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Catherine II was born on 2 May 1729 in the town of Stettin (now Szczezin) in Pomerania, where her father, Prince Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbst, commanded a regiment in the Prussian army (he was l...
Elizabeth Petrovna was the fifth child and third daughter of Peter the Great and Catherine I. She was born at Kolomenskoe near Moscow on 18 December 1709. Because she was born to unmarried parents, E...
Anna Ioannovna was the fourth child and fourth daughter of Ivan V and Praskovia Saltykova. She was born in Moscow on 28 January 1693. After the death of her father in 1696, Anna moved with her mother...
On the morning of 28 January 1725, following the death of Peter the Great, Russia woke to find that it had a new ruler – Catherine I. The unexpected had happened. A commoner, a foreigner by birth, an...