Wu Zetian is the only veritable empress in Chinese history, and there is more than one empress in Russian history, but there is only one empress who is revered as "the great" like Peter the Great, and she is Catherine II.
Catherine II, whose original name was Sophia, was born in a small principality in the Kingdom of Prussia, and although she was a princess, she received a free and unrestrained childhood because of her father's dedication and mother's dereliction of duty.
Fortunately, at the age of thirteen, she was chosen by Empress Yelisavita of Russia as her future daughter-in-law, the princess of Crown Prince Peter III.
Sofia, who came to Russia from Prussia, had a new name, Catherine, and began a beautiful new life as a princess. The fly in the ointment is that Peter III was not cold to Catherine, first, because Catherine was not a first-time beauty, and second, because Peter already had a heart.
Peter's sweetheart was The maid of Honor of Empress Elizavita, and he made no secret of this, showing his cards as soon as he met his fiancée. Since Catherine could become empress in the future, she was naturally not an angry master, and she soon had her own lover.
Catherine's second lover was the young and handsome Count of Poniatovsei, and the two fell in love at first sight, and they were in love with each other, and they had to meet intimately every night. At first, catherine dressed as a man went to the place where the count stayed to secretly meet the lover, but later, seeing that Peter III did not care about this, he became the count entering the palace and went directly to Catherine's phoenix bed to ask for pleasure.
After a long time, Peter III's face finally could not hang on, and he personally led people to tie up the count who had come to meet Catherine on a starry night in a month, and took him alone to a secret chamber for interrogation, preparing to convict him of plotting assassination and then exile him to the frontier.
The news soon reached Catherine, who was in danger and immediately made a surprising but extremely wise decision to send in Peter III's lover, Vorenzova.
In the end, the affair of the Russian Imperial Palace had a happy ending - the two pairs of lovers did not violate the river water, neither interfered with the other, and each enjoyed the joy of fish and water.
But the story is far from over.
Although there was no love between Catherine and Peter, she gave birth to a child at the urging of Empress Yelisavita, and there were rumors that the boy named Paul was the illegitimate son of Catherine and her first lover, but Paul grew up to be almost exactly like Peter, and this rumor naturally broke itself.
In addition, Paul did not have any abnormal reactions when he was born, which should also prove that he was Peter's biological son.
In 1758, Catherine gave birth to her daughter Anna. Compared with Paul's birth, Peter has a very different attitude toward Anna's birth, and he openly declares that he does not know who catherine and whom the child is wild, let alone how Catherine got pregnant.
At the same time, he was cold to Catherine, and his bad words added up. Catherine was at that time all her body and mind on the crystallization of her love with the count, and paid no attention to her husband's rude behavior.
Seeing this, some readers may ask, Peter is the crown prince, why not abolish Catherine's throne as princess? There are three reasons for this:
First, the right to abolish the princess was in the hands of Empress Elizavita;
Second, Catherine had already given birth to the heir to the royal family, Paul Jr., whom the Empress had no intention of deposing;
Third, the ministers supported Peter, some supported Catherine, and Catherine had the upper hand.
To Catherine's great sorrow, despite her wholehearted care for the count's daughter Anna, the frail Anna died a few months later. Peter, of course, did not comfort her, but instead intensified his stimulation and attacked her.
Catherine, who has a bottom in her heart, naturally refuses to show weakness, she turns the pain of losing her daughter into the strength of counterattack, and Peter launches a round of confrontation, and the contradiction between husband and wife becomes more and more intense, and gradually becomes a white-hot state.
At this juncture, Empress Elizavita died of illness, and Crown Prince Peter succeeded him as the seventh emperor of the Russian Empire, known as Peter III.
Supposedly, the husband should be the happiest to ascend the throne should be his wife, but Catherine is the most nervous person, because she and Peter III are not ordinary two sons, but two sons who are in the same bed and dream, and the name husband and wife are actually enemies.
Faced with Peter on the throne, Catherine had only two choices — either to go along with it, to be deposed by her so-called husband, and then to be sent to hell; or to unite with her ministers to stage a coup d'état and fight with her husband. Catherine is not a weak woman who sits still, and her ultimate choice will not be the former, only the latter.
At the same time, Peter III was also conflicted about how to deal with Catherine, because although he hated and hated Catherine, he did not want his son Paul to lose his mother.
While Peter III was pondering, hesitating, and not knowing what choice to make, his men arrested a Guard officer who had been ordered by Catherine to plan a coup, and the coup plot of Catherine's faction was exposed.
Catherine did not stop at nothing, and immediately after learning the news, decided to act in advance and kill the enemy by surprise.
On June 28, 1762, Catherine and her military ministers staged a coup d'état to overthrow Peter III and proclaim herself emperor, the historical Catherine II, the eighth emperor and fourth empress of the Russian Empire.
Catherine II's coup d'état was successful for two main reasons:
One is that her pomegranate skirt attracted more support for her than Peter III;
The other was the perverse behavior of Peter III, which made the treasury empty and the armaments loose, causing widespread discontent among the upper nobility and the lower classes. Immediately after Catherine II came to power, she launched a series of drastic and drastic reforms, which promoted the prosperity of commerce and trade, increased the revenue of the national treasury, and strengthened the state apparatus.
She declared publicly: "If Russia wants to gain the respect of its own people and its neighbors, Russia must become a formidable power." ”
The coup also brought Catherine II another harvest – her most famous lover, Potemkin. By the way, Catherine II did not forget Count Poniatowski, who ascended to the throne with the great power of Russia and put the Earl on the throne of Poland.
With the wholehearted support of military generals such as Potemkin, Catherine II created the second glory in Russian history (the first was created by Peter the Great). While developing the economy and strengthening national defense, she established various schools, supported literary and artistic creation, pursued the progress of civilization, and not only had close contacts with Voltaire, Diderot and other enlightenment leaders, but also generously funded Diderot.
During her reign, Russia defeated its old enemies Turkey and Sweden, opened up outlets to the Black And Baltic Seas, and expanded Its territory by 670,000 square kilometers, an area larger than France.
But Catherine II was too protective of the interests of the aristocratic class, gradually deepening the contradictions between the nobles and the peasant serfs, so much so that Pugachev launched a sensational peasant uprising in the name of the dead Peter III.
Although Catherine II succeeded in suppressing the Pugachev uprising, it still caused a great shock to her heart, and from this year on, she never let her lover Potemkin leave her side again.
There are rumors that Catherine II and Potemkin, who has been made duke, quietly married in the church, as her mother-in-law, Empress Yelisavita, did, but researchers have not yet obtained enough evidence on this matter.
In any case, since 1774, the situation in Russian politics in which Catherine II and her Duke Potemkin co-ruled, is almost the same as 1,100 years ago when Wu Zetian and Tang Gaozong were called "two saints", but the difference is that Potemkin has a strong nature of eating soft rice.
Seventeen years later, Duke Potemkin died of illness, and Catherine II subsequently fell ill, and died four years later, unwillingly leaving behind her large and powerful Russian Empire.
She is reluctant because she once said something that shook history – if I could live to be two hundred years old, all of Europe would be crawling at my feet.
But this wish of hers could not be fulfilled under any circumstances, although she was the supreme empress and emperor, and in the end she could not overcome the cycle of life and death.