Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Royal Sex: Catherine the Great

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

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, 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. 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 program.

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 book, goodbye to other adults about adultery things and an adult away covering a range of adults. And you should be an adult too.

Do you feel safer? I feel safer. Fair do's, you were warned. Let's do it. It's 1894, and Valashefsky, 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. 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, an emperor doing such things. But an empress? Well, we can't have that, now can we? What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I feel for them done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and 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 annex 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 going to help us get to know this remarkable woman and the rumors that surround her a little bit better. Saddle up Betwixters. We're heading off to St. Petersburg.

Hello and welcome to Betwixta Sheets. It's only Virginia Rounding. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you, Kate. Nice to be here. Oh, it's fabulous to have you here. You are, well, you're the author of Lottwe. 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? I guess I first heard about her when I was studying Russian language and literature years ago. 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 courtisans and was looking around for someone to do a biography on. And it was suggested by my agent that I ought to try Catherine. Actually, I thought, well, she has been done before quite a lot. But there was a suggestion that it was time for another woman to take a look at her. Isabel de Madriagrad 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. So that already suggests that one thing that accompanies Catherine Negreate is a whole lot of rumour and a whole lot of stigma and a whole lot of judgment. Would you say that that's fair? 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 18-year-old. century woman was expected to be. I love her already. 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. That would have just been a slow Tuesday, wouldn't it?

But no, it can't be a woman. Think of Louis the 14th and 15th. That's what they did. So let's take it right back to Catherine's origin story. I'm not even sure I know this much about it. Where did she come from? Was she destined for greatness from the beginning? 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 that came about sort of in an unexpected sort of way through personal family connections and then later through her taking control herself. What was her real name? Her name can't have been Catherine the Great. I mean, that's ambitious. Her name was Sophie.

It was changed to Yaccarina. when she became Russian Orthodox, when she'd already moved to Russia as the prospective fiancé of the heir to the throne, Peter. And what was her family name? So it was Katarina. Well, she was sort of Sophie von Anhalt-Zest, which is where she came from. Okay. What was the family like?

Were they on the make? Were they a good family? Did she have a nice childhood? 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 Zebs, 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, 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, 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 person for Peter to be betrothed to. That's a lot of pressure. Absolutely, absolutely. It was very common thing. In later years when Catherine was the Empress herself, she did just the same kind of things for her son, Paul. She got her envoys around Europe to look for likely girls and would invite them with her mother to be tested out. How old would she have been? She was about 13, 14 when this letter arrived. Yeah, she was 14 when she arrived.

but clearly ambitious right from the outset. She was determined to make a go of it. How old was Peter? Let's talk a little bit about him. Who was he? 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 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. Oh, bless. As he was lonely, he hoped he'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. Why do you think they picked, I say they, I'm going to assume it wasn't Peter at the age of 14 who was making the final decision. Why do you think they picked Sophie slash Catherine to do this? I think partly it was a sentimental reason because Elizabeth had this connection to the family through her dead fiancée. So Elizabeth was a very romantic with a small, ass sentimental woman throughout her life. So that would be part of it. It would be, was she healthy? Was she a sort of good stock?

Would she be able to produce airs? Would she be biddable? Would she be prepared to fit in to as she was told? I think nothing much more complicated than that really. No, probably not. So obviously she is of good stock and she is healthy and they do get married. What kind of event was it? Was it a big celebration?

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 that 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 in 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, was huge.

Processions, carriages, lots of wearing of heavy crowns, meals, 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's put into bed and then wonders what happens because Peter has disappeared at this point. Oh no.

And so she's left there sitting in the bed thinking, well 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. Oh dear. Okay. Maybe he had no idea what to do or didn't occur to him as supposed to do anything. And Catherine turned over and went to sleep as well. Oh. That was the beginning. This sounds like Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis.

