0:02

One quick note before we begin. If

0:05

you're enjoying Noble Blood, we have a Patreon

0:07

Patreon dot com slash Noble

0:09

Blood Tales. You can support the

0:12

show and get access to bibliographies,

0:14

episode scripts, and a variety

0:16

of random bonus content. But

0:18

of course the best support is just

0:21

listening to the show, which is and will

0:23

always be completely free. Welcome

0:31

to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart

0:34

Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron

0:36

Minky. Listener discretion is

0:38

advised. On

0:45

July sixty

0:48

two, the woman who would go on to

0:50

be known as Catherine the Great got

0:52

word that the moment had come for

0:55

the coup she had been planning with her closest

0:57

advisors and generals. Next

1:00

morning, while her husband, the ineffectual

1:02

Emperor Peter the Third, lingered

1:05

with a mistress at a palace outside of

1:07

the city, Catherine rode

1:09

in military uniform through

1:11

the barracks, solidifying her

1:13

support and her loyalty

1:15

amongst the troops of Russia. Her

1:19

husband had been the czar for fewer than

1:21

six months when he was captured

1:23

by guardsman loyal to Catherine

1:25

and forced to abdicate. Just

1:28

eight days after that, the imprisoned

1:30

Peter died, likely of

1:32

strangulation, although the official

1:34

autopsy would declare it to

1:36

be apoplexy.

1:39

Such began in earnest the long

1:41

and illustrious reign of Catherine

1:43

the Great, the minor princess

1:45

turned consort turned empress

1:47

who ushered in a new era of Enlightenment

1:50

philosophy in an attempt

1:52

to bring westernized political

1:54

theory to the country. The

1:57

coup itself, it's machinations,

1:59

and the many place as it almost went wrong,

2:01

is fascinating, and I urge

2:04

you, if you haven't already, to listen to

2:06

the episode that we did about it on this very

2:08

podcast, because today

2:11

we're not talking about Catherine

2:13

the Great, we're discussing instead

2:15

her son, Paul the First.

2:19

Imagine the scene during the coup,

2:21

Catherine and her lover riding gallantly

2:24

on magnificent stallions through the

2:26

city to where Catherine would take her oath

2:29

of office. Now turn

2:31

the camera a little to the side to

2:33

a distant palace window where

2:36

a small, not terribly attractive

2:38

child of seven years old might

2:40

have been looking out. Little

2:42

Paul the First saw his ambitious

2:44

mother sees power from his father.

2:47

If she wasn't responsible for his father's

2:49

death directly, then, at least indirectly,

2:53

the boy ultimately grew up into

2:55

a resentful, bitter man, with

2:58

both enemies and allies would

3:00

politely question his sanity. He's

3:03

an edible case that Freud himself would

3:05

have salivated over. Paul

3:07

the First might have been a smart man, but

3:09

he was a man who let his insecurities

3:12

and idiosyncrasies control him

3:15

to the point where his own nobles

3:17

turned against him.

3:19

Being an emperor is a precarious

3:21

position at the best of times.

3:24

Unfortunately for Paul the First, his

3:26

mother made politics look easy.

3:29

For Paul the Crown would cost

3:32

him his life. I'm

3:34

Danis Schwartz, and this is noble

3:37

blood. One

3:44

quick historical quirk that we're going

3:46

to have to talk about before we start the

3:49

changing of the calendar from the Julian

3:51

to the Gregorian. Pope

3:53

Gregory sanctioned a small

3:55

change to the calendar to prevent drift.

3:58

The actual solar year is slightly

4:00

shorter than having one leap day

4:02

every four years accounts for, and

4:05

so under the Julian calendar we were

4:07

getting an extra day every one d

4:09

twenty eight years. The

4:11

Gregorian calendar fixed that and

4:13

basically fast forward it a few days

4:16

to catch up to where the sun was the

4:18

days that we had lost during the Julian

4:21

calendar. But the tricky thing

4:23

is that different countries adopted

4:25

the Gregorian calendar at different times.

