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rheinsbergElizaveta's coup and Ivan VI, according to Horowski.
1730s: Anna Ivanovna is Czarina of Russia. (She and her court are thus the ones Suhm is pumping for money from Fritz. Also the one that Algarotti briefly visits in his eternal quest for a job.)
1740: She's dying. Her heir apparent is Anna Leopoldovna, her niece. But because Peter the Great made it so that each Czar gets to name his or her heir, Anna Leopoldovna's succession is not a given. Court intrigue leads the dying Czarina to name Anna Leopoldovna's son Ivan as heir instead. Unfortunately...
1740, August 23: Ivan is born.
1740, October 28: Anna Ivanovna dies. Meaning the new Czar is all of 2 months and 5 days old. Regency time!
1741: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI's mother, is regent.
1741, December: Elizaveta stages a coup that apparently involves walking through the palace asking all the guards she meets if they know who her father (Peter the Great) was, and they all swear to die for her. Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, Anna's husband, and the other kids are all taken prisoner in their sleep. Bloodless coup!
Now, one thing Elizaveta is famous for is not having executed a single person during her reign. So this bloodless coup consists of locking up Ivan VI, his parents, and his siblings...for the rest of their lives.
1742: HolsteinPete becomes (P)RussianPete, heir to his childless aunt Elizaveta.
1744: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, and the rest of the family have been hanging out in prison in the Baltic, in Riga, under guard for the last couple of years. This year, Elizaveta gives her minions until February 11 to get the imprisoned royal family out of Riga. They're removed on the last day of the deadline. On February 12, AnhaltSophie arrives in town, on her way to St. Petersburg to become RomKat, wife of (P)RussianPete.
1744: Fritz writes to Elizaveta that she seriously needs to relocate the Ivan VI family to the most remote corner of the earth, until Europe finally forgets about them.
She does. They get moved to the red dot (Kholmogory):
The original plan is actually to put them on the yellow dot (Solovetsky), an island off the north coast of Russia, in the White Sea, which freezes solid 6 months out of the year. But they don't make it in time, and they have to winter over at Kholmogory. That makes Elizaveta realize that if she moves them to the frozen island, she won't be able to get regular reports from her minions. So she leaves them at Kholmogory, nearly as remote and frozen and impossible to escape from, but where her messengers can come and go year round.
Ivan is locked in a single room with no visitors for his entire life. The rest of the family gets to live in an apartment, together, with a few servants, and have a vegetable garden and go for occasional supervised walks, at least. Ivan is eventually moved somewhere closer to St. Petersburg, when word gets out about where he's being kept. The rest of his family remains where it was. Elizaveta goes to get a look at Ivan shortly after his arrival in the new fortress.
1746: Anna Leopoldovna dies in this prison.
1764: At 23 years old, Ivan VI is killed, shortly after Catherine the Great stages *her* coup (she doesn't want any rivals either). Remember, he's been in prison since he was 1 year old, and in solitary confinement since he was about 3. Once Ivan VI is dead, Dad is offered permission to leave Russia forever, but he refuses to leave his kids. Mom's long dead.
1774: Dad dies.
1780: The surviving siblings of Ivan VI, who've never known anything except prison, get released to house arrest in Denmark for the rest of their lives. It is super difficult for them to interact with people outside their immediate family, since they have absolutely no experience with it. To the point where this happens:
Ivan siblings, several years earlier: Dear Catherine, we have no intention of escaping. We accept our fate. But there's a big fence around our prison, and we're told that on the other side of it is a meadow, where flowers grow in summer. We've never seen flowers in a meadow. We were born in prison, and have never known anything but prison for 30 years. Can we go walking in the meadow sometimes? We promise not to try to escape. We hear great things about flowers from our servants and guards!
Catherine: This sounds like an escape attempt. NO.
Catherine: *finally has grandkids*
Catherine in 1780: Okay, potential claimants to the throne. I'm feeling pretty good about the security of my family's succession. You can leave your prison and go live in house arrest in Denmark.