Just nobody had told them. Did somebody tell them what to do in the end? Not for about 70 years. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Yeah, but similar to Marie Antoinette. yeah, indeed. They didn't. Elizabeth was very concerned. She wanted Catherine to produce as soon as she could. Obviously, that was 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 there in, make them, make sure they're in bed together, don't let anybody distract them, keep them together. And she got concerned. Maybe Catherine was riding in a horse too much, because she was a very good horsewoman and fond of, maybe that was stopping her conceiving. Strange idea, but anyway. But no one seemed to have told Peter what to do. Oh dear. 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. And they're so young. Yeah, absolutely, very young. And the longer

it went on, this sort of not knowing what to do maritally, but being pressed into something, the harder it became in a way. Yeah. To see that. But yes, at one point, he really got into playing with toy soldiers after they got 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 I quickly hide it when anyone came in. So it is sweet, but it didn't lead to an air. No, playing with toy soldiers does not tend to lead to an air. Oh dear. So did they have any children then? Or was this an unconsumated 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, 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 what she did. Wait a minute. What did she do? What did she do? Well, she obviously explained what you had to do in bed. And she was an experienced widow. So he just lay there and thought, oh, right. That is a very important. Nice. Okay. But meanwhile, Catherine had had her own sexual awakening. Oh, how'd she now? Because she'd actually fallen in love with a courtier called Sergeus Alticoff,

who was quite inexperienced Philanderer probably. I think he's... How old was she? Oh, by now she was about 20. This went on for a long time, this unconsummated bit. But yeah, in her sort of late teens, early 20, she met Zergei. She felt quite madly in love, passionate. because it was the first time she'd actually experience proper physical love.

And he was a bit of a wrong and was he? He was ready to take advantage of a situation. Right. He could see she was there. He'd obviously thought she was beautifully 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 air.

She weren't inquired 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 too. 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 marriage with her by then after his lessons from the beautiful young widow. So no one is absolutely sure whether the man who's...

subsequently became Paul the first was Peter's son, which he believed himself to be, or Seagays. I'll be back with Virginia after this short break. Peter Emperor by this point, is this the Empress is running around having affairs, or is it? No, he's still, this is still while Elizabeth is the Empress. So there are Grand Duke, Grand Duchess. Peter is starting to get interested in other women. Oh, is he? Okay, so it's like a whole world has opened up to him now.

Yeah, yeah. He never went in for a great many of them, but he fell in love with a woman called Elizabeth Farnsorva, who was also at the court. Though I think that started fairly soon after Paul was born. Was it a happy marriage? It's difficult to say, isn't it, when they were 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? 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 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 all the power play going on, they were allies, 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 influence. She's very smart. She's smarter than him, which he's aware of. So that doesn't help. So she's not supposed to have ended up being the Empress of Russia then? Absolutely not, no. How did this happen then? Well, sort of gradually. The British played their part in the sense that...

Of course we did. Sorry about that, everyone. She became very close to the British ambassador, so Charles Hanbury Williams, who in a way was her political mentor. Is he nice? Do we like him or is he a boo character? 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 is that he was depressed. Yeah. Oh, wow.

It was increased by the fact she was left on her own pretty much. The child was taken away and raised by Elizabeth. Oh. Because she saw him as a few years. emperor right from the moment he was born. So she was going to raise him. I'm liking Elizabeth less and less in this story. Yeah, she's not an easy character by any means.

Catherine learned 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 hold up in her apartment, 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. Playing with his tin soldiers with other women. Yeah, and playing with real soldiers. He has well. He liked doing drill and that kind of stuff. He did.

Yeah, wearing uniform. So he was off doing other stuff. Even Sergei Seltikoff 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. Together they talked about her being empress. Really? Yeah. And initially it was thought of, well, 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' help, envisaged him taking over, but her being a very important supporter in the background and pulling in very... 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 it really began in those years, and gradually she built up all sorts of influences in different circles. And this took place over several years. I mean, we're talking more than a decade. Oh, it's a long game, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

It was in 17. 61 that Elizabeth finally died, 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. 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 got very little political instinct.

He knew what he wanted, but he couldn't let things happen, diplomatically, you 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 that the priests would have to shave their beards off and they'd all have to do what he said. Peter. 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. 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. No. He kind of messed things up pretty fast in that six months. But the further complication, by going fairly speedily through this period,

we've missed out one lover who was of Catharines, who was Stanislav Poniatowski, a young Polish man, friend of Sir Charles Hambrey 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 also had a child, a daughter. It's all completely hidden. Eventually, Peter found out about it, but it was managed by his lover, Elizabeth Beretsova, that they should have a forsov and all get along terribly well. And did they? They did for a bit, yeah. Oh, wow.

There was also fear that he might suddenly turn, and one didn't want him to know too much. And eventually Stanislaus had to go back to Poland. But the complicating factor in 1761 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. Damn it. Well done, Catherine. By Grigori Arloff, yeah.

So she was extraordinary. She spent hours preying 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. So she's there crying and weeping and wailing at the grave of this woman. Oh, she's very dignified.