4:28

Catholic countries like France took

4:30

to it almost right away, right when Pope

4:32

Gregory thirteenth did in the sixteenth

4:34

century, but England,

4:37

for example, didn't adopt it until

4:39

seventeen fifty two. The

4:41

year one September two was

4:43

followed by September four. Russia

4:47

didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until

4:50

the twentieth century, which

4:52

means that some of the dates in this story

4:54

occurred eleven days earlier

4:56

in Russia than people would have recorded

4:59

them as happening in her up. For

5:01

example, Catherine the Great would say that she

5:03

led her coup in St. Petersburg on June,

5:06

while someone in France would think that

5:08

it happened on July nine. Some

5:11

historians deal with this discrepancy

5:13

by marking certain dates as OS

5:16

or n s for Old Style or

5:18

New Style. So

5:23

back in os Russia, Paul

5:25

the First would say that his birthday

5:27

was September seventeen

5:30

fifty four. He was the

5:32

first child born to Peter and

5:34

Catherine back when they were just the Grand

5:36

Duke and Duchess of Russia. The

5:39

future Katherine the Great was far too ambitious

5:41

on her own behalf to concern herself

5:44

too much with an hair. Thanks

5:46

to her husband's impotence and their

5:48

general distaste for each other, it

5:51

had taken the two of them a decade

5:53

to conceive The rumors

5:56

fanned by Katherine herself said

5:58

that the child was actually her lover, Seragei

6:00

Seltokov's. Later in

6:03

life, Catherine would say that those rumors were

6:05

just to make her husband jealous, that

6:07

of course they were his children. But

6:10

there are strong arguments to be made on

6:12

either side. On one hand,

6:14

Peter did struggle with impotence, and

6:16

he never impregnated any of his mistresses,

6:20

and it would be in Catherine's best interest

6:22

to lie later on after the coup to

6:24

link her child back to the Romanov

6:26

dynasty because she wasn't a Russian

6:29

royal by blood. On the

6:31

other hand, Paul does bear a resemblance

6:33

to Peter the Third, and Peter never

6:36

disavowed the child or denounced

6:38

Katherine as an adultress. He

6:40

disliked his wife so much that

6:43

one imagined given her precarious

6:45

situation at court, back when she was just a

6:47

grand duchess, that if she did

6:49

Bearrison by someone else, Peter

6:51

could have used that to get rid of her. Assuming

6:55

Paul was Peters son, the circumstances

6:57

of his birth would be just as hold

7:00

and loveless as those of his conception.

7:07

The Empress, Elizabeth, Peter's aunt,

7:10

was eager for Catherine and Peter to have

7:12

a male heir in there that she could

7:14

mold to her satisfaction. Catherine

7:18

was made to give birth in a room

7:20

right next to the Empress's chambers.

7:23

Just moments after the umbilical cord

7:25

was cut, baby Paul was swept

7:28

into a blanket and out of the room to be

7:30

presented to the Empress. The

7:32

new mother, Catherine was all

7:34

but forgotten in the room where she had

7:37

just given birth. For hours,

7:40

no one cleaned the room or gave Catherine

7:42

any warmth or comfort or

7:45

food. It seemed to her that

7:47

they had just forgotten that she

7:49

was there. She bled

7:51

and sweat and shivered against

7:54

the chill of an open window, all

7:56

alone and too weak to call for

7:58

help, and two to get up

8:00

to go to her own comfortable bed chambers.

8:04

Catherine never held her infant

8:06

to her own breast. Eager

8:09

as Empress, Elizabeth was for a baby

8:11

to care for in theory, in

8:13

practice, she was wildly

8:15

neglectful. On the rare

8:18

occasions that she did give baby Paul

8:20

attention, she doated on him, but

8:22

then she quickly lost interest. Paul

8:25

was brought up by tutors and a governor.

8:28

His diet was nutritionally deficient,

8:31

and he was lonely with very

8:33

little interaction from either parent.

