Historically High - Catherine the Great

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

Catherine the Great, born a minor Prussian princess, transformed herself into one of Russia’s most famous rulers after orchestrating a coup to overthrow her unpopular husband, Tsar Peter III. Her 34-year reign saw the Russian Enlightenment begin to transform Russia, heavily expanding the empire’s borders and cementing them as a dominant European power. She did this by charming the pants off anyone who met her and ingratiating herself with people in the right positions. Her list of lovers and their contributions to Russia are pretty legendary but only slightly less so is the story of her rise.   Thanks for listening and don’t forget to hit subscribe, leave a 5-star rating and write a review. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join us at Patreon.com/HistoricallyHigh and get enrolled for some fun extra content Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Don't. God, really? What? No. We've done so many of these episodes. Do you know how it is to get into an episode? Something new, something different, something fancy? I explicitly asked you to not do the horror stuff. We got to dispel the myth.

That's our whole goal. If you guys walk away from anything this episode, we have to dispel Catherine's love of horses. It's not even that. You know what you're doing? right now. Anybody that is first time listener, anybody that is a tenured student here knows that this is going to find

its way into the actual topic itself. But come on, we have to have, new people are listening to this. Catherine the Great, Kathy Greats, as I like to know, and that is also an invitation for anybody out there that is very good at creating art. I would like to see

Kathy Bates as Catherine the Great. in a situation where it's in the movie misery and laying on the bed having his ankles busted between the sledgehammer and the woodblock would be Peter the third or Petre. And that's all going to make sense the more you listen to this episode. We're back in Russia, baby. Yes. Wildcords are back on the table. Well, here's the thing too about Russia.

Russia is two completely different places. It is rural Russia, the Ural's, just the pectoral. peasantry, 85% of the people in Russia are under what be the serfdom is basically. And then you have all of the landowners. 15, again, 85% of this place is just rural peasantry. But then you have this other class that this is going to focus on, of course, because it's Catherine the Great, that are the ruling elites. But that when you think of like Russian rulers, we always like, or my mind always goes to like Cold War style Stalin.

that kind of stuff. Very industrial, very like, oh, but this is at a time when this is a very like European-inspired Russian aristocracy. We're in the Romanoff dynasty. Yeah. And we're in a time when Russia isn't too far removed away from guys like Ivan the terrible, but also even more recent when they were just known as Muscovy. Like this is Peter the Great, the guy who kind of started Russia in and of itself and began this big long Romanov dynasty.

We've walked, I mean, I think three or four people that will kind of get caught up on because it's a whole lot of kind of wild Russian stuff. But at the same time, they weren't big enough to be named the Great. All the people sandwich, the worst position to be in is to be sandwiched between a Great and a Great. Yes. Because you didn't do dick in between those. But there's also like, isn't there 15 of them? there's some insane amount after Peter that we're going to hit

and then it hits Catherine a bunch of of them were vying for it I don't know if it was that many but there was a at least five or six that were like vying for it that's why you got the whole baby Ivan situation before you get the predecessor

Elizabeth Elizabeth one thing too weird to think about when you heard about Prussia Russia which one would you assume came first I always thought I always thought Russia did.

Yeah. Prussia was just the knockoff. Like you try to add an extra letter to something and make it a different word. It doesn't exist anymore either. Correct. Prussia predates Russia. And somehow Prussia's also German or Germanic and it's, Prussia's an odd place.

And you have the Holy Roman Empire thrown on top of kind of everything there. Austria. This is at a time when you have the Ottoman Empire, when you have the Austro. No, you wouldn't have Austria hungry. You just had Austria. and then you have you have Prussia

you do have France you do have I guess you would call Britain or whatever it was considered at that point but it's a time when Russia is when Peter the Great

took over Russia was 200 years behind everybody in Europe he brought him forward to where there were only about 100 years behind everybody in Europe then you have some diddling and doodling and not doing a whole lot and then you have Catherine the Great

that's like I'm going to take this hundred year behind country, we're going to do some crazy stuff that are going to launch us to the forefront of medical science in Europe, but also at the same time, I can't go too far because we've run into the Enlightenment and we've run into the French Revolution. So I've got to back it up to about maybe 50 years behind everybody else. Yeah. And then I might have to back it up a little bit more once some stuff comes up. All right. We're going to get into it. Before we do, remember patreon.com slash historically high. Go get your content, bonus episodes, little game shows.

It's all good fun. Ratings, five stars, if you can spare them. They're fantastic for us in the algorithm. Reviews we love here and how you guys feel about these episodes. And keep subscribing. Those subscriber numbers are, they're doing well too. And the immortal words of Cosmo Kramer. Let's giddy-up.

His father was a mutter. His mutter was a mutter. He loves the slop. You know who didn't like the slop? Kathy Grades, Catherine the Great, not even born, Catherine the Great, actually. History would know her as Princess Sophia Augusta, Frederica of Anshalzzerbst. So it's Princess Sophia, Augusta, Frederica, but again, they always had the place they're from. From Anhalt Zerps in modern-day Poland, but was in Prussia at the time, in 1729.

Had she not been born into nobility, I have a sneaking suspicion we would not know May 2nd, 1729. No. It's enough of a time far enough away to where she was born out of nobility, she just would have been born and we wouldn't have had any record. It's kind of the, she had noble bloodlines but weren't wealthy. So it's basically the equivalent of like the cash poor lordship system or whatever it is in like Great Britain. Oh, and the setup was just pooping because there were so many Prussian royal figures that her mother, just to kind of lay out her lineage, Johanna Elizabeth of Holstein Gottrop, and her father, Christian August, Prince of Anhalt Zurbist. August was a Prussian general. He was a pretty successful Prussian general. At the same time, not being of Noble Blood himself,

he didn't bring a whole lot to the lineage as far as upwards mobility. Her mother, obviously being of Holstein-Gotrop, had a much better claim to a royal family, but her family was such an ancillary, or her family was such ancillary character within this family, that they were, yeah, they were cash-poor royals. They were just far enough removed to not be, first or second or maybe even third choice.

And I got to say, for as bad as we're going to talk about Kathy Gets, her mom was just a bad thing. Oh, Johanna's a bitch. She sucked. And this is at a time, too, when Prussia is more the power. And thanks to it's not Peter, but it's Frederick. Frederick the Great. Frederick the Great, he's kind of this guy that revolutionizes warfare. And it makes Prussia very, very successful.

And so whereas you would think, oh, her family isn't going to be able to marry into like that high-ranking Prussian aristocracy. Russia, which is still kind of, again, like Adam said, it's kind of behind the times. That's kind of a frontier. That's people really don't know about Russia because it's so rural. And I think they said that the, when she came in, it was like maybe like 18 cities. and the rest of it was just vast landscapes. And so people had this idea because just like when we kind of talk about in World War II and all that, a lot of the major Russian cities that they had to hit, you know, you've got to go a long way into Russia to hit those.

And that was still kind of the case where you would have like St. Petersburg and everything. You'd have to go pretty far north to get there. And so not a lot was known or really there to respect about Russia until, you know, Peter the Great kind of puts them catches them up a little bit. And then you have this period of Frederick the Great being this military mastermind in Prussia, while Russia is kind of trying to get their feet underneath them. Because we have Peter the Great, who kicks the bucket February 1725. His wife, Catherine, he had already basically ascended to the throne to take over next.

She runs Catherine I, from 1725 to May of 1727. She ends up dying. Peter the second grandson and also the son of Alexei Petrovich who was the second son of Peter the Great's first wife Adoxia. So this is a situation where we don't have primogeniture

or primogeniture or anything like that. They're just trying to keep this bloodline alive. You have... This is like who's closest to the throne when he eventually dies? Yeah. He can just like throw the air onto the throne. Yeah. He dies in 17, 18, at the age of 28.

so that would mean that Peter was, that's not right. Must have been 1728. Because 1718 is... You just say when he died. Oh, no, no. Okay, I got it. Alexi would have been the guy who stepped up

and would have taken over after Catherine had died. He died in 1718 at the age of 28, so that's how it fell to his son, Peter the 2nd. Gotcha. Peter the 2nd runs from May 6th. 1727 to January 1730. Then you have Anna, who was the niece of Peter the Great, from 1730 to 1740. She ruled with her regent, or they ruled in 1740.

She ended up switching over to a regent mother position. She loses the throne in a coup by Elizabeth. She had put her son, who I believe ascended to the throne at, like 11 months old, Ivan the 6th, in position of being the Tsar of Russia, or the emperor of Russia. They had an 11-month-old emperor pretty much. And it's a situation where Elizabeth,

who has the claimant of being the granddaughter of Peter the Great and Catherine, to basically bring everybody together and say, I have Peter's blood flowing through me, and I'm not 11 months old. Yeah. I think it's time for me to go in and imprison them. So yeah, she throws little Ivan the sixth in prison at like a year and a half old. They said one of the, and I'm not making light of this, but one of the documentaries I was watching.

So, you know, they're staging scenes for B-roll and stuff. And they literally just bring this child into this like prison cell. And it's got a tiny bed and a wooden rocking horse. And they walk out. And this is like an 11-month-old baby that gets up and just starts like crying. He said that Elizabeth carried out the emperor when she had the coup. Yeah. This is like the first time that somebody's ever been able to carry out a baby emperor.

Carry out a coup. Ah, shit, the emperor pooped himself. Can you guys change him before you throw them in the prison cell? Well, that's the other thing, too, is like, we hear about, like, these child emperors and things like that. When you have, imagine the period of danger. Before that child is even old enough to, like, rule or make any type of decisions. You figure 18 years old, still their brains are fucking mush. But 18, you're in a precarious position.

Someone's just going to come around and kill that kid. So he probably might have been safer in prison. I kind of think so. Granted, his first memories were in prison in Russian prison, which sounds awful. But at the same time, he wasn't dead. I don't know if it was necessarily. I think it was like he was in prison within a room. I'm sure there was some type of like...

A daycare prison type set up maybe? Yeah. And then he just got less and less time outside the cell as he got older. Maybe like an El Capone in prison type situation. Had luxuries, things like that. I just had a weird way for anybody to grow up. But in Russia, not the craziest thing in the world. So with Elizabeth on the throne, she is kind of a wild woman.

She has Peter the Grey Tite, so she's a tall, leggy lady. who also has this penchant for having a pretty loose court. She was dressing people up as transvestites, making them switch clothing. That was the term of the time, basically making them cross-dress, because she didn't like wearing the big frilly dresses because she had a set of twigs on her that she wanted to show off. So she would use this to wear, like, tight men's pants around. Like a little gender bending type stuff.

Just flash in the goods. Okay, so she is Peter the Great's. daughter, correct? Grand, uh, yes, Peter the Great's daughter. Okay, which means that she is the direct. So it's no more of this dancing around like it's this person's kid. This is Peter the Great.

She's stepping in now. She now has to find because she's childless. She's got to go ahead and find an heir. A little bit on Elizabeth before we go any further. So she had a 20-year reign from 1741 to 1762. We're going to cover that period too. This is kind of known as a golden age, um, within, and when I say golden age, more for the modernization of Russia, not so much for the population, the population as a whole, or advancement of like any type of like civil rights for the population itself.

This is advancement in the sense of just like technological and cultural advancement, I guess. We're rolling society forward without rolling anything else forward, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. So known for like cultural brilliance, expansion of the military and kind of was, a stopgap or like bridging the gap between Peter the Great and then Catherine the Great. Elizabeth never got like a great moniker or anything like that in her name. She was, you know what? Her name was probably Elizabeth the Fabulous because this bitch was obsessed with fashion. 15,000 dresses. They said she never wore the same gown twice. Like you said, she had her metamorphosis balls where they were required to dress as women and women as men. She did found the University of

Moscow, which was Russia's first university. and also the Imperial Academy of Arts, basically like laying the groundwork for the Enlightenment to kind of catch hold there. It didn't have to pick up directly, you know, from scratch. She'd already kind of laid the groundwork. She's also a promise keeper because she promised a bloodless rain.

And she delivered a bloodless rain. She did not have anyone, on the record, killed, to take over and then rule the country, which, I mean, probably, bad way to start out if you killed an 11 month old. Well, here's the thing is the deal about Ivan was that, and she

told them, because there were Ivan loyalists, you're going to have those, they're not just going to switch around and go to her side. She basically said, if anybody attempts to like break him out, regardless of who it is, then I will actually have him killed.

So it's up to you guys to not try to break him out to keep him alive. Because he's even in the picture when Catherine comes in. His life is in your guys' hands. Yeah. Yeah, she's kind of the one. Her life is in your hands, dude.

She sets everything up. He wants to tell you that. Her life is in your hands, dude. I think that she understands that her reign is probably never going to run a foul of Ivan being old enough to try to make a claim to her throne.

She's never going to let Ivan know that he has a claim. Can you imagine that? You don't think so? You don't think I even knew who his family was? You don't think he, when they said, why are you and, or when he asked why am I in prison, they didn't explain that?

Nope. Really? Nope. Really, okay, just put yourself in that position. If you were in complete control from 11 months, they would learn everything that you wanted them to learn. You could let them know and be like, hey, you're sick and we can't afford to let you out

because then you'll catch something. You have to stay here. You could convince someone that they're not technically in there because imagine you're taking away somebody's like freedom. They're going to be trying to get themselves out. They're going to be depressed. Like to spend your whole life in there. At some point, you'd think you just bash your head into the bars. But if you could design a world in which they have enough comfort to be grateful for a protection, you could just keep them alive.

And then that would also keep the longer they stay alive, the longer you get to pacify anybody that would want to use them as a tool or use them as a martyr. What's that called Munchausen's by proxy? I have no clue. Just always being told that you're sick and that the world's going to hurt you. Yeah, you're making a bubble boy scenario. Not a great role for Jell and all. Hey, it broke him onto the scene. Yeah.

Catherine needed an air. And there was an air that was floating around. Not the greatest error. This wasn't our first round draft pick. This was more like a player. to be named later. The gym pool got shallow, quick. Yeah, I would say

definitely shallow, I think, faster than I think really anybody expected. It didn't take long. We've done episodes on families that were like so interbred and everything. The fucking Habsbergs have done it forever. But from Peter the Great down to here, we already get

the last option being little peaty, little Yeah, P3, Trey. Peter the third seemed to be a, I don't know quite how to lay out his situation other than he had a claim to the, was it the Swedish throne? Yes. So Peter was the heir to the Swedish throne through his father. So through his paternal side. So not through Peter the great side, but his Swedish father was the prince.

