Indeed, the rise of the former peasant woman to Russia’s throne might well have been a fairy tale had it not been absolutely true.Death did not come easy to Peter the Great. The colossus who had dragged Russia out of its medieval malaise and built an empire by the sheer force of his will now lay convulsing in agony, his eyes filled with fear, as the vital life force that once infused him inexorably drained away. To save his soul, the doomed autocrat acknowledged his sins and repeatedly cried out for absolution. As for the succession, though, Peter was silent.*1 And so he remained through the early morning hours of February 8, 1725, when he finally breathed his last. It was thus that the mighty emperor’s wishes were buried with him and an heir chosen without his express authority. Perhaps Peter never intended that an uneducated former peasant would come to occupy his throne. On the other hand, he had made this once-lowly creature his wife, then his empress. Certainly that had some significance.
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