She's very dignified. Yeah, exactly, while she's pregnant with. I love that. So Peter gets his go at being a czar. He's not great at it at all. Absolutely. 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. Yeah, pretty much. That's right. And the lover she now has, Grigory Aloff, has four brothers who are all in various garse regiments. They're pivotal to this whole thing because they can bring the guards regiments who are fundamental in St. Petersburg along with them. Oh, look at that.

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 constantly. 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 was he was having a party straight away practically. 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 who's brothers, happened to be in key positions in the army. Yeah, I don't think it's in, well, I think it's very mixed. It's very hard to say,

actually. She definitely what the appeal of things is about Catherine and she genuinely falls in love repeatedly. Yes. So the first thing is that she sees some young man and she's attracted and then she falls for them. The political element is partly other people.

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

Yeah. I think sometimes I can see it throughout the course of her relationships, there is manipulation from outside going on. So it's not like she's a mercenary. It's not like she's like, you know, giving out sexual favours to, you know, get army support. That's just a nice coincidence. I think to her it can seem like that. Or it could begin as I like this man.

Oh, well, and it could be useful as well. It's 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? Okay, yeah. 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 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. This is a proper coup. This is Peter, just go over there for a bit and I'll consolidate more and more power when he's like a proxy ruler. This is like a stayed or planned we're going to get him out of the way. Wow. 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. Her hair's done on the way that they meet her hairdresser. And he gets in the carriage and sorts her out on the way. Yes, I like that. Good touch. And then she arrives in the city, Garth's regiments, her 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 had 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, so she's not doing that. Oh, we should be fine. Then they decide to go off to the palace she's supposed to be in, Petterhoff, a Montpelier to have a look for her. Allegedly he goes into the house, looks under the bed in the wardrobe, thinks about she's playing some funny game, but she's not there. And eventually it dawns on him, it's true.

And he tries to rally support by some troops who are faithful to him. But it doesn't succeed. And they get into a galley and go off and try to dock at, Kronstadt and they're told, no, no, you can't come. I'm the Tsar. Never heard of you, mate. He has all worse, being arrested and brought along in ignominy and his sword removed. And there he is.

He's told to abdicate. Does she kill him? Does he lit or does he? No, he doesn't, not immediately. And it's, she would never accept responsibility that she might have done or been involved. But initially, he is taken off and held in a, the, secure prison 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 Alof brothers who's being 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 haemorrhoids. I don't know. Okay. Okay.

But in fact, when he is displayed, in death for his funeral, the sort of scarf around his neck to cover up probable strungulation. So something happened. And the Arloff brother involved wrote a note to Catherine, which was discovered much after she died. Do you know, Virginia, I don't think it was haemorrhoids. You know, you might write about that. Wow. Oh.

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

I'll be about with Virginia after this short break. Is she called Catherine the Great? I mean, I was just, I guess this depends on who you ask. Certainly Peter wouldn't have called her Catherine the Great. So she's come to power. Peter has tragically died of hemorrhoids. It's awful. It sounds really sad, yes. It seems like Russia was ready for this and wanted this. So was she, was everything as good as they thought it was going to be?

In certain respect. It was certainly better. It was pretty bad, though, wasn't it? It was pretty bad. It wasn't necessarily better for those at the very lowest end of society, which is most of them. Yeah. 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 civilised era than what had gone before.

And there's 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. It was a bit, but not a lot. That's good. Yeah. There was more education, especially for girls.

Hurrah, Catherine, well done. Okay. Okay, this is sounding good. 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 Lies Catherine I who did her best for Russia. Oh, that's quite modest. Yeah, she was a strange mixture. Part of her was modest. She wanted to do a good job. She did believe in the Enlightenment ideals

of education, culture, art, categorisation, learning things. She loved to educate herself and other people. She was horrified about the extent of the lack of knowledge. in Russia. 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 to map of what territory we have. A map. We haven't got one of those. Or go and get one. 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. Yes. She is civilising in a way that subsequent generations might find more difficult, post-colonialism and what kind of thing. 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. Did she ever get married again? It's possible that she married her great love of Pachomkin secretly. But she never married officially in any way, because rather like our Elizabeth I, her first, she didn't want to compromise her own power by ceding it.

But she did fall in, I mean, she's doing amazing things on the political stage, slightly power grabby. Yeah, yeah. But she's also falling in love. an awful look. Yes. That's what's interesting, I think. It's this need for love.

