WEBVTT - The Ice Queen 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.000 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:12.040 and Aaron Manky listener discretion is advised. A few years ago, 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:16.960 the Russian tourism industry discovered that they had a problem. 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:21.320 That problem was winter. If you can imagine, the masses 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:26.360 weren't flocking to see Russia's historically significant architecture or world 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:31.640 class art collections when the temperatures dipped below freezing. That's 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:35.600 when even stockpiled provisions of top tier vodka can't manage 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:39.080 to unseat the damp, creeping chill that settles in your 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:44.360 chest in Russia in the winter. And so in two 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:48.320 thousand sis, a group of corporate sponsors and luxury hotel 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:52.199 chains came together with an idea an ice sculpture to 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:57.800 drum up tourism. Not just an ice sculpture, an ice palace, 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:04.520 a palace can structed entirely of ice in downtown St. Petersburg, 0:01:05.000 --> 0:01:08.440 one that would weigh over five hundred tons at a 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:12.760 cost of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.280 to be an exact replica of a massive ice palace 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.280 that had stood on the shore of the frozen Neva 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:24.240 River two centuries earlier. It would be built exactly to 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:29.560 the specifications laid out by that eighteenth century architect. There 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:34.240 were ice trees filled with carved ice birds, clocks built 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.600 from ice with visible ice gears. Guests waited in line 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:41.720 for hours for their chance to walk through the palace, 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.880 to marvel at the detail of the carving, to walk 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.360 through the ice bedroom and see the ice mattress with 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:54.240 ice blankets and ice pillows and cascading ice curtains down 0:01:54.240 --> 0:02:00.360 the four posters, all made of ice. Translucent law dogs 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:03.559 glimmered in the fireplace that would never actually be able 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.240 to contain real fire. Ice was dyed green on the 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:12.320 mantelpiece to resemble marble. And then as guests worked their 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.480 way through, they came to the throne room, where there 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.400 stood this single change that the modern builders had made 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:24.200 from the eighteenth century original, a sculpture of the Empress 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:29.440 Anna Ivanovna, the patroness who had commissioned the original ice palace. 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:33.840 The Empress was a tall woman and broad, and she 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:37.600 was sculpted in all of her courtly splendor, wearing a 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:41.960 heavy airmine cloak and a massive royal crown which ballooned 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:45.320 up from her head, where a pair of dark, tight 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:51.200 ringlets fell past her shoulders. Her face was round in life, 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:56.600 her cheeks had been described as Westphalian ham. Now in ice. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.520 She was here as a ghost, semi trans decent and 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:05.720 impossibly still, watching an endless stream of tourists and locals 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:11.440 gawk at the strange spectacle that had been constructed around them. 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.680 If you didn't know who she was, Empress Anna might 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.240 seem like a proud or even whimsical figure, only the 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.880 second female crowned as the leader of Russia, a woman 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:25.360 with the vision to imagine how miraculous a palace would 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:30.560 look if it was blue and clear and glistening. But 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:34.200 Empress Anna's ice palace wasn't built as a celebration of 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:38.320 Russia or as a way to promote tourism. It was 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:42.920 built out of cruelty and capriciousness. She was a woman 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:47.440 who spent her entire life manipulated, treated as a toy, 0:03:47.560 --> 0:03:51.920 and so when she reached power, she treated others like toys, 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:57.520 their lives made malleable for her amusement. Her ice palace 0:03:57.640 --> 0:03:59.960 was meant to be both a symbol of her power 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:04.680 were and an execution chamber, but it was also something 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:07.960 to make her laugh, and if you'll forgive the pun, 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:13.000 I find that the most chilling part of all. I'm 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:23.400 Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. Anna Ivanovna had 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:27.240 almost no memories of her father, Ivan, the older brother 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:31.640 of Peter the Great. Ivan was severely disabled, both physically 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.080 and mentally, and so his younger brother was appointed his 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:39.039 co regent. By the time Ivan was an adult, he 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.919 was half paralyzed and almost blind, his mind all but 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:48.240 lost to senility. When the Emperor finally died at age seven, 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.279 he was unable to remember his own name. His daughter, 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.919 Anna was three, and so Peter the Great became the 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.160 singular psar of Russia as the niece of the Czar, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:02.039 and would never have been allowed to marry for love. 