The Tsarina’s Daughter: Ellen Alpsten (1709)
Russian history is full of larger-than-life characters and moments of high drama. This vast country has experienced political extremes, huge suffering, and glittering success, often all at the same time.
However, to understand modern Russia, we need look back no further than to Peter the Great and the revolutionary times he unleashed. This age is our destination in today’s episode.
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Peter the Great is known as the man who struggled to transform his country into a modern, west-facing nation by defeating the Swedes, founding St Petersburg, and creating a navy.
Yet his much-celebrated achievements should be viewed through the prism of the condition of the Russian people at this time.
Russia was a land whose greatest natural resource were its beleaguered inhabitants. Here were millions of serfs whose disposable lives made anything possible for its omnipotent ruler, the Tsar.
Everything that belonged to a Russian belonged first and foremost to him. And with a nation of slaves at his beck and call, pretty much anything could be achieved through ruthlessness and ambition.
Jean-Marc Nattier: Portrait of Peter I (Wiki Commons)
For the women around him, however, the world was quite different.
Kept as private possessions, hidden away in the great palaces and stately homes of the aristocracy, they were seen only by their fathers, brothers, and husbands. Uneducated, isolated, and entirely dependent on the will of the men around them.
Even so, many did manage to lead astonishing lives, and it is these women whose stories we will be hearing about in this episode.
They are the subject of Ellen Alpsten’s vivid novel, Tsarina, which tells the story of Peter the Great’s second wife, and the newly published, The Tsarina’s Daughter, which carries on the epic tale of her second daughter, Elisabeth, who went on to rule Russia for two decades in the mid-eighteenth century.
Alpsten brings this fascinating period in Russian history to life.
We follow his wife Catherine’s extraordinary journey from illiterate peasant to ‘Ruler of all the Russias’ and their daughter’s story, beginning with her dramatic birth in the romantic wooden palace of Kolomenskoye in the forests outside Moscow.
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Click here to order Ellen Alpsten’s book from John Sandoe’s who, we are delighted to say, are supplying books for the podcast.
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Show notes
Scene One: The battlefield outside the Ukrainian city of Poltava – This is the defining encounter of the Great Northern War. A huge European conflict most people do not know about today. The Russian army defeated the forces led by the Swedish King Charles XII, which ended Swedish supremacy in Europe and led to the ascent of Russia and the re-invention of the Swedes as a cute & cuddly nation. 'Tsarina' was there, standing by her man, as always, already pregnant with 'The Tsarina's Daughter'
Scene Two: The Red Square outside the Kremlin fortress - Russians witness the biggest victory parade the country had ever seen, trying to justify the immense suffering the war brought to the population, as well as symbolising the effort & the reforms of Peter the Great. When he dies, he leaves the throne to his wife, an illiterate serf, and opens a revolving door of power players all trying to seize the throne of the world's largest and wealthiest realm. When his only surviving child, Elizabeth, finally takes what is hers, it comes at a terrible price.
Scene Three: A bedchamber in the magical timber palace of Kolomenskoye – The architecture is inspired by all styles found throughout the vast Russian Empire. The house with its orchards, woodland, and haunted ravine, is surrounded by rumours of time travel. It is the first gift Peter made to his mistress when she was pregnant with their eldest daughter. Now she is in labour again, with the child who shall be the Prince of Poltava. It's a difficult birth, the baby lies feet first and face up, and is born under the December stars - all bad signs in Russian lore. 'Tsarina' wants to name the child Peter, alas, it is a girl - Elizabeth, the 'Wolverine', the 'Princess of Poltava' and finally - The Tsarina's Daughter!
Memento: Elisabeth’s St Nicholas amulet, studded with diamonds, which she wore around her neck for protection.
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Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Ellen Alpsten
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
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About Ellen Alpsten
Ellen Alpsten attended L'Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris. Whilst studying for her Msc in PPE she won the Grande École short story competition with her novella Meeting Mr. Gandhi.
Upon graduating, she worked as a producer and presenter for Bloomberg TV in London: knowing no-one and working gruesome night shifts on breakfast TV, she started to write in earnest, every day, after work and a nap.
Tsarina, the first and only account of the incredible rise of Catherine I of Russia from serf to Empress, is her debut novel. Today, Ellen works as an author and as a journalist for international publications such as Vogue, Standpoint and CN Traveller. She lives in London with her husband and three children.
Portrait of a young Elizabeth painted by Louis Caravaque
“The world's loveliest Princess' with 'eyes as lively as a bird's.”
Source: Wiki Commons
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