catherine the great biography robert massie

She proved a positively queenly ruler, but was childless, so she coerced one of Peter’s grandsons, Peter III, to leave his beloved German state of Holstein and come to Russia and marry and impregnate the German princess Sophia (renamed Catherine by Elizabeth). She had been placed on the throne through a coup that imprisoned the “rightful” tsar, the infant Ivan VI, and for the next 20 years indulged herself in privilege, a couple of wars, and fitful slackness (she habitually put off governmental business). Among the personalities he presents, the Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great’s daughter, is especially engaging. Massie is so familiar with the figures of the Russian court that he (and consequently we) never feel lost. And then we humbly resign ourselves to witnessing the exciting and fateful contests. Maybe all idealized politicians, from Peter the Great to Lincoln to Lenin to Obama, disappoint when we realize that they’re playing the dirty game of politics. That she wrested the crown of all Russia from her husband, Peter III, and with the help of her lover placed it on her own head, and then tried to keep it from her son’s head and place it on her grandson’s, is forgivable – or at least, understandable – in the context of the Sopranos-style skullduggery and double-crosses and murders that characterize royal history. was only a little German girl brought to Russia for the sole purpose of providing the son of the house with an heir,” the reader, sympathetic or not with some of the grown-up empress’s pragmatic inaction and actions, will always be fascinated. While Massie is smitten with Catherine (1729-1796), who “beneath her title and her diamonds. His simple and straightforward thesis? “ and Peter the Great tower in ability and achievement over the other fourteen tsars and empresses of the 300-year Romanov dynasty.” Elizabeth I of England, meanwhile, was “the only woman to equal on a European throne.” He’s got his sympathies in place and a story to tell. He never seems flustered or tied down to academic details. Massie, whose ' Peter the Great' won a Pulitzer Prize 30 years ago, is about as comfortable a biographer as I know.

Catherine the great biography robert massie