Peter the 3rd, he was the grandson of Peter the Great through his mother Anna Petrovna. Yeah, and he had a claim to this Swedish throne through his father. Oh, okay. So he was technically lined up to be the king of Sweden before Catherine kind of comes in and plucks him out of the situation that he's in, down in Germany, learning German, away from the Russian court, not understanding much of what his home culture is through his grandfather, but through his father's side. he is pretty much going to be Swedish. Yeah. And at the same time, I think he's being raised in Prussia, right?

Isn't it? Wasn't Germany in Prussia? Yeah. So, yeah. So that's where he's at like this entire time before she like taps him to come and fulfill this role. But at the same time, Peter the Great set up this process in which you could actually name your heir.

But you had to be in the position to name someone that had enough legitimacy, where they could tie you like biologically together. So Elizabeth was basically like, I just have to find someone that I can tie close enough to like Peter and everything that I can get away with them supporting him as my heir and there's not going to be anybody else

to try to challenge that claim. What about her claimant than the third Peter? Mm-hmm. The second Peter's not alive anymore. He's not the name. Yeah. That's half of it, right? We got a direct tie to Peter the Great.

At the same time, Peter's not learning Russian. He is not really taking to the orthodoxy, but she does have him baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church, which then disqualifies him for the Swedish throne. So he is now on a one-way ticket, one-way path to being Tsar of Russia, emperor of Russia. He doesn't want to be. He doesn't like Russia.

This is, again, this is when Russia is this weird backwater place. it's not like a role of prestige or anything. He was like, I was lined up for fucking Sweden. Are you kidding me? Have you seen those mountains? And now he's like, I got to be out in like closer to Siberia. And so he's pissed off. He completely idolizes Prussia.

Frederick the Great is his just, he's rubbing himself out to photos of Frederick the Great. He wants to wear his Prussian mock military uniform. And it's just a weird obsession. makes no effort to try to assimilate to, you're not bringing in a bunch of Prussian people with you. You're moving into an area where you are wholly in their culture and everything like that. And if you don't assimilate to that

and get in with the people and ingratiate yourself to them, you're going to have a real hard time regardless of how what your claim to the throne is. You're going to be king one day. You have to try to impress the people because as we've seen in Russia, there can be a lot of movement out of the emperor position.

Might want to be able to give a speech in their language. But this was, just, he seemed bored. Just trying to think what movie would be where the prince is always just like, ooh. I hate to do your highness again, but this is Danny McBride.

No, and here's the thing too, is this is all based upon how Peter's actually raised. Peter's not raised by Elizabeth. he's brought on when I think it like, how old is he at the time? I mean, he's 10 the first, or he's 11 the first time him in Sophie Meade. So he is sent at a very young age to like a basically a tutor to basically live there. This guy's like abusive as shit, treats him like shit.

And you would think like, well, isn't this the future rule or something? They didn't really care. They just wanted the bloodlines to go on is what their only concern was not if it was a great place. after they were dead. And so this guy gets like horrendously mistreated, which is why he's awkward as shit and also has a lot of deep-seated issues. Yeah, I'm not giving him an out.

I'm not, but we can't put ourselves in a position where you're like, here's the deal. I've also been watching the boys a lot. Yeah. Recently catching up. And this is kind of like a weird ass homelander situation when he's kind of just raised in a bubble, not around anyone who gives two shits about him.

and is just like repeatedly abused. And it's going to create a sociopath with like some type of like child complex. I also think he's got Peter the Grey's blood running through him. You remember how much for a wild card he was. This is just Peter the Great who was raised in Sweden to where he didn't have that weird bloodlust that he had to like kill and do crazy shit. But like Peter was like, Peter could be looked at and been like as a conquer doing something like that.

this guy was like just awkward as shit. He got moved. He didn't grow up in Russia. He didn't get broken in Russia. So the name was the only thing that him and Peter the Great had in common. That in the alcoholism. Oh, yeah. I don't know if Trey ever wiped his ass with curtains.

Based on what he does in the rat mock-up courtroom scene, I'm guessing that it's tough hard to consider. Yeah. But this guy also, because of that, he was also, when he was. was being brought up by the tutor and everything. He was encouraged to like drink. I don't know if he thought it was funny getting him drunk, but they said that also contributed to his alcoholism. Again, Russia can't beat the stereotype yet.

So fucked up. Yeah, so fucked up. On the other side of the coin, so you have someone who is being groomed to be king of Russia, to be czar of Russia. I believe they were just going by emperor at this point in time. So we're just going to try to stick with emperor. I'm going to fuck it up some more times, but emperor of Russia. On the other side of the coin, you have this young girl in Prussia named Sophie, who has a mother that is just so pushy. She had this belief that her family and mostly her

were destined for better times. It's the ultimate, like, vicariously living through your daughter, pageant mom's situation. And she wanted a son, because the son's going to be able to advance further. She had Sophie first. She had other sons that were kind of sickly and not really going to amount to much. So she has to focus in on Sophie. Sophie receives an education, as most did back then, through a French governess. Somebody who was a way to be able to teach. She liked her French governess. She thought she was a pretty cool gal. She also had tutors. And her tutors did not like her a bit. because Sophie thought far deeper than these people were willing to teach. They were trying to explain the coming of Jesus in her, I believe, Methodist upbringing.

No, it wasn't Lutheran. Lutheran upbringing. And she's asking these tutors questions. So you're telling me that everybody before Jesus was born just went to hell because they didn't know Jesus. Yeah. And the truth is... question, like, or not common questions. Well, but when you now think about it, it's just like, oh, yeah, there was a time before that they then had to recone.

It's like trying to figure out the Star Wars timeline and figure out what we're going to do with it. Her dudeers didn't like answering those questions because those aren't easy questions. She's sassy. She's got, she's got brains on her. Girl uses critical thinking. And she was a tomboy in the time when princesses just weren't tomboy. But she wasn't like, it's weird.

She had the title of princess because her father was given the title of prince, but Prince of Prussia wasn't like you were next in line. It was like you were a governor or something like that. You were the 840th Prince of Prussia. Yes, everyone, it was just handing out royal titles to like satisfy debts and favors and stuff. Apparently when she wasn't learning though, she was pretty nice with the sword. She did a lot of training with the sword. She knew how to swing that thing and fight,

which pretty interesting for a princess to be a dueler. So I want to say, and I don't know if this is how it worked out, but there was a meeting in which she met with Frederick. Is that correct? Yeah, we're getting to it. Okay. Pretty much in the attempts to marry off her daughter into a better family, there were more than a few suitors, even Johanna's brother.

So the uncle of Sophie was trying to get in on it. And it's a weird situation all the way around. Crush is crazy. The uncle was like eight years older than Sophie. So it wasn't like a 40 and 14 type situation. Not to say that an uncle and a niece is any better? Hold on. So now you got some like, what, 10 year old kid that's an uncle being like,

yo, hook me up with your daughter. You just hook me up with your girl. He's probably not going to raise the station of the family, very much at that type of an age. Fucking get back, you creepy kid. Through kind of a deep cousin tie, Catherine and Johanna were actually, they were like third or fourth cousin,

something like that. They were the same bloodline, but again, Elizabeth is the Tsarist of Russia. And Johanna is trying to figure out how to get to that point in time. Empress, I think is how they refer to it. Empress, yes. You have Elizabeth writing a letter to Yohanna

basically saying, I believe that your daughter Sophie could be a good match for Peter the third. And they kind of get the ball rolling here. Catherine, I guess more Frederick in an attempt to try to get a better hold on Russia with Elizabeth and kind of tighten those relations. It says, okay, I'm going to invite Johanna and Sophie into my court. I want to be able to meet them. I'll kind of give them a little test run, almost like a little interview, so to speak. to see if she has what it takes to be a royal. So Johanna and Sophie traveled to King Frederick's court.

On the first day, Johanna's the only one that shows up, and Frederick goes, where's Sophie? Johanna says, oh, she's sick. I couldn't rise her from bed to come meet the king, but I'm here to spend time in your court. And Frederick's like, well, you're not really the person that we wanted to see here. You're not the one that's being interviewed. I thought this was when Elizabeth invites them They go to Frederick's court

Before they go to Russia to meet Elizabeth Okay So the second day Johanna shows up No Sophie again Frederick goes what's wrong She says

My daughter has nothing to wear And he goes I gave you money to buy her nice clothes And she goes Don't I look nice And Frederick goes We're not trying to marry you You already have a husband

We need to see your daughter third day johanna shows back up still no sophie frederick goes what is it this time she goes i couldn't find her anything to wear like i told you frederick talks to like one of his sisters or one of his concubines like get her a dress we'll get this young girl a dress and put her in a dress sophie comes in this ill-fitting dress but she's so radiant and such a happy kid that when she goes to meet frederick johanna says give the king a kiss and sophie walks up to King Frederick of Prussia and says, bend over so I can give you a kiss.

Bow to me so I can give you a kiss. And Frederick's like, I like this girl. This is pretty cool. And she basically ingratiates herself to Frederick's court. I see this being a moment in like full house where Michelle says something very witty and everyone is just like, oh,

ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. Off with her head. I'm just kidding. She's sassy. She can stay. She can stay in the court. Let her keep it. So Frederick ends up reporting back to Elizabeth that he believes it's going to be a good situation for Peter to be able to marry Sophie.

At this point in time, Sophie and her mother then traveled to Russia in 1744. Sophie's 15 at this point in time. So their first meeting prior to this, I think, is what you were talking about. Elizabeth and Johanna had the kids meet when he was 11 and she was. was 10 and Sophie couldn't stand Peter. He was an 11 year old that showed up to meet them

drunk. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. A drunk 11 year old. But how does a 11 year old not know? Like he's coming straight back from his tutors and everything that he was sent to

when he was like a young kid. That's what I'm saying. I don't know how they expected these people to not be fucked up when you just like raise them in such a fucked up situation. Is it the fact that you know that once you've put somebody on the throne, it's not really your problem anymore because you're dead?

Well, here's the thing, and this is going to jump ahead a little bit, and then we'll jump back. What happens as soon as Catherine has her first child? Catherine's great. Kathy Great. She did her job.

Elizabeth is in there, grabs the child. Yeah. Doesn't see it anymore, right? I think at that point, she was trying to do what Catherine was going to end up doing or what Elizabeth was going to end up doing. Elizabeth wanted to do what Catherine ends up doing where she's hoping to skip over Peter 3.

If she can raise acclaimant. Correct, because she still gets to choose who it is. So what she's trying to do is she's like, this kid's already fucked up. I now can raise this other kid and over the next 20 years, get him to do what I'm going to be doing and then plug him in.

He's the insurance policy. Correct. Well, not even the insurance. He's plan A. This guy's not even part of the plan. This is, this is, you're going to hate this.

This is signing Kurt Cousins when you drafted Mendoza. You're just hiring him. You got to have a bridge quarterback. You're basically hiring him to come in as like a DNA tube just to produce something that you can then still having that same DNA line. just plug in that's going to be doing

the same type of ruling you were. And that's how you make actual change happen because part of the core thing we see here is Russia gets fucking tug award back for like a pretty decent amount of time between these like different ideologies from people that idolize one person but then idolize a different

and they're just swapping rulership. It's the wild north. Everything's kind of up for grabs. So Sophie ends up traveling And you're going to understand the Sophie Caspern thing here pretty quickly. Can we just start using Catherine? Yeah, fuck it. Sophie becomes Catherine when she gets baptized.

We'll get to that here in a second. We're just going to call her Catherine here on out. Okay, so we are done talking about Catherine the first, Catherine the second. This is actually going to be Catherine the third, but this is Catherine from here on out. It's Catherine the second. Is she Catherine the second?

Because she took the namesake of Elizabeth's mother. Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. So Sophia works her ass off to ingratiating herself to Elizabeth and Elizabeth's lover. At the same time, she's studying day and night learning Russian. She's studying Orthodox teachings. And she pushes herself to the point of landing pneumonia.

And pneumonia back in that time was kind of a toss-up if you were going to live or die. She used this time as she was just laying in a bed half awake to keep her eyes closed and listen to the gossip of the women in court that are coming to check on her and make sure that she's doing well. Well, she had gone when she got there, because again, like you're saying, they did not get along. But this was just going to be her situation. So to her, this was a fascinating faraway land that she was learning this foreign, just like, It's so weird to think about that you make such an association about like, well, Prussia, Russia, they must have been very similar and everything. No. Very, very different in cultures and everything. Different religions, different styles of governance. So she learns the language, learns the customs, converts to Russian orthodoxy. And like you said, we got a little bit.

No, we did. Well, what I'm saying is she's continually pushing herself to assimilate into the culture. as much as you can because this isn't a situation where she's just like, oh, I'm here to get married. This is now my permanent home. I will be here for the rest of my life. To be such a young woman and to make the decisions that she made because this is a master stroke for her to be this young and to have pneumonia and figure out how to pull this off. So she's sick enough to where it's time to administer her last rights. She's had several bleeding done. This is like at a time where like there's leeches and stuff. that are used by doctors. And yeah, and she's gotten to the point

where it's just like, all right, it's time to bring in, well, you're getting ready to give the sign to the bullpen, to the G-man's bullpen, who you call in for. Well, normally with her, you know, she would call a Lutheran priest, right? Because that's how she was raised and everything. Johanna actually had made the request

for a Lutheran priest to show up. And Catherine holds her hand up and she goes, nope, I would like my last rights to be administered by a Russian Orthodox priest. And news of this. This is high, here's the deal. This is low risk, high reward. Yeah. If she's wrong and she does, she's just dead.

Well, and here's the thing, too, is someone who questioned that thing from a young age about everything. She was probably, she seemed, here's the thing about Catherine. Kathy Grates is a very smart woman. She knows what she's doing. She is a cool, almost a cool version of Circe from Game at Thrones and the way she can like figures out how to get power and everything. She's forced into this situation, but she plays it masterfully. And she realizes that here's the thing. I got nothing to lose here.

If I die and I have forsaken my Lutheran teachings, honestly, I don't really think there's anything after this anyway. But if I survive this and it's because, and I make it seem like it's because I converted or that had something to do her, that's who I put my faith in, oh man, the people are going to fucking love it. They're going to go nuts.

And they do, because she lives. She lives through this, and she comes out the other side as somebody who Elizabeth is ready to be baptized, or ready to baptize her. Just to further ingratiate herself, the court. She said that she had gone through and memorized every single one of the court ladies, poodles and pug's names. She's going down to learning the ladies of the court's dogs names.

