Thanks to these ties, she soon found herself engaged to the heir to the Russian throne: Peter, nephew of the reigning empress, Elizabeth, and grandson of another renowned Romanov, Peter the Great. The bloodless shift in power was so easily accomplished that Frederick the Great of Prussia later observed, “ allowed himself to be dethroned like a child being sent to bed.”īorn Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a principality in modern-day central Germany, in 1729, the czarina-to-be hailed from an impoverished Prussian family whose bargaining power stemmed from its noble connections. Aided by her lover Grigory Orlov and his powerful family, she staged a coup just six months after her husband took the throne. To put it bluntly, Catherine was a usurper. Here’s what you need to know to separate fact from fiction ahead of the series’ May 15 premiere.Įlle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult in "The Great"Ĭourtesy of Hulu How did Catherine the Great come to power?
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Whereas the premium cable series traced the trajectory of Catherine’s rule from 1764 to her death, “The Great” centers on her 1762 coup and the sequence of events leading up to it. “And yet it was important to me that there were tent poles of things that were true, … her being a kid who didn't speak the language, marrying the wrong man and responding to that by deciding to change the country.”įeaturing Elle Fanning as the empress and Nicholas Hoult as her mercurial husband, Peter III, “The Great” differs from the 2019 HBO miniseries “ Catherine the Great ,” which starred Helen Mirren as its title character. “I think the title card reads ‘an occasionally true story,’” McNamara tells the Sydney Morning Herald’s Michael Idato. Much like how his previous film, The Favourite, reimagined the life of Britain’s Queen Anne as a bawdy “period comedy,” “The Great” revels in the absurd, veering from the historical record to gleefully present a royal drama tailor-made for modern audiences. Adapted from his 2008 play of the same name, the ten-part miniseries is the brainchild of screenwriter Tony McNamara. Perhaps most impressively, the empress-born a virtually penniless Prussian princess-wielded power for three decades despite the fact that she had no claim to the crown whatsoever.Ī new Hulu series titled “ The Great” takes its cue from the little-known beginnings of Catherine’s reign. Ruler of Russia from 1762 to 1796, Catherine championed Enlightenment ideals, expanded her empire’s borders, spearheaded judicial and administrative reforms, dabbled in vaccination, curated a vast art collection that formed the foundation of one of the world’s greatest museums, exchanged correspondence with such philosophers as Voltaire and Dennis Diderot, penned operas and children’s fairy tales, founded the country’s first state-funded school for women, drafted her own legal code, and promoted a national system of education. Catherine the Great is a monarch mired in misconception.ĭerided both in her day and in modern times as a hypocritical warmonger with an unnatural sexual appetite, Catherine was a woman of contradictions whose brazen exploits have long overshadowed the accomplishments that won her “the Great” moniker in the first place.
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