WEBVTT - In the Shadow of the Great 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:06.280 One quick note before we begin. If you're enjoying Noble Blood, 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:10.720 we have a Patreon Patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tales. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:14.239 You can support the show and get access to bibliographies, 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:18.840 episode scripts, and a variety of random bonus content. But 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:21.959 of course the best support is just listening to the show, 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:31.920 which is and will always be completely free. Welcome to 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.200 Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:45.600 and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised. On 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:50.080 July sixty two, the woman who would go on to 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:53.479 be known as Catherine the Great got word that the 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:56.560 moment had come for the coup she had been planning 0:00:56.560 --> 0:01:01.840 with her closest advisors and generals. Next morning, while her husband, 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:05.880 the ineffectual Emperor Peter the Third, lingered with a mistress 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:09.600 at a palace outside of the city, Catherine rode in 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:14.920 military uniform through the barracks, solidifying her support and her 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:19.880 loyalty amongst the troops of Russia. Her husband had been 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:22.800 the czar for fewer than six months when he was 0:01:22.840 --> 0:01:26.880 captured by guardsman loyal to Catherine and forced to abdicate. 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:32.160 Just eight days after that, the imprisoned Peter died, likely 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.480 of strangulation, although the official autopsy would declare it to 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:42.360 be apoplexy. Such began in earnest the long and illustrious 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:46.640 reign of Catherine the Great, the minor princess turned consort 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:50.360 turned empress who ushered in a new era of Enlightenment 0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:55.280 philosophy in an attempt to bring westernized political theory to 0:01:55.320 --> 0:01:59.640 the country. The coup itself, it's machinations, and the many 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.880 place as it almost went wrong, is fascinating, and I 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.440 urge you, if you haven't already, to listen to the 0:02:06.480 --> 0:02:09.359 episode that we did about it on this very podcast, 0:02:10.200 --> 0:02:14.560 because today we're not talking about Catherine the Great, we're 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:20.359 discussing instead her son, Paul the First. Imagine the scene 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.600 during the coup, Catherine and her lover riding gallantly on 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:28.560 magnificent stallions through the city to where Catherine would take 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:32.480 her oath of office. Now turn the camera a little 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.519 to the side to a distant palace window where a small, 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:40.440 not terribly attractive child of seven years old might have 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:44.919 been looking out. Little Paul the First saw his ambitious 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:49.160 mother sees power from his father. If she wasn't responsible 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:53.800 for his father's death directly, then, at least indirectly, the 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:58.200 boy ultimately grew up into a resentful, bitter man, with 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:03.160 both enemies and allies would politely question his sanity. He's 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:06.440 an edible case that Freud himself would have salivated over. 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:09.840 Paul the First might have been a smart man, but 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.880 he was a man who let his insecurities and idiosyncrasies 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.720 control him to the point where his own nobles turned 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:22.359 against him. Being an emperor is a precarious position at 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:26.400 the best of times. Unfortunately for Paul the First, his 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:31.919 mother made politics look easy. For Paul the Crown would 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:36.640 cost him his life. I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:46.480 noble blood. One quick historical quirk that we're going to 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.520 have to talk about before we start the changing of 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:53.760 the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian. Pope Gregory 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:57.760 sanctioned a small change to the calendar to prevent drift. 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:02.160 The actual solar year is slightly shorter than having one 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.640 leap day every four years accounts for, and so under 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:09.000 the Julian calendar we were getting an extra day every 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:13.480 one d twenty eight years. The Gregorian calendar fixed that 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.719 and basically fast forward it a few days to catch 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.400 up to where the sun was the days that we 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:23.120 had lost during the Julian calendar. But the tricky thing 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:27.800 is that different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at different times. 0:04:28.400 --> 0:04:32.000 Catholic countries like France took to it almost right away, 0:04:32.120 --> 0:04:35.960 right when Pope Gregory thirteenth did in the sixteenth century, 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:40.760 but England, for example, didn't adopt it until seventeen fifty two. 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.400 The year one September two was followed by September four. 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:51.920 Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until the twentieth century, 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:54.440 which means that some of the dates in this story 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.599 occurred eleven days earlier in Russia than people would have 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.120 recorded them as happening in her up. For example, Catherine 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:04.360 the Great would say that she led her coup in St. 