Catherine The Great: Portrait Of A Woman by Robert K. Massie

Format: Audio (Spotify/Audible)
Read: May 2025

I decided to read this after watching The Great and getting curious about just how “occasionally” true it was! It turns out it is wildly historically inaccurate in almost every way! Although her mother was a nightmare, they got that right.

Sophia, who wasn’t Catherine until she married, was brought to Russia by Empress Elizabeth to marry her nephew, Peter (who was Sophia’s second cousin) when they were both teenagers. Aunt Elizabeth is in the TV series, but she was never Empress, and Peter is already Emperor when Sophia is brought to marry him. Elizabeth did love to wear men’s trousers (she was very proud of her legs) and would throw “transversite balls” where men would dress as women and women as men, so they did take that aspect of her character!

Peter and Catherine were married for many years before he became Emperor and she overthrew him. They never had a happy marriage and certainly never grew fond of each other, never mind fall in love. Real-life Peter was pretty much the opposite of Nicolas Hoult’s wildly charming portrayal, and he definitely wasn’t handsome! The only thing they have in common is childishness and a propensity for violence. Real-life Peter never consummated his marriage, and none of her children were his. After nearly a decade of marriage with no children, the court was so desperate for an heir that they basically arranged a lover for Catherine!

It is thought he was too mentally immature and also possibly had a physical issue. Peter was famously obsessed with military drills and playing soldiers. He’d drill his servants all day and at night, as a full-grown man, play in bed with wooden toy soldiers!

I found this interesting because at the same time in history, Louis XVI was failing to consummate his marriage to Marie Antoinette, and I also read a biography of the Duchess of Devonshire (Georgiana), and she had the same problem with her husband! Marie Antoinette, Georgiana and Catherine were all widely admired and thought to be charming, intelligent and attractive women by everyone but their husbands!

This is a really engaging biography that is helped immensely in the first half by having access to Catherine’s own memoirs. Her early life at court and dealings with her insane husband and the overbearing Empress are quite fascinating. Once the coup gets going, it was hard to follow all the Russian names, and likewise in the following sections of various political manoeuvrings, but I was still entertained. Learning more about this period of Russian history also helps to put the country’s current state into context and understand the wars they are involved in in 2025, these conflicts over territory go a long way back in history.

When Massie runs out of Catherine’s own writings to draw from, the biography loses some focus. It meanders off in the latter sections, including a whole chapter on the French Revolution and the history of the guillotine, which was there to explain how it affected Catherine and her politics in the future (much less keen on freeing the serfs!), but it felt unnecessarily in-depth for a book about Russia!

The audiobook is fine. I found the narrator a little bit robotic, but then I guess it’s hard to get the tone right with non-fiction! The narrator was also American, so the pronunciation was a little strange at times to my British ears, especially whenever he said Moscow! (There is no cow in Moscow!)

I think my lasting impression from this book is going to be of Peter and what an absolute oddball he was. I cannot imagine being saddled with a man like that, especially knowing it’s essentially your job to produce a child with him! The man had a lot of issues, and he was an all-around idiot. Russia was lucky he was given an intelligent and highly capable wife. The absurd image of the pair of them sitting in a marital bed covered with wooden toy soldiers is going to be lasting!

If you’re interested in Catherine The Great I can recommend this biography! It’s reminded me I’ve had Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette: The Journey for years and should really get to it. I enjoyed Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman previously, too. I got that after getting curious about her following a visit to Chatsworth (I do love Chatsworth!). This was such an interesting time in history to me.

Also, The Great TV series is a lot of fun. Sadly, it got cancelled after 3 series, but the episodes that are there are bawdy and ridiculous, and it has made me laugh out loud many times! If you enjoyed My Lady Jane it is similar in tone, plays very fast and loose with historical accuracy (and doesn’t pretend otherwise!), but doesn’t have the magical fantasy elements (or the romance!). Elle Fanning is wonderful as a fierce, intelligent and ambitious young Empress! I also think it’s worth watching just for Nicolous Hoult’s Peter II! HUZZAH!