So she has something to talk about with them. And something is, I mean, there's a lot of ladies of the court. There's a lot of dogs. But you're using that to be able, if you see anybody in the hallway, you can just say, hey, how's Fluffy doing? And you're getting 30 seconds worth of conversation. But that person who owns Fluffy is walking away thinking, wow, she really cares. She cared enough to remember my dog's name. Not just that, but she's in a place where she has no base. She's not home where she has any type of loyalty to her name or anything like that. She is creating a loyalty around her or having people see her.

But it's also in a position where, like you said, she fakes being asleep sometimes so she can pick up on the gossip and see what people are saying. She stops and she remembers the name of someone's dog. Yeah, like you said, she takes me. talks to him for 30 seconds about the dog or something like that, and then says, hey, what do you up to this afternoon? Oh, well, I'm going to have lunch with this person and this person. You now know the positions of those two people, and what if one of them is a military officer, one of one was this? Now you have little tidbits of information, but when you piece all of those together from all your separate conversations throughout the day, you know what's going on

all around you. Is that much deeper into the whole thing? Yes. and she gets real deep June 28, 1744 Sophie converts and is baptized into the Russian Orthodox church and Elizabeth asked her

what she wants her name to be and she asks if she can just keep Sophie and there was some bad Sophia in Russian history I think that we talked about during the Peter it was like his sister or something

that he had committed yeah something along those lines and Kath or Elizabeth was like, ah, Sophie's... We don't really do Sophie's. Yeah. It's kind of a King John type situation.

We deadheaded that name pretty quickly after this happened. She goes, okay. And Elizabeth says, what about taking my mother's name, Catherine? She sold. I'm in. So she gets baptized under the name Catherine, and this is where Sophie becomes Catherine. To say that Catherine and Peter's relationship never really did well, is an understatement. The hits just keep coming

because not only was Peter a generally unlikable fellow who was a douchebag pretty much through and through, Peter contracted smallpox. Yeah. And is Peter contracted smallpox? I feel bad for Peter, man.

I do. I'm not making excuses for Peter. I understand 100% why Catherine does what Catherine does and Catherine had to do what Catherine. I have no sympathy for Peter that, you know,

Catherine did what you had to do. but I think Peter got fucked up from a very young age. Possibly. But then he doesn't do anything to try to correct it. That's kind of where I run into how I can't feel bad for him because the guy's basically gifted the emperorship of Russia. Like you said, the same year that she gets, you know, really sick with pneumonia, that's when he catches smallpox.

He survives, but, you know, horribly scarred, most likely sterile. Sorry to laugh about that. And there comes a point when after his recovery or whatever you want to call it, where he finally comes to kind of like present himself to court again, it's, I'm trying to think of like. Catherine has a jump scare. It's not even a jump scare. It's just enough to be like, you're just waiting to see the reaction. And she's just the slightest little like, ugh. It's an audible like, ugh.

Or you hear a or you hear something like that. And he basically just turns around and like runs back to his room. And she, she couldn't hide it. He pretty much hates her from this point. They didn't get along to begin with. He basically developed, has developed these psychological issues throughout his entire life due to the isolation. Now the physical deformity on top of that. And I mean, they still have to get married though.

This is a situation where now it's like, oh, I'm sorry this isn't working out, honey, or anything. Do you want to go back to Prussia? It's like, so this is just something we now have to deal with. So like in 19, or sorry not 19, 1745, they end up still marrying. August 21st, 1745, Catherine is 16 and Peter is 17. And to say that the post-nuptial escapades didn't go well, again is another understatement. Well, I mean, they have the tradition. of she's taken to her room and then taken to his room. They're like she's de-dressed

and she's put in whatever the virginal nightgown would be or whatever like that. Taken to his room and then put in the bed and then she just has to wait for him to show up so she's just sitting in his bed like looking around and she's like

he's got a lot of fucking action figures. He's got like a lot of little toy soldiers and everything around here. She's waiting and everything. Hours go by. Finally, He ends up showing up, gets, it just is shit-faced when he comes in and doesn't even try to, basically just passes out right next to her. She kind of, I'm guessing she, you know, maybe pokes him a couple times as like, hey.

Flicked his, pecker. You need, yeah, you need to, like, we're supposed to do something. Like, people kind of expect us to do something here. We've got to consummate this thing. And this pretty much leads to a period of, like, how many, how long, how long? we talked before these things can really kind of like talked about to being consummated. Shit. So they get married in, what did I say, 1745.

Yep. It wouldn't be until 1754 that we have some sort of proof. Yeah, I guess we can call it proof that Catherine at least has had sex. Yes. Had relations. It's a situation that you talked about earlier as soon as this marriage. marriage happens, she is on Elizabeth's clock to get pregnant and produce this air. Peter being the shithead that he was, as Chris was talking about, played with toy soldiers,

had this massive man crush on Frederick the Great. He didn't speak much Russian. He surrounded himself in his kind of personal court with Germans that he grew up with. So that's already a bad look. And that's what's crazy too, is there are like separate courts. So they're not hanging out. They're passing each other maybe in the hall sometimes, but they've got like their entourage or their courts, that's what they call it holding court, with them, that they're just traveling with this entire time,

consisting of completely different people. And so until they really are in their bedroom together or having arranged nights to be spending together, they're in their separate rooms doing stuff like that. I haven't heard it got to the point when like, apparently the little soldiers weren't enough for PD and he was having like his friends and servants dress up, up in the military uniforms and have them like move around and play war in these little battles.

So there were quite a few reports, I guess, from some of the people that were, they moved to, oh God, what was the name of the place? It wasn't the winter court that was in St. Petersburg. It was outside of the winter court. Iranian bomb, Iranian bomb is where their, I guess, marital palace was. It's the bone shack. You're supposed to go out there and make airs. So in the morning, Peter would go ahead and take out all of his friends and all the servants and everything inside the castle and he'd drill him.

This was a Frederick the Great. He was just out there drilling those people left and right. And then at night, they would go into Catherine's quarters and they would party and dance all night. Like, it was a situation where he was fucking training dogs in there. He was playing with both real people dressed as soldiers. and when they were unavailable because they had to go sleep it off or something, he's like, fine, but I'm playing with the dolls for another couple hours, and then maybe I'll try to get on top.

No, who are we joking? I'm not. You can't make me. And it's... I wouldn't have sex with her. Not even if the house was on fire. It comes to a point when Elizabeth has to put her foot down and be like, hey, we're taking your action figures.

Peter's like, okay, well, I'm just going to continue. working with the people in the house and drilling them with my friends. And eventually it got to a point to where the servants inside of the cast were like, hey, give them back its action figures. We have other shit that we need to do. Here's what it eventually boils down to. And there's debates whether how much she knew about it or how much she didn't know about it. But there comes a time when this is what we're eight, we're like seven years in at this point. And Elizabeth is looking in like,

Peter is not a viable option for my air. That's not, that's a non-negotiable. Have you, have you seen him with the soldiers and shit? No. What I need is I need you to produce me an air that I can take and I can raise. That is your job right now, Catherine, is to do that. And so she's like, get pregnant. And she just looks at Catherine and she's like, you mean with, and she's like, ah, get

pregnant. I feel like is the message. Yes. Get pregnant. Try to, you know what? Try to find someone that looks like it's got the same hair color or something like that. Try to get close if you can. And so

both of them eventually end up taking, we're going to refer to lovers, partners, ministers, mistresses. That's going to be a common thing throughout the episode here. So they eventually take lovers on the side. Catherine with this guy named Sergei salty cove.

I thought you're going to try to make a joke at that. Where's, oh, he's got salty loads, what? No, I don't, I don't know why that would be funny right now. I'm so focused. I don't know. I'm so focused on the fact that we're like, kind of tickling around the toy soldier story

just because it's kind of the ultimate, like, this is my favorite thing that Peter does. I know. Peter had taken up a lover pretty quickly after they had gotten married. He'd taken up a mistress pretty fast. So this wasn't a situation where like, oh, Peter's dick doesn't work. We can't consummate the marriage. This is almost Peter knowingly shunning his...

Hold on. Okay, look at this way. So her name is Elizavita Var-I'm going to butcher the shit out of this. Veronstoza. Veronstoza. Something like that. Anyway, I don't know if Pete's dick works. The reason I say that is he can have a mistress in which just like gets naked for him and slaps it around a little bit or dresses up like a Prussian soldier and spanks him with a butt of a rifle.

Whatever. As long as she's doing stuff behind the scenes or just hanging out with him, that could technically be his mistress. He could also be paying her and being like, yeah, tell everyone how good I fuck. He could be paying her just spread that. What I do know is that both of them do it. She gets with Sergei. I think it's like 1752 to 1754 there together. And he's kind of widely believed and also kind of hinted at at certain points by Catherine

himself to actually be the biological father of the son and future czar Paul I. So that's who people recognize as the child of Catherine and Peter is Paul. Hey, Catherine Peter Paul. I don't know. It's a to go that far means that. to call the rest of the Romanoff dynasty, Romanovs is just a sham, a flat out lie. But at the same time, I do believe, and like you talked about,

there's parts of Catherine's writings in some of her diaries where she does say that Peter's not the father. At the same time, I believe that her writing that is probably during a time when she has a lot of animus towards Peter, and that's going to hurt in perpetuity. Why was she not pregnant in any of the nine years before? I don't know. I do believe that they had consummated the marriage at some point. Yeah, but like how much so?

I know that she did and I can't remember, sorry, I can't remember exactly in which part of the process of her having more children, but she does have miscarriages. And I believe that- The first two are miscarriages before she has the- Before she has Paul. Yeah. So, and at the same time, I believe to make sure it's legitimate,

because here's the thing, too. she can't give birth to someone if at no point she was not having sex with Peter. Because then Peter's going to be like, we haven't had sex. The kid's not mine. Like he has to be able to at some point have it in his head that, yes, that kid is his because at some point they did have sex. I think that happened. I was really drunk when it happened. I'm pretty sure I put it in something. But the fact that they had also had sex before that and everything, I think the fact that it is like the two years before she eventually has. Paul that she has, that she has her miscarriages. And that's kind of when he comes in, Sergei comes into the pictures in 52.

So the timing for me just says it increases the likelihood of, I think, just based on the timing of it being Sergei's. Regardless, this kid is not going to be raised by Catherine because as soon as he is born, literally she is on the bed. She's got her parts out and everything like that, not to be disrespectful, but she is laying there. They come in and they're like, yay, you did it. Congratulations. Elizabeth takes the kid and she's like, deuces and takes off with the kid. Catherine's got afterbirth all over. She's just laying there, moaning on a mattress.

For a couple hours, right? And anyone that's in there with her, she's like, can you, in two week to move? And she's like, can you give me some water or something? They're like, we're not at liberty to do that. Is that, and is that something to have to do with, like, poisoning? or because you have to have like official people that like test the food or anything like that or like what the fuck is that? I think that she became extraordinarily less important at that point in time. Well, I mean, based on her treatment, everything, she basically is just left kind of alone to try to piece herself back together. I don't know what it is, what it would be for, you know, postpartum if you don't have the kid there. like postpartum seems horrible enough in everything but not having the actual kid there

and they mean like i went through all this and i don't even get to look upon the thing that i went through all of this for to try to like feel that closeness or get that like endorphin rush or something like that that's fucking no contact she never held poll yeah yeah it's a it all happens so fast and she kind of becomes dispensable at that point what that was october were first 1754. So the salt... I was going to say before we move on, because this is kind of at her lowest point right now.

Just to wrap it up, this is towards the end of Saltikov's time of them being together, I believe. Yeah, 54 is when... And it's a situation where I'm, I'm more than willing to go the Saltikov route. I would be fine with him being the father of Paul. My only hang up is that Paul is Peter's son

because Saltikov wouldn't have produced such a royal fuck-up. That's true. That's where you get into the nature versus nurture situation. Because Catherine's outside of the Romanoff bloodline. But didn't they also say that as he got older, even looks wise and everything, he had a lot of very distinct Peter features. Not Peter, you know, features on his Peter. Maybe, who knows.

It could have been too, but features very similar to Peter. Yeah, those are kind of my two things is I feel like Saltikov was kind of a, maybe a smarter member of society. Yeah. And maybe a more noble person than Peter was. Yeah. And Paul is raised essentially by the same Elizabeth that raised Peter and somehow still turns out exactly the same in kind of temperament in the way that he acts.

And then like you say, as he gets older in appearance, it's got to be Peters. Okay. So I love this spot to take a break because this is literally the low point of Catherine's life. and at this point after this occurs when she makes her comeback, it is going to be all rise and this chick is going to leave just shit in her wake.

All right, we'll be right back. Well, hello. Listen, while we head to the restroom and get ourselves something to drink, why don't you do something nice for yourselves? Head on over to patreon.com slash historically high and get signed up for a little bonus content.

I mean, come on, you deserve it. If you want to keep up with this, Our main source of social media is going to be our Instagram, which is Historically High Pod, P-O-D. You can also head over to its Twitter, it's X, it's Twitter, come on, at Historically High, and that's High, H-I-like, high. If you have any recommendations, you want to get to us, just want to reach out and say hello. You can hit us up on our email at Historically High Podcast, H-I-G-H-H-H-H-G-H-H-G-H-H-G-H-G-G-T-E-Mail. All right. And with that said, let's get back to the good stuff. All right. So Catherine has given birth to the first one. She technically has done her job. She's popular because she survived and she gave an air.

So as far as the people are concerned, they don't see how she's being treated within court. They just know that the princess that they like has now secured the bloodline. Well, that's what the commoners see. But the court sees the kind of, verbally abusive relationship that Peter and Catherine have where he will openly mock her at dinner he threatens on more than one occasion that kind of leads to what's what the writing on the wall seems to be for Catherine to become Catherine the Great where he's made threats

to have her arrested and to have her head shaved and to be put in nunnery or whatever the convent basically hey wait till I'm in power because then I can divorce you because then I have the power to do that. Then I'm going to go ahead and lock you away in a monastery and I'm going to marry my mistress because I can do whatever I want. Yeah, you have five years later, Catherine's pregnant with the second kid. So again, the outward appearance seems to be, oh wow, they had one kid. Now five years later, they're having another kid. Well, we have, and even between that time frame, we have this, you know, guy come in.