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:08.640 Petersburg on June, while someone in France would think that 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.960 it happened on July nine. Some historians deal with this 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:16.919 discrepancy by marking certain dates as OS or n s 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:24.560 for Old Style or New Style. So back in os Russia, 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.280 Paul the First would say that his birthday was September 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.520 seventeen fifty four. He was the first child born to 0:05:33.720 --> 0:05:36.679 Peter and Catherine back when they were just the Grand 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.559 Duke and Duchess of Russia. The future Katherine the Great 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.799 was far too ambitious on her own behalf to concern 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.360 herself too much with an hair. Thanks to her husband's 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:51.240 impotence and their general distaste for each other, it had 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.120 taken the two of them a decade to conceive The 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:59.240 rumors fanned by Katherine herself said that the child was 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:04.000 actually her lover, Seragei Seltokov's. Later in life, Catherine would 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.200 say that those rumors were just to make her husband jealous, 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.480 that of course they were his children. But there are 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:14.320 strong arguments to be made on either side. On one hand, 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:18.200 Peter did struggle with impotence, and he never impregnated any 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.600 of his mistresses, and it would be in Catherine's best 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:24.719 interest to lie later on after the coup to link 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.440 her child back to the Romanov dynasty because she wasn't 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:32.119 a Russian royal by blood. On the other hand, Paul 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.479 does bear a resemblance to Peter the Third, and Peter 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.680 never disavowed the child or denounced Katherine as an adultress. 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.119 He disliked his wife so much that one imagined given 0:06:44.120 --> 0:06:47.039 her precarious situation at court, back when she was just 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.799 a grand duchess, that if she did Bearrison by someone else, 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:53.280 Peter could have used that to get rid of her. 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.640 Assuming Paul was Peters son, the circumstances of his birth 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.200 would be just as hold and loveless as those of 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:11.120 his conception. The Empress, Elizabeth, Peter's aunt, was eager for 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:14.280 Catherine and Peter to have a male heir in there 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:18.480 that she could mold to her satisfaction. Catherine was made 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.320 to give birth in a room right next to the 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:26.239 Empress's chambers. Just moments after the umbilical cord was cut, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.600 baby Paul was swept into a blanket and out of 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.120 the room to be presented to the Empress. The new mother, 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:36.800 Catherine was all but forgotten in the room where she 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:41.200 had just given birth. For hours, no one cleaned the 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:45.360 room or gave Catherine any warmth or comfort or food. 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:49.200 It seemed to her that they had just forgotten that 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:53.960 she was there. She bled and sweat and shivered against 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.640 the chill of an open window, all alone and too 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.760 weak to call for help, and two to get up 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:05.440 to go to her own comfortable bed chambers. Catherine never 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:09.760 held her infant to her own breast. Eager as Empress, 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.360 Elizabeth was for a baby to care for in theory, 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:18.600 in practice, she was wildly neglectful. On the rare occasions 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:21.960 that she did give baby Paul attention, she doated on him, 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:26.240 but then she quickly lost interest. Paul was brought up 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:30.760 by tutors and a governor. His diet was nutritionally deficient, 0:08:31.560 --> 0:08:36.000 and he was lonely with very little interaction from either parent. 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:40.120 And then, when he was seven years old and Brisce 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:45.920 Elizabeth died six months later, Paul's father, the Emperor, was 0:08:46.000 --> 0:08:52.480 overthrown by his mother and his father was killed. Catherine 0:08:52.520 --> 0:08:55.240 was the Empress then, but it turns out she had 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.000 abowed as much interest in the stranger that they said 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:01.360 was her son as his eight great aunts. During her 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:07.720 neglectful periods, Katherine and Paul never bonded and never would bond. 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:12.000 She resented him for being sickly and a not very 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.719 attractive child, and for being an implicit threat to her 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:19.679 power because he was a Romanov by blood. He resented 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.040 her because well, he blamed the death of his father 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:27.840 on her. Neither trusted the other, probably for good reason, 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.280 and Catherine had no interest in training him to be 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.320 her heir, lest he tried to force her to share 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:37.280 some of her power. The best thing to do with 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:41.559 her son, then was just marry him off. When Paul 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:46.319 was nineteen, Katherine chose a princess for him, Wilhelmina, from 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:50.400 one of the many non United German kingdoms. Just three 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.600 years into that marriage, the woman died in childbirth, which, 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.400 at least in Paul's mind, was probably for the best. 0:09:58.160 --> 0:10:01.880 Wilhelmina had already taken a ever in their brief marriage, 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:06.200 and given her strong willed ways and open ambition, she 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:13.840 had reminded Paul of his mother. Now a young single 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.640 man in his early twenties, Paul started openly talking about 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:22.439 co ruling with Katherine. That wouldn't do for Katherine, and so, 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:26.440 just six months after he became a widower, Katherine married 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:30.640 her son to another Germanic princess, a woman named Sophia Dorothea, 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:36.200 who which would become Russianized to Maria Federovna. This marriage 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.400 proved to be a little longer lasting. The pair had 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:42.320 a son within a year, a little charubic thing they 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:46.319 named Alexander, just as it had been done to her 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:51.240 newborn infant. Katherine swept the baby away immediately after he 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:55.800 was born to raise him herself as her heir. To 0:10:56.000 --> 0:11:00.480 keep her son occupied and placid, Katherine granted Paul a 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:04.319 nice estate out in the suburbs Garcina, where Paul kept 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.480 a brigade of soldiers. Over the years, the little that 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:12.640 Paul knew about his own father became embellished in his mind. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:17.280 Like his father, Paul became fascinated by the Prussian model 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:21.600 of military dress and discipline, and so like his father, 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:25.280 he forced his soldiers to drill and parade around for 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.360 his amusement. Paul and his wife had what was by 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:34.160 eighteenth century standards a successful marriage, even though Paul had 0:11:34.160 --> 0:11:38.000 two mistresses over twenty two years. He and his wife 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:42.120 would go on to have ten children. One of those children, 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:46.480 of course, was Alexander, the firstborn son that Catherine had 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:51.760 been grooming for the throne since his infancy. In seventeen seven, 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:57.320 rumors began to spread that Catherine was going to name Alexander, 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.880 not Paul, her heir, sipping over Paul completely. Word is 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:07.160 that Katherine even met secretly with Alexander's tutors and with 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:12.480 Alexander's mother Maria, but ultimately those plans would never come 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:17.600 to fruition. In seventy six, when Catherine died of a stroke, 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:22.800 Paul instantly sprung into action to seize power. He destroyed 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:27.400 Catherine's will, which was probably unnecessary given there was no 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:31.080 indication that his son Alexander would have been willing to 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:38.160 honor her wishes over his own father's. Now, at forty 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.800 two years old, Paul was finally in charge, and the 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:45.600 first thing he did was repeal the practice of rulers 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:50.040 being allowed to choose their successors willy nilly. Instead, he 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:54.160 declared that should always be the oldest, most eligible son 0:12:54.280 --> 0:12:56.760 who was next in line for the throne, and that 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.600 women would only inherit the throne if there were no 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:04.840 legitimately born male heirs in the family. The years of 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.720 repressed bitterness towards his mother emerged in policy. All meant 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.480 to undo everything that Catherine had done and to defend 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:16.920 the memory of his long dead father, Paul had the 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:21.520 bones of Gregory Potemkin, Catherine's lover, dug up and scattered. 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:26.880 He immediately recalled all troops located outside Russia, because, unlike 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:33.440 his mother, Paul had no expansionist ideals. Paul was incredibly vindictive, 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.800 willing to hurt himself and hurt Russia just despite his 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:42.720 dead mother, Catherine, had loved French culture and philosophy. She 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:48.960 regularly read French philosophers and famously corresponded with Voltaire. Paul 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:53.320 saw French culture as a threat After the French Revolution, 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:56.720 Paul did everything in his power to prevent that ideology 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:01.720 from reaching Russia. He banned foreign books, banned for newspapers, 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:06.920 and forbid anyone in court from wearing French fashions. Some 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.520 of that seems logical. If you're an absolutist ruler, you 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.640 don't want your people to get any bright revolutionary ideas. 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.520 But Paul wasn't a rational ruler. He was prone to 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.320 fit a violent rage that terrified his friends and servants. 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.440 Sometimes he made decisions for the country that seemed so 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:32.320 arbitrary and self defeating, like randomly becoming wild with rage 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:36.640 that Napoleon had conquered Malta that his friend privately wondered 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.320 if maybe Paul wasn't all there, I mean, what did 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.240 Russia have to do with Malta anyway? Why did he care? 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:48.480 As Emperor Paul put his troops in Prussian style uniforms 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.240 and forced them to parade outside his palace at eleven 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:56.120 am every single day. If you can imagine, the elite 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.320 soldiers who served Bazar did not enjoy being treated like 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:04.320 chopin these But Paul's real troubles would come from offending 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:09.080 the nobles. Some of Paul's political ideals weren't bad. He 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.120 banned corporal punishment for the lower classes and tried, not 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:16.120 quite successfully, to make things a little bit better for 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:19.800 the serfs. But those efforts were part of a larger 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:23.960 campaign for Paul to weaken the entrenched aristocracy that had 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:27.800 been the center of his mother's world. But as Paul 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:33.920 would learn, even tsars can overestimate their power too deadly consequences. 0:15:39.960 --> 0:15:44.560 Part of Paul's strangeness was an obsession with medieval chivalry 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:48.080 and knights of old. He forced all of his advisers 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.760 to adopt a code of chivalry with random rules of 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.520 bowing and kneeling. If any of them weren't dressed to 0:15:55.800 --> 0:16:00.400 Paul's exact specifications, even something as little as a missing button, 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:06.200 he went wild. Frankly, all of his advisers thought it 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.720 was a little much Paul knew that he had enemies, 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:13.960 and so his paranoia was probably justified when he declared 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.080 that he wanted a new grand palace built in St. 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:21.080 Petersburg because he no longer felt safe in the Winter Palace, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.720 and so the Palace of St. Michael was built according 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:29.160 to his exact specifications, an architectural camera that was half 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:34.200 Russian classical style and half Medieval English castle, complete with 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.840 full moat and drawbridge. It was completed in eighteen o one, 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:43.280 but Paul would sleep there for only forty nights before 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:51.120 his murder. On a cold Monday night, Sir Paul the 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:54.760 first hosted dinner at the Palace of St. Michael. His 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:57.960 son Alexander was present, sitting on the far side of 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.040 the table and struggling to make icon intact with his father. 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.160 With some food and drink still on the table, Paul stood, 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.080 shoving his chair away and declared that he was off 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:12.360 to bed to retire in his own apartments. The eating, 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:16.280 but more importantly, the drinking, didn't stop for some of 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:21.359 the other high ranking officers present. They drank and continued 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:25.679 to drink, and then they made their move. A group 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:29.840 of disgruntled officers made their way to Paul's bed chambers, 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:35.320 where they physically overpowered two valets and knocked down Paul's door. 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.200 The bedroom was empty. There was a single burning candle 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:44.439 and a bed with rumpled cheats, but no Emperor Paul. 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:49.120 The bird has flown, one of the men said. Another 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:53.200 felt the sheets of the bed, perhaps, but not far, 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:59.000 you responded, The nest is still warm. They found the 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.720 emperor cow we're in behind a curtain. Though the Tsar 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:06.200 tried to beat them away, he was battered and strangled 0:18:06.200 --> 0:18:09.520 with a scarf and ultimately stabbed with a sword by 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:13.439 General Nicolay Zubov. The rest of the group forced him 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:17.880 to the ground and trampled him to death. It's possible 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.360 that the group hadn't initially planned on murdering the Emperor, 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:28.000 that they drunk on adrenaline and liquor simply got carried away. 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:32.560 They had brought with them abdication papers that presumably they 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:36.560 were planning on forcing Paul to sign. But then again, 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.080 one of the conspirators had asked another what they would 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.720 do if Paul wasn't willing to sign away his power. 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:48.240 Making an omelet requires the breaking of eggs. The other 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:53.720 man replied ominously Immediately after the tsar was killed, Nicolay 0:18:53.800 --> 0:18:56.720 went to find the young Alexander, twenty three years old 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:00.440 and the new emperor time to grow up. Niko I said, 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:04.960 go and rule. Alexander knew that the men were planning 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.080 on overthrowing his father, but no one had told him 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:11.480 that his father's blood would be on his hands. He 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.119 would have a guilty conscience for the rest of his life, 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:19.480 but he wouldn't punish the assassins. Alexander went on ruling, 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.399 and the official court physician declared that Emperor Paul the 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:28.960 First had died of apoplexy. Coincidentally, that's the exact same 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.960 thing that the official reports had said Paul's own father, Peter, 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:44.960 had died of That's the sad short reign of Paul 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:48.000 the First. But keep listening after this brief sponsor break 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:59.479 to hear a little bit more about his legacy. In 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:03.640 terms of popular Russian monarchs, Paul is pretty much overshadowed 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.960 by his much more famous mother, But he did get 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:11.880 the big screen treatment a film called The Patriot, directed 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.840 by Ernest Lubitch. The film was mostly silent, but it 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:19.560 won the second ever Oscar for Best Writing. It was 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:23.000 also nominated for Best Picture, and so I assume it 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.040 had to have been a great movie. I used the 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.960 past tense there, because the movie is lost. Only pieces 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:35.000 of it are left to date. No complete copy of 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:38.600 the film The Patriot has ever been found. It's the 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.480 only Best Picture nominee in history for which that's true. 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.679 But some pieces of Paul's legacy are still around, at 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:51.720 least his genetic legacy. Out of the ten children that 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:54.720 he and his wife had, several went on to marry 0:20:54.760 --> 0:21:00.160 into prominent European monarchies. Through his grandchildren, Paul the First 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:04.480 is an ancestor of the current royal families of Denmark, 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:09.679 Netherlands and Sweden, and he's related through the late Prince 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:21.480 Philip to Charles, Prince of Wales. M Noble Blood is 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.000 a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:26.960 from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:31.760 Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:35.200 and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:37.720 Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:40.720 show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:43.960 podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.359 Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.