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:04.960 But it seems that when her uncle ordered her to 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.599 marry Frederick William, the Duke of Courland, to secure a 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:14.159 lucrative alliance, she was genuinely excited. Seventeen year old Anna 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:18.080 wrote to Frederick William, her new fiancee. I cannot but 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.640 assure your Highness that nothing could delight me more than 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.760 to hear of your declaration of love for me. For 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.760 my part, I assure your Highness that I share your 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.080 feelings at our next happy meeting, to which I look 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:35.640 forward eagerly, I shall God willing avail myself of the 0:05:35.680 --> 0:05:40.520 opportunity of expressing them to you personally. Anna's mother had 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.000 been an old school Russian s arena. She had been 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:48.000 selected to marry the infirm Sar to be after parading 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:53.800 in a bride show of potential candidates. Throughout Ivan's declining health, 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:58.320 Anda's mother dutifully cared for him, standing at his side 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.080 wiping drool from his chin, and her only failure as 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:06.440 a wife had been berthing only daughters. Those were the 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.279 values that she passed on to Anna into her sister. 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.280 They were educated at home, taught that their purpose, above 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:17.760 all else was to be wives. Anna was only semiliterate, 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:22.080 but she knew that much by heart. Anna's wedding to 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:26.479 Frederick William was a gorgeous affair, accompanied by the full 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:31.240 pageantry of the Russian court. Her cape was laced with gold, 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.560 she wore a tiara. The night ended with a fireworks 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:39.800 display over the palace, and Anna stood side by side 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.760 with the boy that she had pledged to devote herself 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:47.240 to for the rest of their lives. Anna watched the fireworks, 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:51.160 completely unaware of the misery that would soon befall her, 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:55.680 where only of the glittering sky and her new husband's 0:06:55.720 --> 0:07:03.719 shining eyes. The next night, her uncle bizarre through a 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:08.279 second wedding, this time for a pair of dwarves. Peter 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.239 the Great held a fancy of breeding an entire race 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.440 of dwarves, and so just as he arranged the wedding 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:17.240 of his niece, he arranged the wedding of two of 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:20.040 the fools he kept in his palace for his amusement. 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.520 The dwarf bride was dressed exactly as Anna had been 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:29.320 the previous night, in an exact replica of her embroidered gown, 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:33.600 a fifth of its original size. The guests of the party, 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:36.880 all of the dwarves Peter the Great could summon, were 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:40.520 given excessive amounts of alcohol so the court could watch 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.520 them stumbled drunkenly as they jumped out of cakes and 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:47.840 attempted to dance. It was a cruel mockery, cruel to 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:52.000 the dwarves forced into a servile role as entertainment, but 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:55.000 also intended as a cruelty to the court that was 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:59.280 watching them. Peter the Great had designed this second wedding 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.880 as a grow Tesk fun house mirror for the Russian 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:08.680 court to watch themselves, and poor Anna, famously unbeautiful even then, 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:13.400 happened to be the centerpiece. The bride doubled in miniature 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:17.160 for everyone to laugh at, and the guests did laugh. 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:20.480 They laughed, and they drank, and they laughed some more, 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.520 and then drank some more, and the festivities continued for 0:08:23.560 --> 0:08:26.640 another week till it was finally time to send Anna 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.840 and her new husband off back to Courland and for 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.240 everyone to get on with their lives. To get to 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.040 Courland in present day Latvia, it would be a journey 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:40.280 of many days. When Anna and Frederick William entered their 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:44.320 coach the morning of their departure, Frederick William was still 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.640 drunk from a drinking competition with Peter the Great the 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:51.600 night before. He was pale and sweating his hair wet 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:55.560 against his forehead, even in the Russian chill. They only 0:08:55.600 --> 0:09:01.000 made it twenty kilometers before Frederick William dropped dead. But 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.080 just because a husband dies doesn't mean the alliance that 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:06.880 the marriage was meant to cement is any less important. 