So the first guy is kind of out, and this is going to be a common theme. There's going to be just people coming into Catherine's life. And weirdly enough, she is going to leave a lot of these people in positions where they're still still very loyal to her. She leaves shit better than she finds it. That's what she does. Okay, this is Catherine's fucking superpower is to be able to, God, I want to talk about this so bad.

You know what? My wife won't listen to this episode. I'm going to talk about it. So my wife's grandma. Yes. Yes. Okay. So, and this is what I compare to Catherine.

So I'm going to try to keep this short. my wife's grandmother was a war bride from Italy, so from post-fascist, Mussolini, Italy, and came over with my wife's grandfather. And she went on to basically marry four other guys, but each man that she divorced, the guys that she married were like neighbors or something. And like three of the guys eventually lived within, literally within a few houses of each other. And they were all on like good terms. She would even go over to the other guy's houses and like cook for him at some point. She had kids with several of them, but like during their times when they were married, never really did any cheating. But this woman was basically had just these guys had her own little harem of dudes that she just made fucking like pasta for and was apparently an incredible woman.

This is Catherine's superpower. She's just like, hey, I'll date you. I'm going to get a little bit of, you know, benefit from dating you and everything. and then when we're done in a romantic sense, I'm going to make sure that you're taking care of, so you're still loyal to me and I can call upon you for help. So this dude that she starts seeing, right kind of in that period of the birth of their second,

Stanislavs Aponyatownski, he's this Polish diplomat. He fathers Catherine's daughter, Anna. Is that the second kid you were talking about? Because Anna is the one that dies in infancy. Yeah, she lived for 14 months. I mean, Peter is showing, up drunk to this birth and still making accusations that it might not be his, which at this

point in time, Peter was pretty sure that he sunk one in around the time that Paul was born, or at least in his stupid warped mind. Honestly, I think at that point, he is trying to be like, I could have sworn we didn't sleep together at this point. Yes, exactly. I'm the first time I can remember, you were wily, you might have tricked me or did something like that. I've suspected it, but this second time I made sure I kept my penis. Just I was always drunk around you so my dick didn't work. I mean, the smallpox probably did that too. Yeah, there's so many what-ifs.

And I do think you're right that Stanislav was probably the father of Anna. So that was from 1755 to 1758 that they were together. Years later, once Catherine is in power, she's going to end up using like Russia's military power, basically to get him appointed as the king of Poland. Yeah. Yeah, Stan becomes the man. Stay on good terms with your exes.

Catherine didn't just leave him taxi fare on the nightstand. Slap on the ass and said, she said, no. I'm going to send you out with a swag bag. I'm going to make you king. Not a Russia, but of Poland. Come on. I'm going to make you breakfast. I'm going to talk.

You have anything before January 5th, 1762? Gregory Orlov. So he comes into her life 1759 and kind of hangs out with her until 1772. So not too much about him early, early on. They're not, that's someone that was within her life, but not really like with her in the early stages of it. It was just they knew each other. He was this military officer who had a brother and they had masterminded this 17, 62 event that we're going to talk about here.

Yeah, to get to that 1762 event, we have to talk about January 5th, 1762 when the Empress Elizabeth takes her last breath and Peter ascends to the throne. And

Peter celebrates Elizabeth's death at the same time not wanting to become emperor because he still doesn't want to be Russian. And this is at a very precarious time because we're talking about kind of nuts deep in the seven years

war that happened from 1756 to 1763 and as Peter ascends to the throne he becomes the decision maker and he pretty much starts fucking up double time as soon as possible. This is she dies at 52. So I think they had they thought they had more time because she has like a massive stroke or or some type of hemorrhage or something like that. Apparently, like, her health had been failing for years, like before she actually died. She had, like, severe asthma, chronic respiratory issues.

It was hard for her to move around. Basically, she had this really lavish lifestyle. We talked about this. Didn't we talk about 15,000 dresses? So, I mean, lavish lifestyle. She had these massive midnight banquets. She heavily drank. She had, like, had fainting spells and seizures by, like,

the late 1750s. Again, she's Peter the Great's daughter. Well, yes. And she's a lot of Peter in her. As this is happening, Catherine's watching this and being like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. This woman is the only thing keeping him in line right now and keeping me from not being divorced. And Peter, like you said, his celebration, he's just watching this being like, just fucking die. Because then I can, you know, I can make good on all those threats or do anything like that.

And then when she does die, literally as she does, dies. Russia is on the verge of winning the seven years battle against Prussia, this huge military powerhouse and had Russian troops in Berlin. They had captured Berlin and had cornered Frederick enough to where he was basically like, I'm not going to get captured alive. So I might just want to off myself. And the moment she died that Elizabeth died and he became emperor, he's like, call it off. Stop it right now. Why are we fighting? against the great Frederick and everything. Prussia, we should be looking up to these guys and everything.

Get all the troops out of there. I want them to give all of those conquered territories back to Prussia for free. I'm going to sign a peace treaty with them. I'm going to basically reverse anything that Elizabeth had done during this. And I'm going to make sure everything is given back to Prussia. And to the Russian people and the peasants and all the calls. commoners and all the people that actually are the fodder for the armies, they're like, motherfucker.

All of the people here that have died for this, and you're basically just giving them all of this back, all of our victories and all the lives that we threw in over this last seven years war and everything, the moment she died, you basically just asked, you know, Frederick, he could, just told him he could stick it in whatever holy wanted. And he did And all those guard members That we lost Taking all of this land

And all the gains All the spoils of war That we had earned With blood, sweat, tears and death For the last What Five, six years At this point in time

You just handed it right back to him I It's It's kind of Beyond my understanding Of I don't know I have a weird time

With this whole royalty line because I have what I would do while fully knowing that at the same time I would never want to do this. So to be thrust into that position, to put myself in Peter's shoes here, to put myself in Peter's pants, if I didn't want to be there, I don't think I would turn around and hand everything back to Frederick immediately. I would try to get them to a place to where I could just walk off into the sunset. And you pretty much know that if you fuck up enough,

you will be killed. Like there's, even as the ever... I don't think this guy knows that. You don't think he knows? Buddy, I mean, after this, okay, so that protection that Catherine and everything had had, that's now gone.

Yeah. With her gone as well. He's openly free to, you know, threaten her and everything like that. That's behind closed doors. People can't see that. That's not going to get the military on Catherine's side or anything like that.

Peter then goes to siege church lands, and then forces Russian priests to adopt Lutheran-style practices back like the Prussians do. So then he attacks the religion. So all of those people that were Russian Orthodox and everything, now they're pissed off. Then he basically alienates the military

by making his personal bodyguards and everything drill in Prussian military-style uniforms in the way that the Prussians do, and basically starts to then openly humiliate Catherine and basically threatened to like divorce her, lock her up, marry his mistress. And this entire time that she's been back at court, she has still been making connections. She's had these guys that have been her lovers and her like confidants

and have also been planning with her, that these are the guys that have control and loyalty of the military because they actually fought. And they're not being told, these are Russian people. Yeah. These are people that actually really fucking despise Peter. And basically kind of sensing this, this is where Catherine, along with Gregori Orloff and then his brother Alexi conspire with also, you know, that these other like key military leaders, that they're going to have to eventually make a run for the throne. I think Catherine learned this much earlier.

I think the day that Catherine learned that she was going to have to usurp Peter is when she walked into their bedroom. And Peter had a rat in a uniform that he had caught... Not like someone that snitched on somebody, a literal rat in a maid army uniform. that had snuck into his toy soldier chest and nibbled off the head of one of his toy soldiers and the arm of another one.

What is limited edition, Frederick the Great? Peter court marshaled a rat. Peter dressed a rat, Peter court marshaled a rat, and as Catherine comes walking into their marital bedroom, she goes, what are you doing? And he goes, a court marshaled this rat. Off with his head! He made a little tiny rat gallows.

Yep. I thought it was a guillotine. Gallows is the thing that they have to hang somebody from. I thought he chopped its head off. I'm pretty sure it was a gallows because after he hung and killed the rat, he left it hanging there and Catherine goes, what are you doing? Did Peter the third of Russia hang the rat or cut its head off? He said that he hung the rat, so it would let all the other rats know not to mess.

with his stuff. Yeah, it looks like he might have hanged it. I probably chopped its head off. No, no, he wanted to send a message. Oh, so he made the rat march up the... I see, he wanted the pageantry of the walk to the gallows. Then did he put a black hood on and tightened the little noose around his rat neck and then pulled the little lever?

He flicked the thimble out from underneath the rat feet. Is a rat even heavy enough to... He probably assisted. There was probably a little pull and tug on that rat. Holding the tail. Yeah, but this is... He went full crasses. So fuck, that's even more extender hitters squeak and do all that.

That's okay. Yeah. I thought it was fucking even crazier when he just cut its head off. Of all the things that he did, not only did he give everything back to Prussia, but then he switched sides, which is pretty ironic that he switched to the losing side of the seven years war. He basically said we won, but I'm going to give the losers back all their stuff. And then we're going to start acting like the losers. And then we're going to start shit with Denmark, who is our natural ally against Sweden, who is our biggest enemy at the time. He did all that.

He pissed everybody else off. Catherine watched him hang a rat in her bedroom, and she's like, that guy's going to have to go one day. It was as simple as that. From the outside, on an international scale, you have Britain, who just got turncoded by Russia after they were fighting together on that side. there's going to be more than one occasion when Britain is going to come calling to Russia and Russia is going to be doing something else that had they kept that relationship up, there's a good chance we'd still be drinking tea every day. Let's see if people can start making the connections here because the day that you're talking about comes is July 9th of 1762. So there was an arrest of one of the co-conspirators of this coup plan that they were going to pull off the Orlovs and Catherine. thinking about the plan to somebody who wasn't in on the plane.

Yeah. So ending up, you know, forcing her to act prematurely. Basically, Catherine is, I believe, in this place called Peter Hoff Palace. And I don't know if it was Gregori or his brother Alexi. I want to say there was either the two brothers. There might have been a third. I can't remember. They're just the two.

The two men guys. Okay. So they basically come in while she's sleeping like, it's got to happen now. This guy's been talking and everything like that. He got pulled in. we got the soldiers assembled and everything. All the men we were able to assemble. And basically she's like, all right.

So she gets up, she gets into the carriage and they head straight for St. Petersburg. And I want to say while they're going, she's changing into like more of like a cavalry officer's like uniform, right? So she takes off in the first carriage. They end up having a meeting where she jumps into a second carriage that has her hairdresser. I think his name was like Francois or something like that. Fuck, yes, it was. That was there to do her hair because she had to portray this regal empress-looking figure. As she gets there, she's walking through the military members that have already basically vowed their allegiance,

and she's pulling pieces off of their uniform to put on. So she's lining them up and she's walking by and she's like, eh, we kind of got the same build. Give me your shirt. We got the same bill. Give me your pants. Give me your boots. but do you know how like sick that's when she goes to pull like

she's like I want this like thing the ribbon or something like that and you're just like and then it goes through and you're like she was wearing my fucking ribbon yeah everybody's because that even comes into play here in a second because there is this younger like 22 year old soldier that notices she's missing this like knot

or rope like hanging from the sword that she's using and goes and offers her his and this guy's going to come in big to play but at that point he's just one of these guys that's pledged his loyalty to her and like jumps on the back and his right and on the back of one of these carriages. And this isn't like she's being delivered in front of a group of people and basically pitching herself. She's going from military barracks to military barracks and basically

telling them that she has the power to become empress and that she will lead them in a better direction than Peter is. As they're moving along, basically I think the Orlovs had kind of already said like you guys are going to join us as we move along. but we're moving all along behind Catherine at this point. Because even the military, everyone was looking at Peter and was like, fuck this guy. Like, we were just waiting for Catherine to do this. So let's go.

And they end up gaining support of basically like the guard, like the personal guard and everything. The guard that was created by Peter the Great is now siding with Catherine, the non-Romanov. Yep. and then kind of the broader, like, St. Petersburg Garrison, who basically are cheering her as, like, the rightful ruler. And I think she ends up getting to the palace, right?

Because Peter happens to not be at the palace at that point. Peter's off fucking around with his friends. I want to say in that Arambalamba-bamba place that we were talking about earlier. Peter's playing paintball with his friends in the woods behind the house. As they're making their way back to St. Petersburg, he comes upon this train that are pulling fireworks. This big carriage full of fireworks that Peter had ordered for a celebration of himself that was going to be taking place in St. Petersburg.

And he stops somebody goes, what are you guys doing? You're supposed to be headed. We're headed to St. Petersburg. Why are the fireworks still with you? Why didn't you drop them off? And the guy that's the fireworks merchant tells him, Yeah, I got there and you're not the guy anymore. I just got snakes and sparklers.

He says, this is for the emperor's party in St. Petersburg. I believe the fireworks guy says, there is no emperor of Russia. There is only an empress of Russia. At that point in time, Peter realizes that he's been double-crossed. They start hoofing it towards St. Petersburg. Panned to the camera. Oh?

Yeah. Meanwhile, Catherine is sitting on a horse in front of this massive army. And as Chris was talking about, she looks the part, she's acting the part, she's playing the part, except for one piece that she doesn't have. And this 22-year-old soldier named Gregory, Grigory Potemkin comes running out to her and he offers her the sword knot from his uniform. Potemkin had actually been riding in on the back of the carriage with her, unbeknownst to her. and she's okay thank you i appreciate it now get back in line and pretemkin goes and gets back in line and she leads the charge to go arrest her husband here's the thing this ain't like meek little like uh you're not like your future this is like six three big dude gregory petemkin

coming up being like your highness like please take probably almost like level with her on this horse. Like me and all to raise this up and she's just probably like, oh my. Probably had to kind of, he like did the thing where when he walked up, he had to kind of pull it away from his thigh. Stories are going to happen about this. We might as well address, again, addressing the elephant in the room in regards to this. No. So she saw something this guy, but basically she's like, you can go get back in line now.

He's like, okay, I'll go get back in line now. Yeah, she saw a little glimmer in Potemkin for maybe a future situation. She's like, but not now, not the temptations of the flesh. I got a, I got a coup to handle. And handle it, she does. They go after Trey. They go after Peter. Peter ends up thinking, well, if I jump in a boat and I make it out to this island,

maybe I can find some, oh, not mercenaries on the island, but maybe somebody that still wants me in power. Did he read the history of Jenghis Khan about the one guy that tried to get away and wrote out to the island. Or fucking, even Spartacus that tried to head down to Sicily and got hosed by the... None of them realized that it never worked

to try to get out to the island? Nobody figured, well, he probably didn't study a lot of that. As he shows up on the island, he realizes that Catherine's forces have already gotten out there and they pledged their loyalty to, so he basically gets chased back to land. And I don't know if Catherine was maybe some sort of

a clairvoyant figure, but I think that she does Peter a real service here. He ends up getting taken by the shit, what are the brothers' names? Orloves. Yes, the Orlovs. As he's taken in and arrested by the Orlovs.

