of fate, Peter never had to make a decision. Alexei fell ill. He requested his father see him, and Peter did, reportedly crying alongside his dying son. Alexei died on June 26, 1718, at the age of 28. No one official acknowledged it explicitly, but it's likely he simply did not survive the blows with the knaut.

• 25:27Dana Schwartz?

  Alexei was stronger than he'd always thought, but weaker than his father had always wished. Peter had not signed off on condemning his own son to the death penalty, but he did allow the torture that almost certainly killed him.

• 25:48Dana Schwartz?

  After Alexei's death, he was mourned like a tsarvich rather than a criminal, interred in state. Peter the Great died on February 8th, 1725, at the age of 52. He did not name a successor, and after he died, the succession was confusing. Of the two baby Peters who had given him such hope, his own little son had died in 1719 at age 3. His wife Catherine ruled as Empress for 2 years until her own death in 1727. And then, maybe in small revenge for Alexei,

• 26:30Dana Schwartz?

  it was his own son Peter who took the throne, though for not quite 3 years before he died at age 14. Peter the Great is not the only Russian monarch to have killed his son. Nearly 150 years earlier, in 1581, the first Tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible, had flown into a rage and killed his own son and only competent heir when the boy was 27, almost exactly the same age as Alexei was when he died. But Peter was not raging like Ivan was

• 27:12Dana Schwartz?

  when he coolly instructed the court to treat Alexei as they would any other accused criminal. “So far as I know,” said the historian Jonathan Daly, “there were no other European monarchs who oversaw the torture of their own children.” What would Peter have done if his son had not died? Would he have sentenced his own son to the death penalty? We can't know. History can only be left to wonder. But at Alexei's funeral, the preacher quoted from the Old Testament: “O, Absalom, my son, my son!”

• 27:56Dana Schwartz?

  That's the story of Russian Emperor Peter the Great killing his son, albeit indirectly. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about the women in the story.

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• 29:12Dana Schwartz?

  You may be wondering a little bit about the women in the story. As for Afresina, Alexei's beloved mistress, intended wife, and ultimate betrayer, her child disappeared from history. No one knows whether Alexei and Afresina's child lived or died, or where the child was born. Afresina got married herself and lived another 30 years in St. Petersburg. As for Eudoxia, Peter the Great's unloved first wife and Alexei's mother, who had been banished to a convent, her lover had been brutally tortured, and her brother was killed over the Alexei affair. But she wound up with the last laugh.

• 29:57Dana Schwartz?

  It was her grandson, Peter Alexovich, who wound up on the throne after Catherine, the second wife's, death. And when he got there, Eudoxia left the convent at last. Despite her husband having banished her, Eudoxia wound up dying at court.

• 30:25Dana Schwartz?

  Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Hight, and Julia Maloney. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk with supervising producer Reema Ilkayali and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Trevor Young, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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• 31:42Dana Schwartz?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.