Elizaveta - 'Empress of Russia, Whore of the North, Daughter of Peter the Great, patron of Catherine the Great'. These four phrases sum up Elisabeth, the Russian empress from 1741-61. In Simon Sebag Montefiore's view - and he did an enormous amount of research into Elizaveta's life when writing PRINCE OF PRINCES - 'her unbridled, wild and decadent behaviour, kindness and cruelty, extravagance and nymphomania, grandeur and ambition, simplicity and energy, personifies everything extraordinary about imperial Russia. There are few more dramatic and romantic scenes in all of Russian history than the night of her coup d'etat on 25 Nov 1741 when she seized the Empire: draped in furs and accompanied by just 300 Guardsmen and a French doctor, this beautiful blonde blue-eyed princess rode through snowy Petersburg to ascend the throne, bursting in to arrest the Regent sleeping in her bed. As Montefiore has already in only two books made gained a reputation for throat-grabbing openings, this, he says, is the scene that will open ELIZAVETA.
He sees Elisabeth of Russia as overlooked by history, yet she achieved autocratic power in her own right in the era of George II, Louis XV, Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa. ELIZAVETA has the potential to be another GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE, Amanda Foreman's bestseller.
- ISBN10 0297847708
- ISBN13 9780297847700
- Publish Date 30 June 2006
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 29 November 2004
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 480
- Language English