He only... He's like, Grigori, Alexi, just arrest him and put him on house arrest and don't let him escape. And they're like, we gotcha. And they're winking at her. And he's like, she's like, hey, just watch him and make sure he doesn't escape. And she's, and they're like, all right, and they wink back her at her again.

She's like, God, okay, whatever. Well, and it's not to say that Peter didn't make attempts to try to reconcile his relationship. He had sent three requests to Catherine. The first request kind of feels like I'm just reaching out to kind of feel the waters. do you want to stay married and just rule codependently, be co-rulers of Russia? And Catherine doesn't answer that. And then Peter's like, okay, well, do you want to stay married

and you can just have sole control of Russia? 50, 50? She's like, no answer, he's like, 100% you? And I just, you don't have to see me. Didn't work. Final request. can I have my mistress's violin and my dog

and Catherine out of the goodness of her heart grants this and like I say I think Catherine did Peter a service because I don't know what the rest of his life would have looked like but it wasn't going to be very long either way because eight days after he is arrested Peter ends up dying of hemorrhoids she saw into the future that Peter was sick she didn't want Peter on the run for his final days

so she has him brought in to Can you imagine the hemorrhoids? I mean, how would you even run with hemorrhoids like that? Yeah. They burst early, maybe you die sooner. That's the whole point. What I'm saying is she's like, don't run. And we're not kidding about this.

This was the official reason that he said that he had died. And they had really weird ways of trying to cure the hemorrhoids. Because obviously when they found him, they gave them a once over and they saw the hemorrhoids. They're like, hey, day eight, we need to try to fix it. these hemorrhoids, so we're going to get you drunk, and then we're going to literally try to choke the hemorrhoids out of you. Yeah. Didn't seem to work.

It's a neckbones connected to the backbone, backbones connected to the tailbone. It's a situation, and it's more of a holistic thing, but it's a whole mind-body, one thing's connected butterfly effect situation, you know. Yeah, just the Orlovs. You're an Eastern medicine guy. You know you put an acupuncture in your toe. fill it up in your shoulder? Yeah, I just didn't think that choking was going to cure the hemorrhoids, but apparently the Orlov brothers didn't have a... It was an experimental

procedure. Yeah. He didn't have much time. They were seen if it could. They could save future sufferers of of hemorrhoids. And I'm not saying that Catherine had him killed. I don't think that he had her, or she had him killed. I do think that she was... I don't give two shits. Asphetic. I think that she was fine with it. I don't really give a shit because honestly, How often was he threatening to just do horrible, heinous shit to her? He does, but again, the public doesn't know about that. So to keep him alive shows that she has, yeah. You just blame it on the hemorrhoids.

Exactly. Yeah. There was one of the loose end that needed tying up. I feel like that's also a little bit of a jab of saying like, is that just the most humiliating, like, natural way to die? You can't say a murdered, but like, I don't want him to have any type of, like, pride. I don't want him to have any humility left in life. So how do I kill him?

It's literally burst rectal bleeding. Yeah, they call it like piles or something like that. That sounds like a disgusting term for hemorrhoids as piles. Piles of a bad time is what it is. The last loose end that needed tying up at this point in time would be Ivan the 6th being killed in prison. So young Ivan's life was safe when Elizabeth was on the throne. Peter probably didn't really care because he had a real legitimate claim to the throne. Catherine didn't order Ivan to be killed, but she does have kind of a shaky claim to the throne.

Well, and the same deal kind of stood. And the guys that ended up killing Peter... The Orlovs? Yeah. I mean, they ended up getting, you know, rewarded and everything. they ended up being given a lot of land, a lot of perks for their role in that. And here's the deal.

It was hemorrhoids. So technically they were just there. They did all they could to save him. They tried to stop the bleeding. But with this whole Ivan, it's Ivan the 6th, I think, right? Yep. Ivan the sixth situation is don't rescue him

and, you know, don't start nothing, won't be nothing. And all of a sudden, in 1764, which, you know, who's to say, actually happened, but there's a failed attempt by a rogue officer to rescue and restore him to the throne. And so basically they're like, the deal was that no one can try to bust him out or we have to kill him. And so standing orders have to be enforced and the removal of Ivan takes place. Yeah, in 64. Technically it's not on her. No. She gave them. She didn't make the previous

deal. She was just fulfilling an existing contract left by a predecessor. Far be it for her to step in to something that's been chosen that way. Now far be it for her to say there was a rogue officer, they didn't just kill him. But September 22nd, 1762, you have the official coronation. Catherine becomes empress of Russia. Unbeknownst to her, during her reign,

there becomes a situation. of her walking into the Russian bank and be like, all right, let's open up those war chests, let me see what we got. And they open them up, and it's just a goddamn puff of smoke, and there's a couple spider webs in there.

A moth? A few moths fly out. Come fluttering out. The treasury has no money into it, or in it. And she takes a page out of her grandfather-in-law, Peter the Great's book, and she goes after the church.

She sees, she nationalized, I guess you would say, the church's assets, on behalf of the state and begins taxation of the church. She kind of minimizes the way that priests can perform ceremonies and even kind of forces them to basically start charging and then taxing them on doing like a baby blessing or something like that that they're being paid for.

And she uses this to finance all of these battles. Bless your house, eight roubles. Hey, the last guy offered me six. Okay, I'll do it for six. The motherfucker is Belinda kept me. Along with that, in 1769, the bank begins issuing paper money. So you have kind of this fast forward by this Enlightenment Empress that is pushing these kind of Western European ideals. Well, in like two years before that, I think in 67, that's when she had convened that like mass assembly that was supposed to represent all the classes, except of course 85% of people, which were the serfs, to be.

basically drop these new law codes based on the enlightened principles that were starting to kind of permeate and bring themselves into Russia. This kind of got cut short basically due to the outbreak of a couple wars that are going to be coming up. Russia ends up fighting two major wars with the Ottoman Empire. The first starts in 1768 and lasts for about what six years? Yeah. Before we get to the wars, just that we got a little bit before that I want to get to. But one of the, one of the of kind of the first things that she does is she puts out this thing called the instruction, or the knock-a's is 1767. And this is kind of like this monumental political document that is supposed to kind of guide basically law enforcement in Russia. And it's stuff like

legal equality that declares that all men should be equal before the law. Oh, it's innocent until proven guilty type stuff. Yeah. And the punishment levels of certain things and talking about the status of like serfdom as far as she disapproves of the severe exploitation um but she doesn't go far enough to take serfdom away and i don't like it and then just walks off this is it's supposed to be that thing where she's like where she's going to say something else about like getting rid of it and like i don't know she's walked out stage and it's a situation where she is reading voltaire she's reading all of these Enlightenment authors, and she comes in as this Enlightenment Empress that wants to bring Russia into this new age, but do it the right way. And then she runs into a problem

that none of the Enlightenment authors ever had to deal with. And I've carried enough water on this podcast for bad people, not all their water, but a fair amount of water, to say she can be as enlightened as she wants as a private citizen or somebody in waiting. But when you become an autocratic leader and you are the ruler of a country, you become more concerned with keeping your position than trying to do good for the people because you're trying to ultimately save your own ass first in hopes that you can do some benevolent things later. That's exactly it. So 100%. It's the situation. where you come in with all of these,

you don't know how the system works fully because you have never been in the role where you get to see all of the inner workings. You come into it with all of these ideals and as soon as you see that it's like it grinds and that there are certain ways you have to get stuff done where you have to do certain things you don't want to do,

she comes in with this ideal and she's able to get some stuff going momentum-wise, but then, you know, obviously she's not very religious because she's just like, fuck yeah, I'm going to tax the church and that's how we're going to go ahead and get our money. You know, she puts all of that church land and everything under government control. The church had a ton of like serfs and everything like that because they had so many landholdings.

So all of that becomes property of the government. Including the serfs. Including the serfs that she's able to make this money off of. But then what happens is stuff starts to kind of catch up to her. And like you said, but you get so used to having the power and you want to keep the power because you think you can be good with, you know, with the power. but then you're so afraid that you start making bad calls in an effort to keep it.

The ruling class that is the one that could remove you. It's the absolute power corrupts absolutely eventually. Yeah, she had to make some concessions, some enlightened concessions because she knew that she had to stay in power and the Enlightenment's not going to help the royal class. And the Enlightenment, here's

the thing, all of the Enlightenment stuff, a lot of it was like urban type stuff. It was in the cities, which was a very, very small portion of that because all of those serfs were all out in the country, that 85% of the population. So it was very visual, visually enlightening. You could see where the changes were happening. It was there in the city. Is there where the culture was? But then you walked out and you're like, well, when is it going to like kind of permeate down and all these people are going to benefit from it?

It's like, well, that takes time. You got to start it in the cities and start it with the upper class to have it come down. We'll get there. I just need time. I need to stay in power long enough to To see that through. Which, I mean, isn't there technically rational thought to that of saying, like, it's a slow fucking ship and it's hard to make these because everyone that tries to make hugely drastic changes that are going to impact end up out of power. And right now, I'm the fucking empress of Russia. And I got to try to navigate this thing to make sure that my power is secured so I can try to enact some of these changes. But that's the issue of that because that's hubris on your part. It's such a fucking balancing act.

I know there's no way you can talk yourself into anything, I guess. But the ultimate thing is, I think that we've learned through like the French Revolution shit like that, that people live better when there's not a king, when there's not a ruler of a country. So in order to make stuff better for your populace, you would have to step down from your position, but you're not going to step down from your position. Not when you have more confidence. when you have more confidence that you can do a good job and that out, you know, overrides that whole, there shouldn't be autocrats. There shouldn't be autocrats.

But if there is going to be, I'm going to be the one to be able to do it differently and do it right. But that's what they're telling themselves to try to. We've all told ourselves that at some point. Come on. Yep. Come on. Along with that, she just for to go back to her enlightenment stuff,

she encourages the migration of these German farmers into the Volga River Valley. region and they're modernizing the agricultural sector of the Russian economy that is making them more money. She also focuses on public health. She begins building modern hospitals. She's collecting vital statistics on all the public to kind of look and see, you know, if there's outbreaks of disease in certain regions of Russia. And in doing so, she sees that there is an outbreak of smallpox inside of Russia. Smallpox back in this times were like everybody

that lived in a largely populated area is going to get it and it's going to spread. And it had a death rate of about one in five that it affected, or infected, it was going to kill them. Prior to this, hundreds of years

before this, in places like Africa and Asia, you have the practice of inoculation starting. inoculations are happening in Turkey when they get picked up by an English I believe it's an way down the South Road and all that kind of stuff and then working their way up into Europe brings it up into England and this practice is essentially it's really gross so you're going to take the pus out of a smallpox wound or an infected patient you're going to make a slight

cut in the skin you're going to put a little bit of that pus inside the body you're going to wrap it up and the sickness is going to affect you, but it's just going to affect you on a minor level and not to mention you're doing it when you're healthy. So your body's at its peak to be able to fight this, it's going to suck dick for like two weeks. You're not going to have a good time. But after that, you're going to be immune to smallpox. And as this was making it to England, English doctors are looking at this procedure. They're like, well, if we slice a bigger hole and we put more of the pus inside of it, and then we help the body because when it Plus better.

When it gets a high temperature, it's because the body is trying to fight it. So if we make the person hotter, their body will be more efficient to fight the virus. The other method is working just fine. So are you just kind of like, yeah, but why? Yeah. I mean, it seems, but I guess you also don't technically know if it's actually working because it takes such a long time to try to do a study type. Yeah.

So, but even though this practice is flawed in England, you're still looking at a death rate of one and every 50. So now you've, the mortality rate on this went from 20% of getting smallpox to 2% of getting inoculated and dying from that. There's this man, he's a Quaker English doctor named Thomas Dimmesdale. And Dimmesdale figures out the better solution is going to be to cut a smaller hole and just use a little bit of pus to get the body reaction to be able to fight this thing.

And his numbers are actually great. has conducted 6,000 inoculations and only lost one patient. That's a hell of a lot better than 2%. I don't know what that percentage is, and we're not going to try it because our math on here is famously, intentionally bad. But that's a pretty good success rate. And Dimmesdale hears Ergots a letter from the Russian Empire from Catherine asking him to come inoculate her.

And he's looking at like, I don't want to come to Russia. this this feels really bad who is this it's gotten bad enough this outbreak has gotten bad enough in the city that uh Paul's tutor's wife

ends up dying of smallpox so it's getting closer and closer and Catherine hears of inoculations she's pushing for dimsdale there's a rider that rides like 16 days straight from Russia to get into England I don't know how he rode across the water

maybe he was treading on a boat or something. They got those like paddle boat that horses were in a swan that came across

pedals yeah uh end up just basically calling for Dimmesdale personally and finally he's like okay

I'll come over and do it and I just see them chloroforming Dimstale yeah maybe that was it take Z off for next time

he did end up taking his son with him so they might have chloroformed him for maybe just leverage no witnesses

yeah he saw too much as soon as they get in this carriage to ride into Russia, they see that this is just this beautifully opulent carriage. And this is not at all their belief of what Russia looked like. And as they get to the winter powers... That's where the vampires were from. Like, you mean like Dracula? Like Transylvania? They're like, yeah. Like, no! I mean, it's cold as fuck here, but... There is a lot of gold still, though. Somehow there's a lot of nice stuff. A lot of stuff the

Germans are going to want to take when they come into Russia and World War II. They're going to have come deep to get it. As Dimmesdale's waiting, they put them up in this beautiful kind of like apartment flat right next to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Dimmesdale's actually looking around like, this place is way more modern than we thought it was. I'm still a little nervous about this. Is this like how all kidnappings work?

This seems odd for kidnapping. I have no baseline. Just to lay out the risk factor for Dimmesdale here. Catherine had gone ahead and made plans for Dimsdale with a carriage waiting outside to take him away in the dead of night to a waiting ship to take him back to England. Now he had to do this in front of people, correct? No. Okay, then here's the deal. How would anybody know?

I feel like because she couldn't just claim she got it done. I think she actually had people. I'm not saying she had like a stadium full, but I believe she did this in front of people. from the reading that I got this was in the dead of night really because they wanted to make sure that if anything happened katherine died it would give him sufficient time to escape no no i get that aspect of it but she had to the whole point of her doing it is to inspire her her people to believe in like the science aspect of it that it was useful and that it could save their lives so she would have to have people watch her have it done or she could have not had it done and just said she did not take any risk like you're thinking, I got another side to it. And I think that this is what she was going for in kind of the way that it makes the most sense to me. She volunteered

to do it to herself because she needed to get Paul done. Because of Paul contracted smallpox and died, her claim to the throne of being a regent, quote unquote, regent for Paul, who's the natural bloodline.

Her claim goes... Paul was nothing before this. She's not a regent at this point. She's the empress. She is, but her claim of being Empress without having an air that's her son becomes a little bit more shaky. Correct. She could technically have another son and everything. But at the same time, if people like her, I don't think she, I think her point about keeping Paul around is so Paul can have an error and she can then take that air. I think she understands that Paul being taken away from her.

She's like, the last kid that got taken away was a fucking psychopath, was my ex-husband or whatever. and so I got to try. I can't do anything to fix Paul now. Yeah. So now I have to try to get Paul's kid. And at that point, that's why she's going to end up naming her heir, not Paul, but the next kid in line. She goes a little great way that. She just, I think, has to keep Paul alive.

But at the same time, I think she's like, I can't fucking lose people to smallpox all the time. I got to make sure I keep enough people around this country to keep it functional because a population is what's going to make this company grow and work and make money. But that's why she couldn't inoculate Paul first because if something goes wrong and Paul dies. Oh, got you okay. Then she's going to have to explain that she accidentally killed the hair to the throat.

After it worked, then she was like, guess what I did? And the thought process that she had was after she's inoculated, once she's sick, they will use her pus to put into him. So it's a direct connection down the line. That ends up not being able to happen. There's a couple things.

Paul ends up getting like some other kind of sickness that they're like, we can't do this now. We're going to have to wait until he gets better. He ends up getting inoculated too. But over this entire time, you have, I believe it's up to like 1800. There ends up being 2 million people within the Russian limits. Yeah, by 1800, there was those 2 million people that had smallpox inoculations. in the Russian Empire. So the growth of that and just the proof,

the propaganda she calls it, which it totally is of her saying, I took this, I lived, I'm not scared of smallpox, my son took this, the heir to the throne took this, he lived, he's not going to contract smallpox.

I think that was enough just by word of mouth to get it out there. And that's not to say that there weren't a ton of people that still died of smallpox. What I think supports of those the fact that she, I believe she actually did it

based upon, because here's the whole deal, if she wasn't going to actually do it, why even act and bring that guy in? She could have brought it, she could have said a Russian doctor was going to do it so they would trust that people in Russia knew what they were doing, but she actually needed to do it. She also probably needed

to do it. She's like, I got fucking plans. I got to wait till this guy has a kid then take the kid that raise it to do mine. I can't be getting fucking smallpox. I got to take the chance. And once I get in, people see that it works, because it will. then I'm just going to get everybody inoculated, then I'll have a population that I don't have to worry about getting wiped out every few years.

And that was also part of the thinking was she understood the value of human beings. Yeah. That she knew that this was at a time when you didn't really get close to your kids until they hit a certain age when it... She wanted to protect the serfs so they could be surfs. Yeah. Yeah, to keep surfing on them. Her in Dimsdale actually became pretty close friends. And later on in life, Dimsdale actually sent her like these.

four Italian greyhounds that she started breeding and it became like the dog in fashion in Russia. Of course. Because a dog that has no hair on it. Just freezing for that. It's a long body just trying to fucking shiver. It's why you had to send four. She sent a letter later. She's like, hey.

Can you, do you guys have like something with more hair? Thanks for sending four. Two of them survived winter. We figured it out though. We're going to make them wear stupid coats. Do they grow hair? Like, had you shaved them before you sent them? They're sleek.

This is as long as it gets? Oh, they're fast. Okay, great. They're going to outrun the cold, I guess, huh? Yeah. So along with this kind of Western European philosophy in Russia, they begin, Catherine begins state-funded schools. She is building girls schools, again, mostly for the noble elite.

there's this girl school called the Smolny Institute that actually begins taking students beyond just the royals, but still, you know, the upper class. Correct. You're teaching a lot more people to have literacy and access to education than were even before this. Yeah, and it's... And an educated society is going to be a more successful society.

I mean, that's just like, yeah, there's no arguing with that. And there also is a little pushback from some of the Russian aristocrats saying, well, why are we... using this kind of Western European thought. And she's explaining how successful all these other countries and empires are. You obviously have not visited any of the other further Western European countries.

Let me tell you, it's nicer there right now and we're going to get there. Read the fucking book. And along with that, Catherine does try, I guess, in a sense, to help to serve class. She gives them a small amount of power.

she basically gives them the ability to lodge complaints against the landowners and the people that they interdeals with. Yeah, she treats a more localized system of government where instead of being like, you guys are going to take your problems directly to me, and then I don't know who to address. You guys are going to take them to someone at a more localized level like a governor or something like that and report to them. And then they'll bring the complaints to me. It seems like she's tossing them a bone. but then at the same time you're looking at it and you're saying like

you can almost construe that as trying to distance yourself from it a little bit more you can use both sides of the argument I do believe she had the intention like you talked about of trying to help them through the length of time in which she was able to enact change but

who's to say the reason she's Kathy Grates is the fact that we're talking about somebody and she's not even close to being done yet that came from just a girl whose mother wanted to just try to get her married off to someone that she could try to live vicariously through her daughter. Oh yeah, Johanna, she's fucking back in.

Elizabeth kicked her out of court because they thought that she was a spy. Yeah, so yeah, they sent her back in a long time ago. Oh, and we even missed it. So she was angry about her seating arrangement for the wedding. Oh, and she got sent a private table two buildings over or whatever it was? She was complaining that she wasn't sitting up with the rest of the, elites in the royals and the tables at the wedding. Smells like poor people down here.

Elizabeth says, okay, well, I'll get you a special table. The most exclusive table in the place. Two buildings over from where the wedding is being held. Joanne is sitting by herself at a table, not a part of any of the festivities. The ultimate shut the fuck up. You know you messed up and you're sitting there. And they're like, no, no. Sit.

Yeah. Enjoy yourself. And you're forced. And you know there's a guard behind you, making sure that you're sitting there and enjoying yourself. you should laugh. You are in Russia. You have no power here.

Oh, they didn't talk like that. They talk like Prussians or Germans or like Austrians because they're all, God, wouldn't that be just so weird? Because you know they didn't talk like that. To go to Russia expecting to see all everything Russian and they're just speaking German. But then the people, the common people are speaking more of the traditional Russian.

Yeah, just wild. To get back on surf topic, the reason that she stopped short of doing this eventually and trying to help out the surf class is she sees the pushback from the noble saying we don't want them to have any power and then she's also seeing starting something that we're going to be talking about

a little bit later she's seeing the fallout of the Russian or the French Revolution she saw her I guess equal the king of France be hung and she realizes that maybe an uprising is going to be bad for her career so she does kind of lay off a little bit of that.

We've talked about them a lot. We're going to hit some highlights here. Catherine had a lot of lovers. We're not going to cut that short. I've heard the number that she had 12 different lovers. I'm calling bullshit on that. I feel like 12's a low number. There's really no shame in this because every royal in the history of royals has had

extracurricular affairs outside of their marriage, it seems. Yeah, that's more common than not common in those situations. It's not uncommon for a king to have a harem or concubines or anything like that, but that's a thing, is it's a king, and nobody's going to look the, everybody's looking the other way on a king doing it. Correct. And what's the, okay, what's the counter going to be to a king in that situation? It's what someone wants to go, okay, this king, you know, slayed a bunch of ass and everything. What's the next guy going to get him up there and say about him? Well, no, he didn't.

That's going to be the worst thing against that king is going to be like, oh, no, he only. you know, but he fucked all these, you know, animals and stuff like that. Then maybe you're sulling his name. For Catherine, the whole point of it even being a topic is that... She's a woman. It's 100% that she's woman. But here's the thing. She did it in a way that she got so much benefit out of it that it was...

You almost have to look at it and say, you do the same thing to zero benefit to yourself. as a king. I'm able to put myself in a position of control over all these people that are in positions of control and even when I don't let them in on this sweet sweet

you know, what, borsh, a bowl of borsh or whatever you want to say, they're still loyal to me because I take care of them because I know I'm a fantastic fucking cook. Yeah. And I know how to

and I put them in positions of power. Catherine is a grandmaster of bang chess. Yes. She's moving the pieces on the board exactly where she needs to be. Whereas a king is not doing anything in bang chess because he's banging women. She's maximizing her time. She's like, I'm getting my rocks off just like you guys. I'm getting so much more out of it. Yeah. Yep. I got to fuck his way into being the king of Poland. And that's who we're going to start with. Um, Stanislav, Pont. Oh, shit.

Ponutowski? Sure. Finds himself the king of Poland. The pair had met in 1755, as Chris was talking about earlier, and Stan was installed as king, August 1764, after a Russian invasion of Poland, as Chris was talking about. And this is a situation where the Poles had kings, but they were always a Polish descent.

Yeah, they were someone from the area or from a line within that area. Yeah. And Russia comes in and says, well, we're going to make you a vassal state. Not only are we going to make you a vassal state. We're going to make you guys vote. And it turns out the only guy that's running for this position is Stanislaw. That's a pretty good, he moved up in the world.

Then, as Chris was talking about the brother combo, oh, fuck. Orloft. Yeah, the Orlofts. Had seen her through this coup and end up falling out of favor. but still have a pretty good working relationship. Fall out of favor in the sense of like her and Gregori fall out of like the romantic relationship. She's able to just do this.

She's like we have our romantic relationship, but she also has her political and like business relationship with all these guys. They all like, um, they all, what am I trying to say? Compliment her like strategies and like she puts herself in a position where she puts the best people and people that will be straight with her in positions. Yeah. Even when they're gone, she's just like, so we're just not having sex anymore. You're still going to be doing a bunch of this stuff and everything. I'm going to give you this. You're going to be looking after this. And they're just like, okay, and she's like,

we're not having, like, keep having sex with whoever you want and everything. It's just like me and you aren't. Still come to me if you need anything. I'll call on you if you need anything. We're all good. And they're like, we're fantastic. Yes. So we get to keep all of our positions. Yes. We need to keep all of our positions. You're not going to like, kill me. take my... She's like, no. In fact... She's just like, she's like, no, sweetie and just like,

kind of strokes his cheek and, like, don't fuck me over there. They're like, okay. I won't. Don't worry about it. Oh, and on your way out. Yes, ma'am. Grab the deed to this largest state in Russia that I'm going to give to you. And a couple thousand serfs. Deal. I'll take that. Like I said, there's like, you know,

the guy waiting with the fucking grab bag at the door, and it just has a stack of papers for landownership and a couple fucking, like a bunch of jewels and shit like that. There's a feather quill to sign your name. on some big plot of land. This NDA. That's what it was. Instead of making them sign an NDA, they had to just sign

off a big plot or big estate. It's just a deed, yeah. Yeah. A deed after the deed. Nice. Maybe the star of our show, we had mentioned him earlier, a young Gregori Petimkin that had been a supporter of Catherine since the coup. He would see her walking around the winter palace from time to time,

and he would stop and profess his undying love for the Empress, always kind of giving her a wink or a nod when he could and just saying, you're the woman for me, while just slaying ass left and right in between these times. Gregory in one book was referred to as having an elephantine presence around his groin region. Gregory was packing. Yeah.

And this isn't just coming from Catherine. This is coming from the Guard Regiment that he had served in where all of the other Guard Regiment, I guess. No one wanted to shower with. No. They had made mention of his member on many occasions. This was a very blessed man. And at one point in 1772, Potemkin's out fighting.

And Catherine writes him this love letter. And as soon as Potemkin reads this love letter and sees that Catherine has this undying desire for him and has always felt this way in her loins and cannot wait to see him again, he goes ahead and throws his hog over his shoulder like a continental soldier and jumps on his horse, that poor horse having to carry that thing. Potomkin probably had hip problems, right? Just from throwing so much. He's a big dude, he's like 6'3. Okay, so he might have the frame to support it. Ends of riding through the night all. the way back to St. Petersburg and they, I guess you could say, rekindle this kind of flirting romance that they've had for the entirety of her reign. They get down to the nasty business in

St. Petersburg quite a bit. There are rumors and I would tend to not call them rumors, but facts just in some of the letters that were written back and forth between the two that they were married in this private ceremony. She refers to a many times. as her husband. She also has a pet nickname for him. What is he? He's the... The golden cock, pheasant, or I don't know. I can't remember what it was. Yeah, it's something alluding to his giant hog. She liked Potemkin quite a bit. It was a flowery version of just saying like, hey, nice piece, bro.

Potemkin's desire stayed with Catherine, but he had this itch to keep expanding the empire. He would find himself as basically like the ruler of what would be considered new Russia in these lands. He would go out and build these new cities in some of these areas that were taken in the wars that we're about to talk about. They form quite possibly the most odd sex treaty that I've ever heard of. Oh yeah. They make agreements to both take other lovers because they're going to be away from each other. But the caveat here is that their lovers will refer to them as mom and dad, and they will refer to their partners as their children.

Or like nieces, or there was a whole bunch of like, listen, hey, I said it once, I'll say it again. Rush is fucking wild. Yeah, we're pro-sex podcast. I think we're celebrating Catherine's reign of slaying as much ass as she could get her hands on. It's trying to be great, man. It's just an odd. I'm fine with the treaty.

I'm fine with the open relationship. Good on them. The mom and dad thing is kind of where I started to be like, whoa, this is getting a little bit odd. But regardless, Potemkin goes out picking his nieces, as Chris was just talking about, and Catherine has these partners in court. They both know about them. There's one quote-unquote niece that Potemkin has that Catherine becomes like, friends with.

Yeah. They start spending a whole lot of time together, and it's like they're sharing secrets of their, their big hogged lover back and forth and form of friendship. Eskimo sisters. Yes, they were. It's very true. And it was cold enough up there probably.