8:37

And then, when he was seven years old

8:39

and Brisce Elizabeth died six

8:42

months later, Paul's father, the

8:44

Emperor, was overthrown by his

8:47

mother and his father was killed.

8:51

Catherine was the Empress then, but

8:54

it turns out she had abowed as much interest

8:56

in the stranger that they said was her son

8:59

as his eight great aunts. During her

9:01

neglectful periods, Katherine

9:04

and Paul never bonded and

9:06

never would bond. She resented

9:09

him for being sickly and a

9:11

not very attractive child, and

9:13

for being an implicit threat to her power

9:16

because he was a Romanov by blood. He

9:19

resented her because well,

9:21

he blamed the death of his father on her.

9:24

Neither trusted the other, probably

9:27

for good reason, and Catherine

9:29

had no interest in training him to be

9:31

her heir, lest he tried to force

9:33

her to share some of her power. The

9:36

best thing to do with her son, then was

9:38

just marry him off. When

9:41

Paul was nineteen, Katherine chose

9:43

a princess for him, Wilhelmina,

9:46

from one of the many non United German

9:48

kingdoms. Just three years

9:50

into that marriage, the woman died in

9:52

childbirth, which, at

9:54

least in Paul's mind, was probably for the

9:57

best. Wilhelmina had already

9:59

taken a ever in their brief marriage,

10:02

and given her strong willed ways

10:04

and open ambition, she had

10:06

reminded Paul of his mother. Now

10:12

a young single man in his early twenties,

10:15

Paul started openly talking about

10:17

co ruling with Katherine. That

10:20

wouldn't do for Katherine, and so,

10:22

just six months after he became a widower,

10:25

Katherine married her son to another

10:27

Germanic princess, a woman named Sophia

10:30

Dorothea, who which would become

10:32

Russianized to Maria Federovna.

10:35

This marriage proved to be a little longer

10:37

lasting. The pair had a son

10:39

within a year, a little charubic thing

10:42

they named Alexander, just

10:45

as it had been done to her newborn infant.

10:47

Katherine swept the baby away immediately

10:50

after he was born to raise him

10:53

herself as her heir. To

10:56

keep her son occupied and placid,

10:59

Katherine granted Paul a nice estate

11:01

out in the suburbs Garcina, where

11:03

Paul kept a brigade of soldiers.

11:06

Over the years, the little that Paul knew

11:09

about his own father became

11:11

embellished in his mind. Like

11:13

his father, Paul became fascinated

11:16

by the Prussian model of military

11:18

dress and discipline, and so

11:20

like his father, he forced his soldiers

11:23

to drill and parade around for his

11:25

amusement. Paul

11:27

and his wife had what was by eighteenth

11:30

century standards a successful

11:32

marriage, even though Paul had

11:34

two mistresses over twenty

11:36

two years. He and his wife would go

11:38

on to have ten children. One

11:41

of those children, of course, was Alexander,

11:44

the firstborn son that Catherine had

11:46

been grooming for the throne since his infancy.

11:50

In seventeen seven, rumors

11:52

began to spread that Catherine

11:55

was going to name Alexander, not

11:58

Paul, her heir, sipping

12:00

over Paul completely. Word

12:02

is that Katherine even met secretly

12:04

with Alexander's tutors and with

12:07

Alexander's mother Maria,

12:09

but ultimately those plans would

12:12

never come to fruition. In

12:14

seventy six, when Catherine

12:16

died of a stroke, Paul instantly

12:19

sprung into action to seize power.

12:22

He destroyed Catherine's will, which

12:24

was probably unnecessary given

12:26

there was no indication that his son

12:28

Alexander would have been willing

12:31

to honor her wishes over his

12:33

own father's. Now,

12:37

at forty two years old, Paul

12:39

was finally in charge, and the first

12:42

thing he did was repeal the practice

12:44

of rulers being allowed to choose their

12:47

successors willy nilly.

12:49

Instead, he declared that should

12:51

always be the oldest, most eligible

12:53

son who was next in line for the throne,

12:56

and that women would only inherit the

12:58

throne if there were no legitimately

13:00

born male heirs in the family.