Siblings: *are 30-40 years old*
Siblings: If you had let us go when we were younger, we would have liked that. But our parents are dead, we only have each other, we literally know no other world than this prison, and we've gotten used to it here. Also, we don't speak a word of Danish. Nothing about this leaving plan sounds better than staying. So if you're loosening up...could you maybe let us stay here instead, with permission to walk in the meadow sometimes and see the flowers?
Catherine: Nonsense. Off to Denmark with you.
Now, the basic outlines of this I had already known from "Ekaterina", which gives Ivan VI some memorable screentime in the first season. But what I didn't know, and thanks to Horowski excelling at pointing out connections, I now know, is...
Ivan VI's dad in this story? Who gets locked away in a remote part of Russia just for being married to a Russian royal and landing on the wrong side of a coup? Is EC's older brother, Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick.
In fact, he and EC were only one year apart in age. See, I knew one of EC's siblings had married into the Russian royal family around this time, but I didn't know it was the one who'd gotten locked up for being the father of Ivan VI, and I certainly didn't know Fritz had advised locking him up in the most remote part of the world forever.
And you thought the condolence letter about EC's brother Albert after Soor was bad!
It also gives new meaning to EC's letter to her brother Ferdinand when Fritz and SD and the siblings are all having excursions without the Brunswick wives, in which she writes, in March 1744, "I remain stuck in this old château like a prisoner, while the others have fun." In March 1744, their brother Anton Ulrich was on his way to Kholmogory.
:/
Have some screenshots from "Ekaterina". These are fictionalized, in that Elizaveta did not visit Anton Ulrich and the rest of the family (too far away), and that when she visited Ivan, he was a teenager, but I thought it worked pretty well as fiction.
Anton Ulrich on his knees directly in front of Elizaveta, the non-Ivan kids surrounding him, the new baby in the nurse's arms, Mom isn't here because she's just died (she did in fact die after giving birth):
Elizaveta being shown to Anna Leopoldovna's grave (very difficult to get a good shot because of all the leafless shrubbery):
Ivan VI, in his prison cell of solitary confinement, reaching out to touch Elizaveta's hand:
Catherine visiting now adult Ivan VI in solitary confinement, shortly before she orders his execution:
1730s: Anna Ivanovna is Czarina of Russia. (She and her court are thus the ones Suhm is pumping for money from Fritz. Also the one that Algarotti briefly visits in his eternal quest for a job.)
1740: She's dying. Her heir apparent is Anna Leopoldovna, her niece. But because Peter the Great made it so that each Czar gets to name his or her heir, Anna Leopoldovna's succession is not a given. Court intrigue leads the dying Czarina to name Anna Leopoldovna's son Ivan as heir instead. Unfortunately...
1740, August 23: Ivan is born.
1740, October 28: Anna Ivanovna dies. Meaning the new Czar is all of 2 months and 5 days old. Regency time!
1741: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI's mother, is regent.
1741, December: Elizaveta stages a coup that apparently involves walking through the palace asking all the guards she meets if they know who her father (Peter the Great) was, and they all swear to die for her. Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, Anna's husband, and the other kids are all taken prisoner in their sleep. Bloodless coup!
Now, one thing Elizaveta is famous for is not having executed a single person during her reign. So this bloodless coup consists of locking up Ivan VI, his parents, and his siblings...for the rest of their lives.
1742: HolsteinPete becomes (P)RussianPete, heir to his childless aunt Elizaveta.
1744: Anna Leopoldovna, Ivan VI, and the rest of the family have been hanging out in prison in the Baltic, in Riga, under guard for the last couple of years. This year, Elizaveta gives her minions until February 11 to get the imprisoned royal family out of Riga. They're removed on the last day of the deadline. On February 12, AnhaltSophie arrives in town, on her way to St. Petersburg to become RomKat, wife of (P)RussianPete.
1744: Fritz writes to Elizaveta that she seriously needs to relocate the Ivan VI family to the most remote corner of the earth, until Europe finally forgets about them.
She does. They get moved to the red dot (Kholmogory):
The original plan is actually to put them on the yellow dot (Solovetsky), an island off the north coast of Russia, in the White Sea, which freezes solid 6 months out of the year. But they don't make it in time, and they have to winter over at Kholmogory. That makes Elizaveta realize that if she moves them to the frozen island, she won't be able to get regular reports from her minions. So she leaves them at Kholmogory, nearly as remote and frozen and impossible to escape from, but where her messengers can come and go year round.