It could be considered that way. Siberian siblings. As you were alluding to earlier, from 1768 to 1774, you have the Russo, Wow. Russo-Turkish war. And this is the sixth installment of, I believe, what becomes 11 different installments of the Russo-Turkish War.

These people are at each other's throats constantly. The Ottoman Empire continues its spiral. After the seven years war and kind of getting laid flat there, this war against the Russians is kind of where we start to get, What is it known as the sick man of Europe? Yeah, the syndrome of eventually the, it's like that death rattle when a country gets to a certain point when they can all smell blood in the water. So the two main Russo-Turkish Wars against the Ottoman Empire, the other one was in 1787 to 92. We'll get to that in a second.

But basically the goal here was there needed to be some type of warm water port for Russia to actually. kind of step on to the world stage as a superpower. They're not going to survive if they're landlocked every place except the north where it's very hard to get like a lot of shipping through. And so to go down into the Ottoman territory, they're trying to establish access to the Black Sea by annexing like certain areas down there to basically then turn Russia into a naval power that has access to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Caspian Sea, one of those doesn't connect to the other.

I can't remember which one it is. The Black Sea connects to the Bosphorus, which goes into the Eugen, which goes into the Mediterranean. Yes. So that's kind of what they're trying to do. And the whole reason the first conflict starts is the Ottoman Sultan declares war

basically pissed off about Catherine's political interference in Poland. And at that point, she's like, okay, well, I feel like she kind of baits him in a little bit. And then as he declares war, she's like fantastic. That's what I was actually hoping is going to happen. Potemkin has probably let her know all of her generals is like hey, all of

because of when this is, again, this is 68. Stuff's starting to brew for other countries in Europe. Britain and France are always fine each other. There might be some stuff going on in the colonies where something has drawn Britain's attention. If you're going to make moves in Europe,

you have to try to just make it a one-on-one affair because that's what you're banking on is your strength trying to beat their strength. If they catch an ally coming in, especially someone that can attack you from a different direction, it's going to be a little harder for you to take territory. So this timing kind of works out because everyone else is a little bit preoccupied. And as this Sultan declares war,

it gives Catherine the chance to go in there. I think they said in 1770, the Russian Baltic fleet. Yes, this is just what I was Googling to get everything right. This is awesome. Okay. It sails all the way. way around Europe and then into the Mediterranean. And don't they end up going, do they end up battling in the Aegean?

They get caught up right behind the Ottoman fleet and just wipe them out. I believe it was in the Caspian maybe. Okay. Somewhere in there. Because it says the Battle of Chesme, but I can't remember because that would gain access for the Russians to like the entire Aegean. But there is the boss for Straits. that you have to go in than into like the black that's the black sea i think well kind of in and around

that area katherine has these similar ideas of looking down at constantinople at this point and being like fuck that used to be a christian city that was that was the Byzantine empire that city's got some clout to it having that city's a feather in the cap if we can take this back that's going to be a huge win for the Christian community and not only that we're going to have a Russian orthodox ruler on the throne if I can get down to Constantinople and take it. I love the idea of the sneak attack. It's so brilliant to be able to take your fleet that far in and just had the Ottoman Empire not expecting a thing. But you have no, that's the funny thing, is it's technically the reason that you don't

think it's happening going to happen is because it's kind of audacious. Yeah. Well, not to mention if you take it. It has to happen. There's only one way they can get in there. Yeah. Or one way they can attack you from it. But yeah, so the Black Sea, you go by Istanbul into the seat of Murmara and then through the Caspian or through the Straits, I think.

So the Black Sea is the one that does connect everything. Think about how crazy. And we always talk about boat construction and how nuts that is, but they sailed these cold water boats all the way up through the North Sea or however they came down. Then into the warm waters of the Mediterranean. and these boats were able to withstand all of that just to sneak up. The Ottoman Empire had no idea. Because it sounded so insane. They're like, they're totally going to just try to beat us on land, right?

I mean, they'll hit us first, like, if they come across. Yeah, just a wild move. And while this is happening, you have this uprising during the war in the Volga River region that was led by this Cossack named Yemilan, Yemol. Yan Pugachev. And Pugachev kind of comes to power under the guise of being the still alive Peter the 3rd.

Now, I thought that this was stupid. I thought that this was stupid until I really kind of put myself in the time here. How many people outside of probably St. Petersburg in these big towns had ever laid eyes on Peter the 3rd? Oh, less than a tenth of a percent of the

population. And now we're talking about a time when pictures aren't a thing yet. So you haven't even seen a picture of Peter the 3rd. So this guy walking in and said, hey, I'm Peter the 3rd. I'm still alive. I need you guys to support me as I make my run to the throne. If nobody knows what Peter the 3rd looks like, does he not have a terrible plan here? Well, and if he has a point about the suffering or anything like that. And again, this rebellion, you know, when this guy does this, this is him rallying the peasants, which are kind of still getting the raw deal. Nothing's really changed for them.

Just because they're not working for the church, now they're working for the, it's the same work that they're having to do. But when this happens, this rebellion actually like slaughters, like thousands of nobles before Catherine's army is able to kind of respond to it, get in there,

and they end up capturing Pugachev. And of course, like, so, yeah, Pugachev does get captured. they took an area of land in between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains that was like their home base. And eventually when Catherine does pour the troops in, all these other Cossacks realized that Pugachev might be pulling the wool over their eyes about the Peter thing.

And he's losing now. So they lock him up in a cage and they walk his ass over to the Roman generals, or over to the Russian generals and just hand him off. This is for you. Please forgive us. That's what it was. It was like a sorry gift. Catherine, she is very pretty.

Either is Pukachev or P to the third. Either way, Catherine's going to be pumped to see him. Well, and I mean, even during this time frame, again, going back to these, like the, there's a guy, Alexander Vassel Chikov, who's this, like, guardsman. And after her and Orlov split off, she needs a rebound. There's never a time when she doesn't have one of these guys accounted for during these time frame. So from 1772 to 74, she's with this handsome guardsman.

Feel bad for this guy. Yes. You can't follow. Well, this is no, this is Orlov. This is before she even gets with Pugachev. So this is just her being with Orlov, kind of the first guy she gets to be with. This guy is just a dumb hunk of meat. That she's just like,

God, you're attractive, but I'm just going to use you as like a bang toy to try to get over this because she tires of him. He was boring. had no interest in art or politics or anything like that. So she kicks him to the curb pretty quick. 1774 in the middle of that Pugachiev rebellion, she signs this thing is the Treaty of Cukuk, Kynarka.

God, I butcher that. Kinarka. And that basically saw Russia gain the ports of Azov and Kirch and the right to sell merchant ships through the Bosphorus Straits. So they have now officially gained access to those trade routes and everything like that also for their military, or for their Navy. The weird structure of society in Russia,

there wasn't really like a middle class. There wasn't a merchant class because the surf class was so big. And think of this. Like, we say that lightly like she gained access to this port or did that. What that does is not only does that give you access to all the money going through there,

but now you have something to say to your people. And we're like, there's going to be jobs down here. Yeah. This is our area. Now we can like, you can go and you can better yourself. or you can go do this. They're like, great, we can go be surfs by the water. But at the same time, it does give the perspective of, like,

there's advancement happening. The country's on the come up. And it also opens up a situation where now you have a port that you can ship things out and get, they receive things 365. Yeah. A warm water port is always going to produce. We're going to have more stuff coming in. There's going to be more stuff for people.

Exactly. The Russo-Turkish war continues. after this happens. And basically, Russia's fighting to keep this hegemony. Jesus Christ. Hegemony over the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, I believe is what it was called. And while they're trying to fight this, you have the Habsburg monarchy who's taking control in Austria. And you have Frederick in Prussia looking around like, shit.

We don't really want them to take. a lot of this and this fighting's not going to they look like they're going to keep winning this rousseau turkish war pretty handily the ottoman empire is not doing a whole lot um so they create this territorial split called the um first partition of poland which it sucks for poland this whole scenario and situation that plays out with poland is awful um and basically it's just a split of of parts of this Commonwealth between these three countries. The second petition or partition comes in 1793, and this is just between Prussia and Russia.

And basically it's to avoid, I guess, recognizing what was known as the May 3rd Polish Constitution in 1791. And basically these political reforms were kind of reminiscent of what was going on in the French Revolution. and there's a situation where Catherine realizes, okay, Prussia and I need to kind of step in and take some more of this land. Russia takes a very large chunk to the east. Prussia takes a very large chunk to the west. The final partition, the third partition,

takes place in 1795, and it's a response to the Kazuko uprising, and they crushed the uprising and realized that Stanislaw wasn't necessarily doing, the most to stop this uprising from happening. Stanislaw ends up abdicating the territories that are left are completely dissolved and Poland has taken off the map until 1918

Yeah Poland ceases to exist from between 1795 to 1918 That's insane Yeah The Polish resolve to come back as their own country is strong than maybe anything that we've ever talked about. Those people are hearty. Oh, yeah. To sit there and wait and bide your time for a century.

Be like, okay, 1800's not going to be our time, but God damn it, after World War I, we're taking back our independence, our sovereignty. So jumping back a little bit to the Pugachab rebellion, halfway through that is kind of when Gregory Potemkin becomes, that's when him and Catherine are just like together at that point. this kind of becomes partners partners yes this becomes known as like the great lover of life and everything

during this time frame too Alexander is born to Paul so her first grandson is born in 1777 and then in 1779 Constantine is born and so she has these plans even naming these kids Constantine is named because she wants to put him in control of Constantinople once they conquer this area she feels it would be poetic and people would really get behind it. She's going to take Paul or

she's going to take Alexander and Alexander is going to be raised to basically it's going to try to skip over. She wants to skip over Paul and be able to write in that it's going to be Alexander that's taking over. Writing's kind of on the wall right now and I think Paul's feeling it a little bit. Yeah. And Paul

is not contributing to the family in any meaningful way. He's following a very similar path to Peter as far as how he's treating his future ascendancy. Yeah. So also in regards to like the relationship with her and Potemkin, so they have this physical relationship for like the first couple years and everything,

but they find that they're better together just kind of as like a power couple as well. They'll still be together at certain points. But Potimkin also assumes this weird role as like the screener for California. Catherine's like younger boyfriends to make sure that none of them have like too much ambition to try to kind of like sway her one way or the other to kind of derail their plans and everything. It's smart. Oh yeah, definitely. But it's weird that she's like, yeah, totally just make sure that none of these guys are like weirdos or anything like that. Just you know what I like.

Yeah. Yeah. Make sure they make sure they know what I like. There was a treaty that treaty that we talked about in 1774. That's what forced the Ottoman Empire to basically renounce its sovereignty over. like the Crimean area and made them independent. Well, because they were then independent at that point, Russia could be like, well, hey, Crimea, and could basically move in there.

And that's when Potimkin basically moved in and annexed that to the Russian Empire in 1783. He's building a new Russia. Yeah. So they basically were like, we beat the Ottomans. We made them release Crimea. And then we went in and we took over Crimea. Which is interesting. how much Poudi

desired Crimea Well and that's what kicked off That second Ottoman war Or the Ottoman conflict Was they were kind of demanding The return of Crimea They launched that was the first one When the Ottoman Empire launched

The preemptive strike to roll back Like to roll back their gains And Catherine had now made an alliance Or an alliance with Austria And at that point Had kind of updated the military And we're able to basically Just like put that one down

Pretty quickly The Ottoman Empire didn't have a lot of gas left. No, like you said, it was that kind of that death rattle, that old man. It's weird to think that they kind of stayed in that perpetual state until World War I. Like they wrote it out for another century. Well, that's what came down to what she called the Greek project. They wanted to develop basically this control over everything that the Ottomans had had. They wanted to dismantle the entire empire, conquer Constantinople, resurrect the Byzantine empire basically with Constantine her grandson on the throne.

I don't hate it. Kind of cool. I mean, it's lofty stuff. Yeah. But I'm done making headway doing it. And so at that point, the Ottomans were first to sue for peace. And then the tree recognized Russia's annexation of Crimea finally. And then pushed the imperial border southwest all the way to like kind of some of the

areas where it's at nowadays. And there's been all the current stuff with Crimean all that shit. they don't stop that's the amount of land did you pull the number that was taken under Catherine

I didn't get the the numbers but it was literally she widened it by every metric of northeast south and west north probably wasn't a tough push

no I mean you just had to go a little further here's the other crazy thing too when she first got into power the map thing the what the map thing

when she first got in and she went to like her advisors and all the people there. And she's like, they were talking about something happening in this town. She's like, well, what town?

They're like, well, it's this one from what we're referred. And she's like, show me on the map where it is. And they're like, um,

and none of them knew where it was. And so she went to like a map maker and they're like, well, this is as much as we have. We don't have much more. And she's like, we need a fucking map

of the area that we have. And so she had this huge map commission and then had them actually do like surveys and censuses and stuff. She didn't even know how many room she had. had in the house. House is so goddamn big.

I know. She hadn't even visited all of them. It continues to get bigger because the Russo-Persian War happens April. Oh, do you have anything before 1796? Yeah. So 1785.

Or sorry, she built the Black Sea Fleet, which was a permanent fleet that was actually going to be down there. A couple new strategic ports that she built there. And I want to say that God, and I can't remember the dude's name. Potemkin, when he went down there and was developing these ports, he was bringing in all of these different people from all around the area.

He wasn't like, hey, this is just going to be people from Russia were bringing down here. All the local people from the areas, he's like, this is what's going to make this function. Is it all of us are working together and we can get this thing up and going? She'd done this thing where she formalized the privileges of like the Russian aristocracy in 1785, basically exempting them from taxes and military service, while basically giving them absolute legal control over their serfs. So the Pugachchev rebellion that you were talking about that really stuck with her, combined with the shock of the French Revolution, which was in 1789,

that basically scared her shitless about pretty much anything giving additional freedom or rights to like the serfs. When in actuality that was going to make the rebellions happen. and she kind of just was like, remember all those enlightenment I just, well, I was young and I was naive and I didn't know about all that kind of stuff. And it was like, you know what? I think I'm just going to kind of do

what I want to do and go kind of full autocrat. Yeah, it's the absolute power of corruption. Mm-hmm. For sure. And then in 1791, just before the Turkish war officially ended, this is when her lava soulmate and just got,

she hopes she got a plaster cast of that thing. Gregori Potemkin, Potemkin dies. And as the one that was kind of with her the longest, I think the one that she saw most as her equal, this pretty much just sends her into a spiral, leaving this just not only was he there for like the emotional aspect of it and could like relate to her, but then he was such an actual resource from a military, political,

like that kind of standpoint that now, someone that she would go to on pretty much anything and everything she lost that they shared the same dream they wanted to build Russia into something spectacular so much

so that even when they weren't having sex the agreement was like let's still work together and be able to complete this so you not only lose an emotional partner and probably still a sexual partner when they get back together on mom and pause show up and get back

together, but you lose kind of the artists that you're painting a picture with. Somebody that you can not only lean on for ideas, but somebody that you have to celebrate victories with. Well, and I think that this really kind of leads into those last like four years that are basically just her being kind of like politically paranoid. She's still going through the grief and everything like that. Of course, she's with other people because she doesn't want to. She doesn't want to be alone, which is fine. But you really see all of that, like, all of the, not the positivity, what am I trying to say?