13:03

The years of repressed bitterness

13:06

towards his mother emerged in policy.

13:09

All meant to undo everything that Catherine

13:11

had done and to defend the memory

13:14

of his long dead father, Paul

13:16

had the bones of Gregory Potemkin, Catherine's

13:19

lover, dug up and scattered.

13:22

He immediately recalled all troops

13:24

located outside Russia, because,

13:26

unlike his mother, Paul had no expansionist

13:29

ideals. Paul

13:31

was incredibly vindictive, willing

13:34

to hurt himself and hurt Russia

13:36

just despite his dead mother, Catherine,

13:40

had loved French culture and philosophy.

13:42

She regularly read French philosophers

13:45

and famously corresponded with Voltaire.

13:48

Paul saw French culture as a

13:50

threat After the French

13:52

Revolution, Paul did everything in

13:54

his power to prevent that ideology from

13:56

reaching Russia. He banned

13:59

foreign books, banned for newspapers,

14:01

and forbid anyone in court from

14:04

wearing French fashions.

14:06

Some of that seems logical. If you're

14:09

an absolutist ruler, you don't want

14:11

your people to get any bright revolutionary

14:14

ideas. But Paul

14:16

wasn't a rational ruler. He

14:18

was prone to fit a violent rage

14:21

that terrified his friends and servants.

14:24

Sometimes he made decisions for the country

14:26

that seemed so arbitrary and self

14:28

defeating, like randomly becoming

14:31

wild with rage that Napoleon had

14:33

conquered Malta that his friend

14:35

privately wondered if maybe Paul wasn't

14:38

all there, I mean, what did

14:40

Russia have to do with Malta anyway?

14:42

Why did he care? As

14:44

Emperor Paul put his troops in Prussian

14:47

style uniforms and forced

14:49

them to parade outside his palace at

14:51

eleven am every single day.

14:54

If you can imagine, the elite soldiers

14:56

who served Bazar did not enjoy being

14:58

treated like chopin these But

15:01

Paul's real troubles would come

15:03

from offending the nobles. Some

15:06

of Paul's political ideals weren't bad.

15:09

He banned corporal punishment for the lower

15:11

classes and tried, not quite

15:13

successfully, to make things a little bit

15:15

better for the serfs. But those

15:18

efforts were part of a larger campaign

15:20

for Paul to weaken the entrenched aristocracy

15:23

that had been the center of his mother's world.

15:26

But as Paul would learn, even

15:29

tsars can overestimate their power

15:32

too deadly consequences. Part

15:40

of Paul's strangeness was

15:42

an obsession with medieval chivalry

15:44

and knights of old. He forced

15:46

all of his advisers to adopt a code

15:49

of chivalry with random rules

15:51

of bowing and kneeling. If

15:53

any of them weren't dressed to Paul's

15:56

exact specifications, even

15:58

something as little as a missing button, he

16:01

went wild. Frankly,

16:04

all of his advisers thought it was

16:06

a little much Paul knew

16:08

that he had enemies, and so his paranoia

16:11

was probably justified when

16:13

he declared that he wanted a new

16:15

grand palace built in St. Petersburg

16:18

because he no longer felt safe in the

16:20

Winter Palace, and so

16:22

the Palace of St. Michael was built according

16:24

to his exact specifications, an

16:27

architectural camera that was half

16:29

Russian classical style and

16:31

half Medieval English castle, complete

16:34

with full moat and drawbridge. It

16:37

was completed in eighteen o one, but

16:39

Paul would sleep there for only

16:41

forty nights before his murder.