Ivan is locked in a single room with no visitors for his entire life. The rest of the family gets to live in an apartment, together, with a few servants, and have a vegetable garden and go for occasional supervised walks, at least. Ivan is eventually moved somewhere closer to St. Petersburg, when word gets out about where he's being kept. The rest of his family remains where it was. Elizaveta goes to get a look at Ivan shortly after his arrival in the new fortress.
1746: Anna Leopoldovna dies in this prison.
1764: At 23 years old, Ivan VI is killed, shortly after Catherine the Great stages *her* coup (she doesn't want any rivals either). Remember, he's been in prison since he was 1 year old, and in solitary confinement since he was about 3. Once Ivan VI is dead, Dad is offered permission to leave Russia forever, but he refuses to leave his kids. Mom's long dead.
1774: Dad dies.
1780: The surviving siblings of Ivan VI, who've never known anything except prison, get released to house arrest in Denmark for the rest of their lives. It is super difficult for them to interact with people outside their immediate family, since they have absolutely no experience with it. To the point where this happens:
Ivan siblings, several years earlier: Dear Catherine, we have no intention of escaping. We accept our fate. But there's a big fence around our prison, and we're told that on the other side of it is a meadow, where flowers grow in summer. We've never seen flowers in a meadow. We were born in prison, and have never known anything but prison for 30 years. Can we go walking in the meadow sometimes? We promise not to try to escape. We hear great things about flowers from our servants and guards!
Catherine: This sounds like an escape attempt. NO.
Catherine: *finally has grandkids*
Catherine in 1780: Okay, potential claimants to the throne. I'm feeling pretty good about the security of my family's succession. You can leave your prison and go live in house arrest in Denmark.
Siblings: *are 30-40 years old*
Siblings: If you had let us go when we were younger, we would have liked that. But our parents are dead, we only have each other, we literally know no other world than this prison, and we've gotten used to it here. Also, we don't speak a word of Danish. Nothing about this leaving plan sounds better than staying. So if you're loosening up...could you maybe let us stay here instead, with permission to walk in the meadow sometimes and see the flowers?
Catherine: Nonsense. Off to Denmark with you.
Now, the basic outlines of this I had already known from "Ekaterina", which gives Ivan VI some memorable screentime in the first season. But what I didn't know, and thanks to Horowski excelling at pointing out connections, I now know, is...
Ivan VI's dad in this story? Who gets locked away in a remote part of Russia just for being married to a Russian royal and landing on the wrong side of a coup? Is EC's older brother, Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick.
In fact, he and EC were only one year apart in age. See, I knew one of EC's siblings had married into the Russian royal family around this time, but I didn't know it was the one who'd gotten locked up for being the father of Ivan VI, and I certainly didn't know Fritz had advised locking him up in the most remote part of the world forever.
And you thought the condolence letter about EC's brother Albert after Soor was bad!
It also gives new meaning to EC's letter to her brother Ferdinand when Fritz and SD and the siblings are all having excursions without the Brunswick wives, in which she writes, in March 1744, "I remain stuck in this old château like a prisoner, while the others have fun." In March 1744, their brother Anton Ulrich was on his way to Kholmogory.
:/
Have some screenshots from "Ekaterina". These are fictionalized, in that Elizaveta did not visit Anton Ulrich and the rest of the family (too far away), and that when she visited Ivan, he was a teenager, but I thought it worked pretty well as fiction.
Anton Ulrich on his knees directly in front of Elizaveta, the non-Ivan kids surrounding him, the new baby in the nurse's arms, Mom isn't here because she's just died (she did in fact die after giving birth):
Elizaveta being shown to Anna Leopoldovna's grave (very difficult to get a good shot because of all the leafless shrubbery):
Ivan VI, in his prison cell of solitary confinement, reaching out to touch Elizaveta's hand:
Catherine visiting now adult Ivan VI in solitary confinement, shortly before she orders his execution:
