During and after the reign of the flamboyant and powerful Empress Catherine II of Russia, whose

During and after the reign of the flamboyant and powerful Empress Catherine II of Russia, whose long rule led to the modernisation of the Russian Empire, many urban legends arose, some legends based on true events, concerning her sexual behaviour.

Catherine had between 10 and 17 male lovers throughout her life, some of whom would reap political benefits from their relationship with her, and many of whom were relatively younger. In addition to her sexual relationships, her multiple relationships with Russian nobles, as well as unfounded allegations of her being a nymphomaniac or a libertine, and unfounded rumours that she liked to collect erotic furniture, and an atmosphere of palace intrigue cultivated by her son Paul I of Russia, led to negative portrayals of Catherine.

Some called her the "Messalina of the Neva", while others termed her a nymphomaniac. There is also a legend that she died while having sex with a horse.

PERSONAL LIFE NARRATIVES
Rumours of Catherine's private life had a small basis in the fact that she took many young lovers, even in old age. (Lord Byron's Don Juan, around the age of twenty-two, becomes her lover after the siege of Ismail (1790), in a fiction written only about twenty-five years after Catherine's death in 1796.) This practice was not unusual by the court standards of the day, nor was it unusual to use rumour and innuendo of sexual excess politically. One of her early lovers, Stanisław August Poniatowski, was later supported by her to become a king of Poland.

One unfavourable rumour was that Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov and her later lovers were chosen by Prince Potemkin himself, after the end of the long relationship Catherine had with Potemkin, where he, perhaps, was her morganatic husband. After Mamonov eloped from the 60-year-old Empress with a 16-year-old maid of honour and married her, the embittered Catherine reputedly revenged herself of her rival "by secretly sending policemen disguised as women to whip her in her husband's presence". However, another account claims that there is no truth in this story.

According to some contemporaries close to Catherine, Countess Praskovya Bruce was prized by her as "L'éprouveuse", or "tester of male capacity." Every potential lover was to spend a night with Bruce before he was admitted into Catherine's personal apartments. Their friendship was cut short when Bruce was found "in an assignment" with Catherine's youthful lover, Rimsky-Korsakov, ancestor of the composer; they both later withdrew from the imperial court to Moscow.

In his memoirs Charles François Philibert Masson (1762-1807) wrote that Catherine had "two passions, which never left her but with her last breath: the love of man, which degenerated into licentiousness, and the love of glory, which sank into vanity. By the first of these passions, she was never so far governed as to become a Messalina, but she often disgraced both her rank and sex: by the second, she was led to undertake many laudable projects, which were seldom completed, and to engage in unjust wars, from which she derived at least that kind of fame which never fails to accompany success".

DEATH NARRATIVES

LINK TO ARTICLE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_of_Catherine_the_Great

TAGS: Legends of Catherine the Great, Russian legends, Catherine the Great

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