16:48

On a cold Monday night, Sir

16:50

Paul the first hosted dinner at the

16:52

Palace of St. Michael. His

16:54

son Alexander was present, sitting

16:57

on the far side of the table and struggling

16:59

to make icon intact with his father. With

17:02

some food and drink still on the table, Paul

17:04

stood, shoving his chair away and

17:06

declared that he was off to bed to

17:09

retire in his own apartments. The

17:11

eating, but more importantly, the drinking,

17:15

didn't stop for some of the other high ranking

17:17

officers present. They

17:19

drank and continued to drink,

17:22

and then they made their move. A

17:25

group of disgruntled officers

17:27

made their way to Paul's bed chambers,

17:30

where they physically overpowered two

17:32

valets and knocked down Paul's

17:34

door. The bedroom was

17:37

empty. There was a single

17:39

burning candle and a bed with

17:41

rumpled cheats, but no Emperor

17:44

Paul. The bird has

17:46

flown, one of the men said. Another

17:49

felt the sheets of the bed, perhaps,

17:52

but not far, you responded,

17:55

The nest is still warm.

17:58

They found the emperor cow we're

18:00

in behind a curtain. Though

18:02

the Tsar tried to beat them away, he

18:04

was battered and strangled with a scarf

18:07

and ultimately stabbed with a sword by

18:09

General Nicolay Zubov. The

18:11

rest of the group forced him to the ground

18:14

and trampled him to death. It's

18:17

possible that the group hadn't initially

18:19

planned on murdering the Emperor, that

18:22

they drunk on adrenaline

18:24

and liquor simply got carried

18:27

away. They had brought

18:29

with them abdication papers that

18:31

presumably they were planning on forcing

18:34

Paul to sign. But then

18:36

again, one of the conspirators had

18:38

asked another what they would do if

18:40

Paul wasn't willing to sign

18:42

away his power. Making

18:45

an omelet requires the breaking of eggs.

18:47

The other man replied ominously Immediately

18:51

after the tsar was killed, Nicolay went

18:54

to find the young Alexander, twenty three

18:56

years old and the new emperor time

18:58

to grow up. Niko I said, go and

19:01

rule. Alexander

19:03

knew that the men were planning on overthrowing

19:05

his father, but no one had told him

19:08

that his father's blood would be on his hands.

19:11

He would have a guilty conscience for the rest

19:13

of his life, but he wouldn't

19:15

punish the assassins. Alexander

19:18

went on ruling, and the official

19:20

court physician declared that Emperor

19:23

Paul the First had died of apoplexy.

19:26

Coincidentally, that's the exact same

19:29

thing that the official reports had

19:31

said Paul's own father, Peter, had

19:33

died of That's

19:43

the sad short reign of Paul the First.

19:45

But keep listening after this brief sponsor

19:47

break to hear a little bit more about

19:49

his legacy.

19:59

In terms of popular Russian monarchs,

20:01

Paul is pretty much overshadowed

20:03

by his much more famous mother, But

20:06

he did get the big screen treatment a

20:09

film called The Patriot, directed by

20:12

Ernest Lubitch. The film was

20:14

mostly silent, but it won the second

20:16

ever Oscar for Best Writing. It

20:19

was also nominated for Best Picture,

20:21

and so I assume it had to have been a great

20:24

movie. I used the past

20:26

tense there, because the movie

20:28

is lost. Only pieces

20:31

of it are left to date.

20:33

No complete copy of the film

20:35

The Patriot has ever been found. It's

20:38

the only Best Picture nominee in history

20:41

for which that's true. But

20:43

some pieces of Paul's legacy

20:46

are still around, at least

20:48

his genetic legacy. Out

20:50

of the ten children that he and his wife

20:52

had, several went on to marry

20:54

into prominent European monarchies.

20:57

Through his grandchildren, Paul the

20:59

First is an ancestor of the current

21:02

royal families of Denmark,

21:04

Netherlands and Sweden, and

21:07

he's related through the late Prince Philip

21:10

to Charles, Prince of Wales. M

21:20

Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio

21:23

and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

21:25

The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz

21:27

and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick,

21:30

Alex Williams, and Trevor Young.

21:33

Noble Blood is on social media at Noble

21:35

Blood Tales, and you can learn more about

21:37

the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot

21:39

com. For more podcasts from I heart

21:41

Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,

21:44

Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

21:46

to your favorite shows.