Wu Zetian has a very special position in the entire feudal history, as the only female emperor to ascend the throne in the Great Unification Dynasty, Wu Zetian's ambitions and abilities are extraordinary, but there are many foreign empresses, and today we will introduce one.
Catherine II Alexievna,
The twelfth Tsar of the Romanov dynasty of Russia, she was the only empress in Russian history to be given the title of "Emperor".
Although Catherine II was the Tsar of Russia, she was not Russian, she was born in Prussia, and her father was only a duke of a small principality. At that time, she was still called Sophia August, with amazing beauty and endless vitality, and her parents were relatively uninhibited by her long time, so she was less constrained, and even became a pen pal with Montesquieu.
At the age of thirteen, King Frederick II of Prussia wanted to marry Russia, and The Crown Prince of Russia, Peter, was Sophia's distant cousin, and Sophia became one of the candidates for the marriage.
Eventually she became the most suitable candidate, arriving in Moscow in 1744, when she was fifteen years old.
Her husband was later Peter III, the Tsar of Russia at that time was the daughter of the famous Peter the Great, Elizabeth I, Peter was her nephew, and Peter, who had just been baptized by the Orthodox Church, was not an original Russian, he was the heir to the Swedish royal family at first, and then he was chosen by Elizabeth I, who successfully seized power.
Peter this person looks polite, but timid and uncultured, Sophia is much smarter than him, she arrived in Russia began to study Orthodoxy, and after her conversion changed her name to Catherine Alexievna, at this time she arrived in Russia for only half a year, but she can already communicate fluently in Russian, while Peter, his Russian language until his death did not speak Ekaterina II fluently.
After getting married, the two of them had a very bad relationship, Peter had many mistresses, and even after five years of marriage, the two of them had never had sex together, so they had no children. Elizabeth I was very angry about this, and Catherine II tried every means to consolidate her position and gave birth to a boy, named Paul. Whether this child was Peter's child or not was actually very suspicious, and in any case, Catherine II had hinted that he was the child of himself and her lover, but everyone still assumed that he was Peter's son.
Soon after, Catherine II gave birth to a daughter, named Anna, and this time Peter bluntly stated that it was not his own child, and that Peter's attitude toward his wife had become worse and worse since then. Catherine II immediately understood that this marriage could only bring misfortune to herself, and if she wanted to change, she would seize the throne.
Her plan did not go well, because Elizabeth I was still alive, and the woman who had seized the throne through a coup d'état had mastered the means, and catherine II's hard-won ministers were either exiled or expelled. Until she met a man of outstanding ability and availability, Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov.
Orlov was madly infatuated with Catherine II, who was a member of Peter's Janissaries, while Orlov and his four brothers were among the Janissaries.
After Orlov became Catherine II's lover, she gave birth to a son, and Peter broke with her completely, what Peter did not know was that a large net had been woven by Catherine II and Orlov in his Janissaries. Eventually, with the support of hundreds of janissary officers, Peter, who had just succeeded to the throne for a year, was overthrown. The coup was very successful, as a party to the rebellion, in fact, Catherine II was not on the right side, but Peter the emperor was really too unpopular, the territory that was not easy to expand was returned by him at will, and almost all the wars launched by the outside world were lost, there were no results but led to financial difficulties, Peter this person also has no personal charm, timid and cowardly unreasonable, sensitive and suspicious of the ministers, is really not worthy of the position of tsar.
So even though Catherine II rebelled against the throne, she quickly gained the support of her ministers and the populace.
Catherine II, who became Tsar, began her glorious life.