All of the, why is the word escaping me so much? When you have an expectation of good things to happen. Enthusiasm, the enthusiasm that she had for, like, the possibility and all of the change that she's going to have, that's just when that gets wiped out. And now it's all about protecting her position and her legacy. Well, they're still working on conquering different regions, and they're going to have a run-in with the Persians, just to update Catherine's sex life at this point. 1789, she met a 22-year-old named Platon Zubov,

and they start getting together. She kind of becomes his, or he kind of becomes her main penis. He was 22, she was 60. Yeah. And they had always described Catherine as a rather shapely voluptuous woman. She was probably packing a lot behind her and sound like she was pretty sturdy up top. She's getting older and she just kind of starts rounding out in every aspect of the word. Well, and here's the thing, too, is you'd think like as you're getting older, you'd have to do less.

If you're bringing in, you know, if you're one of these boy. toys that she's bringing in, you're like, perfect. I get to get taken care of. Probably won't have to do as much. And she's like, yeah, I mean, I'm not like in the mood for like full on, you know, intercourse. Yeah. But you're going to get down there and do all the work yourself. You got, you got stamina. I hope you can breathe through your ears. Stick your tongue out. But Platon, this young stud of a man, seems to have held Catherine's interest and I do, I think I had seen something

or maybe heard something on a documentary about how Petemkin had given his sign off before he had passed away on Zubov. So he had the Potemkin blessing and kept Catherine's kind of love attention span up.

The Russo-Persian war that happens from April to November of 1796 sees incursion into this Russian protectorate of Georgia. They had come down on a couple different occasions and had signed treaties with Georgia, basically, saying we will protect you your region, as long as you keep the Persians away from us as a buffer zone. We're going to use you as a buffer zone.

If they break into the buffer zone, we'll come down and take care of it. Persian Empire does end up pushing into Georgia and has some success before a group of Russian soldiers that are led by Valerian Zubov, brother of Platon, the boy toy. They come in and they absolutely wipe the floor with this Persian Empire protecting Georgia, and they consolidate power over the Caucasus, which is huge, as we know, going forward with the oil production and everything that gets pulled out of the Caucasus during World War II. So for them to be able to take this region away from the Persian Empire, I mean, Persian Empire just won't go away.

And I hope they outlive us all as long as they've been around. But it's a crazy thought that you have Russia, who's not necessarily relatively unknown, but as far as the powers go, in 1789, you have France that's still kind of limping away and trying to pay off debts helping the United States and their revolution and you have Great Britain

that's still licking their wounds who had a shot at the time during the American Revolution where Catherine had offered troops to Great Britain to go over and fight the United States and luckily... I mean the French were tapped. Yeah. There was nothing else they could have done.

So a Russian and Kurdish. Persian might have changed the American Revolution. 100%. Yeah. But during this time, towards kind of the end of her life, it was apparent that Catherine had favored a succession plan, as Chris was talking

about earlier, to her grandchildren. Either Alexander or Constantine, depending on how things went for Constantine. Yeah, we were skipping the fuck out of Paul. Yeah, Paul didn't quite seem like this was going to be a good succession plan for him. Well, here's the thing, too. like she did not like Paul

not even the fact that she was like well he's a sweet kid but he's not going to be good realer she probably remind him of his shit or her shit that's the thing he became much more like you know like Peter was like later in life he idolized the same thing he idolizes his dad and then also idolize like Frederick the Great and all this stuff

it was this weird repeat of history and so she names her beloved grandson Alexander who's going to be actually the future czar Alexander the first as her direct successor so as this is written down is this is what's in her documentation. This is what's actually going to happen. Now, before she could officially sign the decree changing the line of succession, she suffered a severe stroke that she had,

I think she had gotten up, she was getting ready, it was at the Winter Palace, and when she suffered the stroke, because she would have times when she was just alone in her bathroom, whatever, I think she was like in there, they didn't find her for a few hours. And then once they eventually did, she had slipped into a coma and then died the next day. on November 17th, 1796. She had told one of the ladies in the palace that morning that she had gotten the best sleep of her life. She felt rested and refreshed and ready to go.

Well, here's the thing, too. So she dies at 67. She drank coffee that was so strong that it would cause heart palpitations for anybody else. She used one pound of coffee beans to make five cups for her morning. routine. Her servants were able to use the leftover grounds to make their own coffee, which was still stronger than normal coffee. How much, how many ounces of coffee beans go into a cup of coffee?

I don't know, but she's using a pound of coffee beans for five cups of coffee. I don't even know how that works. I don't even know you couldn't take the coffee beans and fill the, you would have too many coffee beans to fill the five cups. It's so concentrated. Wow. So no shit. She had a fucking stroke. So just like some like little fun things that we can get back to her a bit

about what Paul was doing. About the stroke though. Pretty crazy at that point in time that the doctor had diagnosed her because they found her on the floor like we were talking about hours later. She was too fat to move without help. So they had to bring guards in, mail guards in to help move her. They put her on her bed. The doctor

correctly diagnosed her with a stroke, which back in that time to call that feels pretty accurate. I mean, I guess if you know the coffee habits. There are signs, but you're also a royal, like, doctor, which means that you probably are somebody that has an extensive

knowledge, or at least what they consider to be an extensive knowledge. Yeah. I just Hey, everybody. Hey, Dr. Nick. Did the guy throw a fist pump in the air when they were doing the autopsy and they found it like, yes? No, but at the same time, what if they were like three things they called it on.

They didn't know what a heart attack was. What if they were just like, we know what a stroke looks like? Yeah. It's one of three things. Are they, is she stabbed? No, is there blood anywhere? Nope. Stroke.

Has she eaten any peanut butter? They probably was, the term stroke, I'm not making light of it, but it probably gets its name from something ridiculous like they had a stroke of bad luck because they couldn't explain why someone would have died. That's logical with the way that they named stuff back then. Yeah, I can see that. But she also really loved tobacco snuff, but she hated using your right hand because she didn't want people who kissed it to smell tobacco. She trained herself to only use her left hand to load herself up.

Snuff, she was sniffing it then? Yeah. So, like, she had a Coke nail? I don't know. How would you? I've never thought about that. I guess, why didn't she use a tool? Just like a little thing of a pinch.

Crazy. That doesn't seem like a royal thing, but it seems like a Russian. Royal Queen thing. I mean, just some fun shit that I wrote down about her. So there was an arrogant nobleman the defendant her one time. So she forced him to dress up as a bride and marry a dwarf

in a massive, highly publicized mock wedding ceremony. The Russians have something about dwarves that I can't quite figure out. You know what? I know. I see why you have the kinship and like with them on that. She was obsessed with cats of the Winter Palace,

so she gave them the official status of guards of the picture galleries to protect like the art and everything because mice would get at Pablo Escobar style if there's enough of stuff mice are going to get and destroy it their descendants the descendants of those cats still live

at the Hermitage Museum today so they're bred from those cats and then crazy things she loved traditional Russian winter ice slides so apparently this was a thing where they would design these elaborate ice slides that were like roller coasters but she

wanted to ride them in the summer so she ordered her architects to build wheeled carts in grooved tracks. She created an alpine coaster. She basically invented the modern mechanical roller coaster at one of her palaces. Wow. She had this private party room. It was called the Hermitage, and it featured a mechanical dining table or dining tables that would rise up through the floorboards that were fully set with food.

And it basically allowed her guest to basically be like, there's no servants in here. There's no one. And it would allow gossip to just come throughout the room. So it was like Harry Potter, man. that freaking tables are rising out of the floor with food already loaded on them. Wow. She's a hip, hip lady. Yeah, she was, and it's a shame the way that she was written about.

All the horse innuendo that we've been peppering in here, I guess maybe just me, comes from... I said nay to it. There you go. You got one in before the buzzer. comes from basically just this salacious ad that was taken out and it was an 18th century British paper of basically a rumor saying that she had some sort of contraption that held her underneath a horse that was having sex with her.

Someone heard, and what it was, it was the telephone game, and someone heard she's banging a dude that's hung like a horse. And by the time it got to somebody else, they were just like, she's banging a horse. And they're like, must be, it's Russia, dude. They heard, or they said Potemkin and somebody on the other end heard like Appalusa. And they're like, ah, she's bag on a horse. The horse's name is pumpkin?

What? It's, it was solely just propaganda written by the British tabloids to try to bring a very successful female ruler down. And when I say success, success is such an interesting word to use for a ruler. Because what she did in Russia, probably fairly successful. probably pretty well liked. That's how she got the moniker the Great while she was alive. The whole point is she had grew the territory when none of these other countries had the option to grow theirs and everything.

They all would have done the same thing had they been in the position to do that. So it's the constant European thing during this time frame and throughout all of history is picking on the person that they think is maybe the growing threat. So it's like, hey, you see Rush over there. They're kind of looking pretty good right now. You know what? Let's fuck with them a little bit. And so even Britain and France would be like, hey, Russia,

and they would just start kind of fucking with them a little bit. It was trying to just a constant soap opera of trying to keep everybody like, you know, on their heels. As Europe turns. Well, and it doesn't help too that as soon as she's dead, Paul destroys all of the paperwork of the decrees changing the succession, seizes the throne, and immediately begins undoing or begins undoing a ton of all of these policies and stuff

that Catherine put into place, trying to basically just dismantle the system that she built. He had this beautiful hereditary trait that he gained from his father of just making everybody hate him pretty much immediately. Beyond burning the notes, he sent troops out to exhume his father's bones and brought them to the cathedral

and buried them right next to. his mother. Oh, no. Was it in the grave? So he had them exhumate from the grave where he was, had them do the bearing together to give him because she didn't give him like an official

like ceremony like that. So gave him the thing along with the mother and then took her back, reburied him, and then buried her next to him. Next to him. That's what it was. The lady couldn't get away from Peter. Just so bad.

bad. They talked about during the funeral possession, he was constantly making a racket and fucking with the people that were carrying his train behind him and just basically making a mockery the whole entire thing.

And Paul was his father's son, along with pissing everybody off. He also threatens to imprison his children, which will catch up to him. Everything that he does, he tries to assemble forces to go try to take

India. What are you doing, man? What's the thought process of India? What are you going to do with India? You got to try to one up. Well, if this is a woman and everything like that, like, watch what I can do. Yeah, you're not getting down that far, man.

You're just not going to do that. And he doesn't really have time to do it, because he ends up ascending November 16, 1796 is when Catherine dies. So shortly after that, By March 23rd, 1801, he had just, he had fucked over so many people. He had dismissed a lot of officers from the military that weren't loyal to him.

If there was any question of succession plan or anything like that that launched him out of power, he was nipping that in the butt. I mean, doing what a ruler should do. Anybody that had supported Alexander being in that position instead of him. Yeah. And it catches up to him because on March 23rd, like I was just saying, 1801, this band of officers that had previously been dismissed by Paul end up entering the house. And at this point in time, 23-year-old Alexander is in the house. And he had given them permission to depose and arrest his father, but not to kill his father.

And as they enter Paul's room, one of them grabs a giant gold snuff box and snuffs him out with the box, crushes it over his head, knocks Peter or Paul to the floor. Paul's dying. They're still in this weird, probably drunken vodka-fueled Russian rage. Or they're just pissed off because they... Okay, yeah. That sounds better. Any of this stuff that they've earned or felt like they've

worked toward it's being dismantled and everything. They saw what happened before, you know, some of these people saw what happened with Peter the 3rd and everything and they weren't going to allow enough time for this to get any steam. I feel like they didn't need to stomp his head flat.

Yeah, they were going to kill him, though, regardless. I'm not saying it was the right thing to do, but here's the thing. Don't give them their mentality is don't give anyone that still supports this guy a chance to break him out. There's no chance to putting this guy back into power if this guy's no longer alive. I don't disagree with that. I don't necessarily disagree with killing him for those reasons. At the same time, if you're going to promise the future emperor... Don't kill him in front of him. Yes. Yeah. And they don't... But at the same time, is that to potentially send a message and saying,

remember who the power is with, not saying like with the military, but it's, don't piss off the guards, man. Don't piss off the military. Don't dismiss the soldiers. They can go back. You're going to show up. Show up, correct.

Yes. We'd like our jobs back now. You saw that we took turns stomping a mud hole in your dad's face. We can do that to you. At 23 years old, Alexander ascends the throne the very next day. and I don't know how much further in the Romanoff line I don't know who the next one is that we get to do but I have a feeling there's going to be a fair amount of fast forwarding

Yeah also at the same time if he takes possession of the throne in 1801 We have what a hundred and seventeen years before the revolution So we still got some time yeah for sure All right man She was cool Yeah she was She's a good bro. We kind of talked about it in passing during study.

She falls into a weird spot and the bad bitches of history list for me. What's also weird is it's weird to talk about a ruler. Most of the people we talk about on here are responsible for a large portion of death of their own people and everything. Again, she's not the greatest person because she did a lot for her, the common people or humanity or anything like that. she was great because she pretty much built herself up to this position and kind of had to do it on her own because she wasn't even she was just brought into that family and all of a sudden now she's this no one else is known as the great after this it's literally peter the great

and katherine the great no one else gets this moniker in russian history so yeah i mean she expanded the empire she hooked a grappling hook to russia and kind of dragged them further into the future yeah so she did do a lot of great things, but like I was talking about earlier, the funny thing about declaring somebody great is ultimately there's going to be somebody outside the borders that doesn't find Catherine's actions to be great. Correct. They're known as different names,

depending on where you're from. Ottoman Empire probably wasn't real. To some people, Catherine, they're not so great. Yeah. Catherine, Catherine, they're kind of not all right. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'll catch on the next one. Peace.