Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst was born on 2 May 1729 in Stettin, then part of Prussia (now Szczecin in Poland), the daughter of a minor German prince. In 1745, after being received ...

remembered merely as the younger sister of the mistress of Peter III, the Russian czar deposed by his better-known wife, Catherine the Great. Perhaps motivated by the prospect of this unflattering ...