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.960 Anna Ivanovna, only seventeen years old, was forced to ride 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.840 the entire way to Coreland with the cooling corpse of 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:19.720 her husband at her side. Her destination was a strange 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.560 land that she would be expected to rule alone. Though 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:26.120 she would write hundreds of letters to her uncle in 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.120 Saint Petersburg begging him for permission to come home or 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:35.200 to marry again, her please went unheeded. The peace with 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:41.319 Corland was essential, Anna's happiness was not, And besides, if 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.480 she got married again, her husband or God forbid, child 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.320 could complicate the line of succession. No, it was better 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.120 for everyone if Anna stayed put, a teenage widow who 0:09:52.160 --> 0:10:02.640 would never be permitted to love again. Anna's letters to 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:07.320 Peter the Great continued, hundreds of them, all desperately pleading 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:09.720 for her uncle to allow her to get married again. 0:10:10.400 --> 0:10:13.440 She had only been seventeen and experienced marriage for a 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:16.200 period of days. Why now did she have to be 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:22.720 alone forever? But then, in seventeen, fifteen years after Anna's 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:27.160 all too brief marriage, Peter the Great died, and five 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:31.640 years after that, his grandson and heir, Sir Peter the Second, 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.079 died too young and with no heir, which meant Russia 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:41.520 now faced a crisis of succession. Peter the Great had daughters, 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:43.800 but they were born out of wedlock, daughters he had 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.679 had with the maid he married only after she gave birth. 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:50.920 But then there was Anna and her sister. Their father, 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.880 Ivan had been Peter's older brother after all, and their 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.560 mother had been a high born noblewoman who cared for 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:00.800 her infirm husband with all of the virtue that one 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:04.680 could ever ask for. Anna's sister was the elder, but 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.760 she was married to a prominent duke, and she already 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.760 had a daughter. The Privy Council, in charge of appointing 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:15.120 the next Russian leader, worried that the husband could try 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:18.160 to steal power, and the daughter next in line would 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:23.560 complicate things all over again. But Anna dutiful. Anna was 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:27.080 a childless widow with no husband to try to wield 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.120 control and no children that would be next in line 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:34.280 for succession, plus being the younger daughter and not naturally 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.520 in line for the throne, She would be grateful to 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.400 the Privy Council for choosing her, and deferential to them 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.640 and all of her decision making. She would be a figurehead, 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.679 and to that end, they journeyed to Courland to make 0:11:47.720 --> 0:11:52.439 her sign a declaration of conditions. Anna would become the Empress. Yes, 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:56.679 but she could not declare war or peace, impose new taxes, 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:04.880 or punish the nobility without trial. She signed the papers 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:07.679 to a round of applause in her palace in Coreland, 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.800 before embarking on the long journey back to St. Petersburg. 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:16.200 For the first time in twenty years, she returned to 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:20.040 a Russian court of bickering and power hungry noble families. 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:23.920 The Privy council was made of two noble families, which 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:27.440 infuriated a handful of other noble families who wanted their 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:31.600 own chance a manipulating the new empress and so egged 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:34.240 on by the lesser nobles. As soon as she arrived 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:38.440 in the Russian capital and Press, Anna Ivanovna dissolved the 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:43.320 council that had granted her the throne. She publicly repudiated 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.120 the conditions she had been forced to sign, ripping them 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.800 in half in public and then for good measure. Since 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:51.400 some of the men who had written them to the 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:55.280 scaffold and a few more to Siberia, Anna would be 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:59.880 an autocrat like her predecessors. Perhaps, before the council had 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.800 gone through with their selection, they would have been wise 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:06.079 to look up at the sky the night before Anna 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.480 was crowned, Empress Aurora Borealist lit up the Russian horizon 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:15.120 in shimmering red. People at the time said that it 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:21.040 looked like blood. Though as Empress she brought with her 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:26.000 a married lover from Corland, Anna Ivanovna never remarried herself. 0:13:26.800 --> 0:13:30.160 What had been a youthful idealization of love and marriage 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:34.480 had charred and crystallized over the years into something cold 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:40.680 and sour. One Russian Prince, Michael Alexeyevitch Galatson, made the 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:45.200 mistake of getting married without Anna's permission, and he made 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:49.960 the deadly mistake of marrying a Catholic. Prince Mikhael Galatson 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.920 had fallen in love with a beautiful Italian woman and 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.640 brought her back to Russia, where their happy marriage represented 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:01.760 everything that the aging power hungry and resented about the world. 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.720 Not long after they made it back to Russia, the 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:09.839 beautiful Italian Catholic woman died, and though one might think 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:12.880 Anna would see that as punishment enough for Prince Michael, 0:14:13.720 --> 0:14:17.760 it wasn't. The Empress stripped him of his title and 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.920 forced him to become a court jester for her amusement 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:26.000 to entertain the privileged aristocrats in court with his humiliation 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:32.400 day after day during the endless Russian winter Bortumn. First, 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.760 Michael was forced to pretend to be a chicken, sitting 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.120 on a massive nest set up for him in the 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:43.360 throne room, coated in feathers and clucking on command. When 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.880 guests came, Anna would make him pretend to lay an egg. 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:51.720 But it was her ultimate act of creative humiliation that 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:56.160 would be her master stroke. If Michael liked getting married 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:00.280 so much, he would get married again, only this time 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.040 Anna would choose his bride, and she chose one of 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:08.040 her female jestures, one famous for being the ugliest woman 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:13.240 in Russia, an older woman named Avdotia bouji Nova, her 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:16.840 surname a nasty joke on the Russian word for roast pork. 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.400 The wedding would be a spectacle one that would begin 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:25.080 with the parade filled with dwarves and foreigners taken prisoner, 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:29.000 and all of the deformed and disabled people that served 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:33.320 as entertainment for Anna and her court. They rode in 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:38.480 procession all these people presented as curiosities, along with the 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:42.600 low left drunks of the Russian streets in carts pulled 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:46.600 by goats and pigs. The subjects from foreign land were 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:50.320 dressed in clothes from their native countries, forced to do 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:55.280 what I'm sure Anna believed to be authentic native dancing. Finally, 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:59.800 the bride and groom arrived, dressed as clowns, and they 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.400 were flaunted down the street in a golden cage together 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:08.080 on the back of an elephant. Eventually they made it 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:14.520 to their destination. Anna's Ice Palace, a palace made entirely 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:18.400 of ice pulled from the Neva River, massive blocks of 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:21.560 it glued together with water so it looked like it 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:25.920 was carved from a single piece of glass. Local villagers 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:30.280 had watched and gathered breathless as the massive edifice had 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.840 erected itself over a matter of weeks, a thing both 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:39.160 delicate and monumental, Over thirty feet tall and over one 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:46.479 feet long. It was spectacular, an apparition, a marvel of engineering. 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:51.120 It was a ghost palace, a reflection back at the 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:56.280 twisted Empress and her malice. There were cannons outside, built 0:16:56.480 --> 0:17:00.800 entirely of ice, that, when loaded with gunpowder, could actually 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:05.919 fire ice cannonballs at sixty paces. On the ice palaces lawn, 0:17:06.080 --> 0:17:09.760 a massive hollow elephant carved out of ice held its 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:13.960 trunk aloft in the sky. Oil lit on fire could 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:17.359 be spewed out of the elephant's trunk, so it looked 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.760 like the elephant was spitting flames into the dark night sky, 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.800 and inside the hollow elephant sculpture was tucked a man 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:29.720 with a horn so that the ice elephant could really bellow. 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.720 Mikale and his clown bride were stripped naked and sent 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.520 into the palace to consummate their union on the ice 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.280 pillows and ice blankets of the bed carved entirely out 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:47.640 of ice, an exact replica of the Royal bedchamber. Guards 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:51.320 were posted at the doors. You have to keep each 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:53.600 other close if you want to stay warm enough to 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:57.199 survive the night and the laught. It was one of 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:01.480 the coldest winters on record for Russia. The pair only 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:05.920 survived because the bride of Doughtya traded her family's heirloom 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:09.960 pearls for one of the guard's coats. The two kept 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:14.159 warm until dawn, running through the ice palace as many rooms, 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.920 breaking what they could and huddling under the coat. When 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:22.360 their extremities began turning blue and their breath started freezing 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:26.440 before their faces, the warmth of it being sucked forth 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:31.120 from their lungs by the greedy colt. The wedding celebrations 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.920 ended with a fireworks display over the frozen Neva River. 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:39.560 The entire spectacle was meant as a reminder to all 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:42.720 of the nobles in Russia, so that they could see 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:47.240 the power that Anna wielded with such capriciousness. Look what 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:52.000 I can imagine, the palace said, Look what I can construct, 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:57.119 Look what I can force you to endure. They say 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.760 that nine months later Mikhail and ev Dotie became the 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:05.240 parents of twins, and that their marriage, for its brutal origins, 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:09.439 went on to become a long and happy one. I 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.560 like that story, the idea that something beautiful and human 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:17.960 emerged from that ice palace. You can believe that if 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:21.080 you want. It was so long ago. No one will 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.760 fault you for imagining a pair of bright, cheek to 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:28.720 Russian babies clenching their fists around their father's fingers and 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:33.000 cooing into their mother's curls, Babies who always seemed to 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:37.000 run cold and needed layers of extra blankets before they 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:41.600 could finally fall asleep, peaceful in a warm home with 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:46.040 parents who loved them. But the truth is that Avdotia 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:49.760 caught a chill that night and she never recovered, and 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:54.240 she died a few days later. McHale continued to serve 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:58.840 at Anna's pleasure until the Empress too died within the year. 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:02.720 It was a slow and painful death for her, from 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:07.800 ulcers on her kidney. With her final words, she called 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:11.840 out for her lover, Ernest Brown and proclaimed him regent. 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:17.920 Barron's regency was short lived, a hated figure in Russian court. 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:23.240 Three weeks after the Empress's death, he was banished to 0:20:23.359 --> 0:20:35.840 Siberia exile out in the cold. That's the story of 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:40.440 Empress Anna Ivanovna's ice palace and her icy rein. But 0:20:40.640 --> 0:20:43.480 stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear more 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:56.520 about what came next in Russia. Princess who married Catholics 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:00.320 weren't the only enemies that in Braziana held. Of her 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:04.400 most hated rivals was her first cousin, Elizabeth, a woman 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:08.800 nearly two decades younger than her and famously beautiful, whereas 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:14.199 Anna had always been diplomatically described as sturdy. A foreign 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:17.640 minister had once come to Anna's court, where Anna had 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.679 asked him who the most beautiful woman in Russia, was 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.720 not understanding the game of forced flattery. The noble instantly 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:31.520 pointed to Elizabeth. Anna fumed with no marriage setups from 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:35.080 her bitter cousin. On the horizon, Elizabeth took a lover, 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:39.480 a handsome soldier named Alexis Shubin. The Empress took her 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:43.760 revenge when she discovered the affair by having Shubin's tongue 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:49.480 cut out. Years later, after Anna's death, Elizabeth would rise 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:53.960 to power in a coup over Anna's infant nephew. Elizabeth, 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:56.919 who was the daughter of Peter the Great, got the 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:00.240 nobles on her side by pledging that she would never 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:05.560 declare a single death sentence as Empress. Elizabeth reigned as 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:10.720 Empress for over twenty years, and she kept her word. 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.359 Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:22.400 Aaron Mankey. The show is written and hosted by Dana 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:27.040 Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.520 and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:33.080 Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:36.160 show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:39.480 podcasts from I Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app, 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:42.960 Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.