It's not just sex by any means. And who was, what did you say his name was? It began with Pee there. You said it the love of her life. Yeah, Patiomkin. Patiomkin. Who was he? 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's... That'll do it. Yeah, she didn't fall from them, but I think maybe he imprinted his self on her mind. 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'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. 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, more than with any of her previous ones.

But now she'd ended the relationship with Alorff. And she had had a rather insignificant, beautiful young man for 18 months, and she didn't know quite what she'd done that for, really. But Pachonkin was serious and deep, and they had huge rows. People used to hear lots of door slamming and that kind of thing. It must 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 paychark and because women were restricted thralls 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, they could perhaps. wields a much more hard power? Well, they certainly wanted to. I think that's very interesting.

I think they were called upon to play the mistress role. And later, the younger men actually did that. Pachonkin wasn't going to be a mistress. No. 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. 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. Did they stay together for the rest of her life?

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, he took other women, for sure. And 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.

Well, now that's an interesting turn of events. Yeah. So he kept the power, but also, made sure she was happy. So certainly the first lover that she had after Pachonkin, Zavadowski, 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. So he's going to choose him kind of young, dumb, full of cum and stupid, right? Not necessarily dumb, but, well, biddible. That's what Madame

Pompadour did when she didn't want to have. have sex with Louie anymore, isn't it? She found young kind of silly girls. Yeah, yeah. Once she could feel in control of and not threatened by. So that was very much Pottomkin's idea. Interesting. 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, 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 also they had to be capable.

But they also had to be prepared to learn to enjoy with her things like her art collection. Part of her day would be walking around her newly acquired artworks in the galleries she'd had designed and looking at them or going through the cupboards and cupboards of little cameos, beautifully crafted little gems with pictures of gods and gods.

and classical mythology of them. And she would love to pour over these in an afternoon alongside one of her young lovers. Does she also have erotic furniture? I've heard that. Yes, she did. There was an exhibition at Saskasilor 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 interesting things around her. Yeah. And she's taking much younger lovers into her 60s, lady. Oh, absolutely, yes. And one of them in particular, she was absolutely devoted to a young man called Alexander Lanskoy, who fulfilled all her desires in that he was young, very teachable, very adoring of her. And she, 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 Lanskoy.

he died young of diphtheria and she was completely devastated. There's normally after each relationship ended, there'd be well waiting in the wings and she'd move on. But she couldn't move on for six months after Lanskoy. She was just planned. And poor Pachonkin 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. She really did love them, didn't she?

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 Rimski Korsakov, ancestor of the composer, who had an affair with one of her maids for the Countess Bruce. And there was another who, towards the end of his relationship with Catherine finally admitted he was actually going to marry one of her. Oh. 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. 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. I could honestly talk to you about someone 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? Yes, she died of a stroke. There we go, everybody. She died of a stroke.

There were no horses involved. What is that story? Oh, it's terrible. 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. I think that when you hear that, it's so ridiculous. She died having sex with a horse. That's the story.

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. Do we know who made it? And how long that rum has been going around for? Been going around very soon after her death. I think it probably comes back to a 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. You don't get powerful women without some kind of nonsense being spoken about them somewhere. No. But actually, her death is very touching, her actual death. By then, Pachomkin had died. So she was a bit of a shadower for myself without him. He died five years before her.

She had a young lover, but Zubov, 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 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 WC, whatever they had, her little bathroom, 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 get the door, and she couldn't because she'd fallen and was wedged

against the door. So they had to get help to get her out. So she'd had a stroke. Very sad. No horses involved at all. No horses. Purely natural causes. No horses. As someone that studied this woman and someone that wanted to try and push through the myths, the obvious myths that 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? I think her own epitaph, the fact that she saw herself as a servant of Russia,

The fact that she was a great civilising 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. Oh, I love that.

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

and who like to work hard. Virginia, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much for coming to talk to us. You have been marvellous. My pleasure. Oh, thank you, Kate. It's been very nice to talk to you. That's always good to talk about Catherine. What a legend. 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 with you 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 betwixt at historyhit.com. loads of Queenie and Empressy sex this month, including Queen Victoria and Marie Antoinette, and watch out for an upcoming episode on Cleopatra and another one on Elizabeth I.

Oh, we do spoil you, don't we? This podcast was edited and produced by Sophie G and the senior producer with Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixta Sheets, History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit.