Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Aaron Manky listener discretion is advised. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: the Russian tourism industry discovered that they had a problem.
Speaker 1: That problem was winter. If you can imagine, the masses
Speaker 1: weren't flocking to see Russia's historically significant architecture or world
Speaker 1: class art collections when the temperatures dipped below freezing. That's
Speaker 1: when even stockpiled provisions of top tier vodka can't manage
Speaker 1: to unseat the damp, creeping chill that settles in your
Speaker 1: chest in Russia in the winter. And so in two
Speaker 1: thousand sis, a group of corporate sponsors and luxury hotel
Speaker 1: chains came together with an idea an ice sculpture to
Speaker 1: drum up tourism. Not just an ice sculpture, an ice palace,
Speaker 1: a palace can structed entirely of ice in downtown St. Petersburg,
Speaker 1: one that would weigh over five hundred tons at a
Speaker 1: cost of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It was
Speaker 1: to be an exact replica of a massive ice palace
Speaker 1: that had stood on the shore of the frozen Neva
Speaker 1: River two centuries earlier. It would be built exactly to
Speaker 1: the specifications laid out by that eighteenth century architect. There
Speaker 1: were ice trees filled with carved ice birds, clocks built
Speaker 1: from ice with visible ice gears. Guests waited in line
Speaker 1: for hours for their chance to walk through the palace,
Speaker 1: to marvel at the detail of the carving, to walk
Speaker 1: through the ice bedroom and see the ice mattress with
Speaker 1: ice blankets and ice pillows and cascading ice curtains down
Speaker 1: the four posters, all made of ice. Translucent law dogs
Speaker 1: glimmered in the fireplace that would never actually be able
Speaker 1: to contain real fire. Ice was dyed green on the
Speaker 1: mantelpiece to resemble marble. And then as guests worked their
Speaker 1: way through, they came to the throne room, where there
Speaker 1: stood this single change that the modern builders had made
Speaker 1: from the eighteenth century original, a sculpture of the Empress
Speaker 1: Anna Ivanovna, the patroness who had commissioned the original ice palace.
Speaker 1: The Empress was a tall woman and broad, and she
Speaker 1: was sculpted in all of her courtly splendor, wearing a
Speaker 1: heavy airmine cloak and a massive royal crown which ballooned
Speaker 1: up from her head, where a pair of dark, tight
Speaker 1: ringlets fell past her shoulders. Her face was round in life,
Speaker 1: her cheeks had been described as Westphalian ham. Now in ice.
Speaker 1: She was here as a ghost, semi trans decent and
Speaker 1: impossibly still, watching an endless stream of tourists and locals
Speaker 1: gawk at the strange spectacle that had been constructed around them.
Speaker 1: If you didn't know who she was, Empress Anna might
Speaker 1: seem like a proud or even whimsical figure, only the
Speaker 1: second female crowned as the leader of Russia, a woman
Speaker 1: with the vision to imagine how miraculous a palace would
Speaker 1: look if it was blue and clear and glistening. But
Speaker 1: Empress Anna's ice palace wasn't built as a celebration of
Speaker 1: Russia or as a way to promote tourism. It was
Speaker 1: built out of cruelty and capriciousness. She was a woman
Speaker 1: who spent her entire life manipulated, treated as a toy,
Speaker 1: and so when she reached power, she treated others like toys,
Speaker 1: their lives made malleable for her amusement. Her ice palace
Speaker 1: was meant to be both a symbol of her power
Speaker 1: were and an execution chamber, but it was also something
Speaker 1: to make her laugh, and if you'll forgive the pun,
Speaker 1: I find that the most chilling part of all. I'm
Speaker 1: Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. Anna Ivanovna had
Speaker 1: almost no memories of her father, Ivan, the older brother
Speaker 1: of Peter the Great. Ivan was severely disabled, both physically
Speaker 1: and mentally, and so his younger brother was appointed his
Speaker 1: co regent. By the time Ivan was an adult, he
Speaker 1: was half paralyzed and almost blind, his mind all but
Speaker 1: lost to senility. When the Emperor finally died at age seven,
Speaker 1: he was unable to remember his own name. His daughter,
Speaker 1: Anna was three, and so Peter the Great became the
Speaker 1: singular psar of Russia as the niece of the Czar,
Speaker 1: and would never have been allowed to marry for love.
Speaker 1: But it seems that when her uncle ordered her to
Speaker 1: marry Frederick William, the Duke of Courland, to secure a
Speaker 1: lucrative alliance, she was genuinely excited. Seventeen year old Anna
Speaker 1: wrote to Frederick William, her new fiancee. I cannot but
Speaker 1: assure your Highness that nothing could delight me more than
Speaker 1: to hear of your declaration of love for me. For
Speaker 1: my part, I assure your Highness that I share your
Speaker 1: feelings at our next happy meeting, to which I look
Speaker 1: forward eagerly, I shall God willing avail myself of the
Speaker 1: opportunity of expressing them to you personally. Anna's mother had
Speaker 1: been an old school Russian s arena. She had been
Speaker 1: selected to marry the infirm Sar to be after parading
Speaker 1: in a bride show of potential candidates. Throughout Ivan's declining health,
Speaker 1: Anda's mother dutifully cared for him, standing at his side
Speaker 1: wiping drool from his chin, and her only failure as
Speaker 1: a wife had been berthing only daughters. Those were the
Speaker 1: values that she passed on to Anna into her sister.
Speaker 1: They were educated at home, taught that their purpose, above
Speaker 1: all else was to be wives. Anna was only semiliterate,
Speaker 1: but she knew that much by heart. Anna's wedding to
Speaker 1: Frederick William was a gorgeous affair, accompanied by the full
Speaker 1: pageantry of the Russian court. Her cape was laced with gold,
Speaker 1: she wore a tiara. The night ended with a fireworks
Speaker 1: display over the palace, and Anna stood side by side
Speaker 1: with the boy that she had pledged to devote herself
Speaker 1: to for the rest of their lives. Anna watched the fireworks,
Speaker 1: completely unaware of the misery that would soon befall her,
Speaker 1: where only of the glittering sky and her new husband's
Speaker 1: shining eyes. The next night, her uncle bizarre through a
Speaker 1: second wedding, this time for a pair of dwarves. Peter
Speaker 1: the Great held a fancy of breeding an entire race
Speaker 1: of dwarves, and so just as he arranged the wedding
Speaker 1: of his niece, he arranged the wedding of two of
Speaker 1: the fools he kept in his palace for his amusement.
Speaker 1: The dwarf bride was dressed exactly as Anna had been
Speaker 1: the previous night, in an exact replica of her embroidered gown,
Speaker 1: a fifth of its original size. The guests of the party,
Speaker 1: all of the dwarves Peter the Great could summon, were
Speaker 1: given excessive amounts of alcohol so the court could watch
Speaker 1: them stumbled drunkenly as they jumped out of cakes and
Speaker 1: attempted to dance. It was a cruel mockery, cruel to
Speaker 1: the dwarves forced into a servile role as entertainment, but
Speaker 1: also intended as a cruelty to the court that was
Speaker 1: watching them. Peter the Great had designed this second wedding
Speaker 1: as a grow Tesk fun house mirror for the Russian
Speaker 1: court to watch themselves, and poor Anna, famously unbeautiful even then,
Speaker 1: happened to be the centerpiece. The bride doubled in miniature
Speaker 1: for everyone to laugh at, and the guests did laugh.
Speaker 1: They laughed, and they drank, and they laughed some more,
Speaker 1: and then drank some more, and the festivities continued for
Speaker 1: another week till it was finally time to send Anna
Speaker 1: and her new husband off back to Courland and for
Speaker 1: everyone to get on with their lives. To get to
Speaker 1: Courland in present day Latvia, it would be a journey
Speaker 1: of many days. When Anna and Frederick William entered their
Speaker 1: coach the morning of their departure, Frederick William was still
Speaker 1: drunk from a drinking competition with Peter the Great the
Speaker 1: night before. He was pale and sweating his hair wet
Speaker 1: against his forehead, even in the Russian chill. They only
Speaker 1: made it twenty kilometers before Frederick William dropped dead. But
Speaker 1: just because a husband dies doesn't mean the alliance that
Speaker 1: the marriage was meant to cement is any less important.
Speaker 1: Anna Ivanovna, only seventeen years old, was forced to ride
Speaker 1: the entire way to Coreland with the cooling corpse of
Speaker 1: her husband at her side. Her destination was a strange
Speaker 1: land that she would be expected to rule alone. Though
Speaker 1: she would write hundreds of letters to her uncle in
Speaker 1: Saint Petersburg begging him for permission to come home or
Speaker 1: to marry again, her please went unheeded. The peace with
Speaker 1: Corland was essential, Anna's happiness was not, And besides, if
Speaker 1: she got married again, her husband or God forbid, child
Speaker 1: could complicate the line of succession. No, it was better
Speaker 1: for everyone if Anna stayed put, a teenage widow who
Speaker 1: would never be permitted to love again. Anna's letters to
Speaker 1: Peter the Great continued, hundreds of them, all desperately pleading
Speaker 1: for her uncle to allow her to get married again.
Speaker 1: She had only been seventeen and experienced marriage for a
Speaker 1: period of days. Why now did she have to be
Speaker 1: alone forever? But then, in seventeen, fifteen years after Anna's
Speaker 1: all too brief marriage, Peter the Great died, and five
Speaker 1: years after that, his grandson and heir, Sir Peter the Second,
Speaker 1: died too young and with no heir, which meant Russia
Speaker 1: now faced a crisis of succession. Peter the Great had daughters,
Speaker 1: but they were born out of wedlock, daughters he had
Speaker 1: had with the maid he married only after she gave birth.
Speaker 1: But then there was Anna and her sister. Their father,
Speaker 1: Ivan had been Peter's older brother after all, and their
Speaker 1: mother had been a high born noblewoman who cared for
Speaker 1: her infirm husband with all of the virtue that one
Speaker 1: could ever ask for. Anna's sister was the elder, but
Speaker 1: she was married to a prominent duke, and she already
Speaker 1: had a daughter. The Privy Council, in charge of appointing
Speaker 1: the next Russian leader, worried that the husband could try
Speaker 1: to steal power, and the daughter next in line would
Speaker 1: complicate things all over again. But Anna dutiful. Anna was
Speaker 1: a childless widow with no husband to try to wield
Speaker 1: control and no children that would be next in line
Speaker 1: for succession, plus being the younger daughter and not naturally
Speaker 1: in line for the throne, She would be grateful to
Speaker 1: the Privy Council for choosing her, and deferential to them
Speaker 1: and all of her decision making. She would be a figurehead,
Speaker 1: and to that end, they journeyed to Courland to make
Speaker 1: her sign a declaration of conditions. Anna would become the Empress. Yes,
Speaker 1: but she could not declare war or peace, impose new taxes,
Speaker 1: or punish the nobility without trial. She signed the papers
Speaker 1: to a round of applause in her palace in Coreland,
Speaker 1: before embarking on the long journey back to St. Petersburg.
Speaker 1: For the first time in twenty years, she returned to
Speaker 1: a Russian court of bickering and power hungry noble families.
Speaker 1: The Privy council was made of two noble families, which
Speaker 1: infuriated a handful of other noble families who wanted their
Speaker 1: own chance a manipulating the new empress and so egged
Speaker 1: on by the lesser nobles. As soon as she arrived
Speaker 1: in the Russian capital and Press, Anna Ivanovna dissolved the
Speaker 1: council that had granted her the throne. She publicly repudiated
Speaker 1: the conditions she had been forced to sign, ripping them
Speaker 1: in half in public and then for good measure. Since
Speaker 1: some of the men who had written them to the
Speaker 1: scaffold and a few more to Siberia, Anna would be
Speaker 1: an autocrat like her predecessors. Perhaps, before the council had
Speaker 1: gone through with their selection, they would have been wise
Speaker 1: to look up at the sky the night before Anna
Speaker 1: was crowned, Empress Aurora Borealist lit up the Russian horizon
Speaker 1: in shimmering red. People at the time said that it
Speaker 1: looked like blood. Though as Empress she brought with her
Speaker 1: a married lover from Corland, Anna Ivanovna never remarried herself.
Speaker 1: What had been a youthful idealization of love and marriage
Speaker 1: had charred and crystallized over the years into something cold
Speaker 1: and sour. One Russian Prince, Michael Alexeyevitch Galatson, made the
Speaker 1: mistake of getting married without Anna's permission, and he made
Speaker 1: the deadly mistake of marrying a Catholic. Prince Mikhael Galatson
Speaker 1: had fallen in love with a beautiful Italian woman and
Speaker 1: brought her back to Russia, where their happy marriage represented
Speaker 1: everything that the aging power hungry and resented about the world.
Speaker 1: Not long after they made it back to Russia, the
Speaker 1: beautiful Italian Catholic woman died, and though one might think
Speaker 1: Anna would see that as punishment enough for Prince Michael,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. The Empress stripped him of his title and
Speaker 1: forced him to become a court jester for her amusement
Speaker 1: to entertain the privileged aristocrats in court with his humiliation
Speaker 1: day after day during the endless Russian winter Bortumn. First,
Speaker 1: Michael was forced to pretend to be a chicken, sitting
Speaker 1: on a massive nest set up for him in the
Speaker 1: throne room, coated in feathers and clucking on command. When
Speaker 1: guests came, Anna would make him pretend to lay an egg.
Speaker 1: But it was her ultimate act of creative humiliation that
Speaker 1: would be her master stroke. If Michael liked getting married
Speaker 1: so much, he would get married again, only this time
Speaker 1: Anna would choose his bride, and she chose one of
Speaker 1: her female jestures, one famous for being the ugliest woman
Speaker 1: in Russia, an older woman named Avdotia bouji Nova, her
Speaker 1: surname a nasty joke on the Russian word for roast pork.
Speaker 1: The wedding would be a spectacle one that would begin
Speaker 1: with the parade filled with dwarves and foreigners taken prisoner,
Speaker 1: and all of the deformed and disabled people that served
Speaker 1: as entertainment for Anna and her court. They rode in
Speaker 1: procession all these people presented as curiosities, along with the
Speaker 1: low left drunks of the Russian streets in carts pulled
Speaker 1: by goats and pigs. The subjects from foreign land were
Speaker 1: dressed in clothes from their native countries, forced to do
Speaker 1: what I'm sure Anna believed to be authentic native dancing. Finally,
Speaker 1: the bride and groom arrived, dressed as clowns, and they
Speaker 1: were flaunted down the street in a golden cage together
Speaker 1: on the back of an elephant. Eventually they made it
Speaker 1: to their destination. Anna's Ice Palace, a palace made entirely
Speaker 1: of ice pulled from the Neva River, massive blocks of
Speaker 1: it glued together with water so it looked like it
Speaker 1: was carved from a single piece of glass. Local villagers
Speaker 1: had watched and gathered breathless as the massive edifice had
Speaker 1: erected itself over a matter of weeks, a thing both
Speaker 1: delicate and monumental, Over thirty feet tall and over one
Speaker 1: feet long. It was spectacular, an apparition, a marvel of engineering.
Speaker 1: It was a ghost palace, a reflection back at the
Speaker 1: twisted Empress and her malice. There were cannons outside, built
Speaker 1: entirely of ice, that, when loaded with gunpowder, could actually
Speaker 1: fire ice cannonballs at sixty paces. On the ice palaces lawn,
Speaker 1: a massive hollow elephant carved out of ice held its
Speaker 1: trunk aloft in the sky. Oil lit on fire could
Speaker 1: be spewed out of the elephant's trunk, so it looked
Speaker 1: like the elephant was spitting flames into the dark night sky,
Speaker 1: and inside the hollow elephant sculpture was tucked a man
Speaker 1: with a horn so that the ice elephant could really bellow.
Speaker 1: Mikale and his clown bride were stripped naked and sent
Speaker 1: into the palace to consummate their union on the ice
Speaker 1: pillows and ice blankets of the bed carved entirely out
Speaker 1: of ice, an exact replica of the Royal bedchamber. Guards
Speaker 1: were posted at the doors. You have to keep each
Speaker 1: other close if you want to stay warm enough to
Speaker 1: survive the night and the laught. It was one of
Speaker 1: the coldest winters on record for Russia. The pair only
Speaker 1: survived because the bride of Doughtya traded her family's heirloom
Speaker 1: pearls for one of the guard's coats. The two kept
Speaker 1: warm until dawn, running through the ice palace as many rooms,
Speaker 1: breaking what they could and huddling under the coat. When
Speaker 1: their extremities began turning blue and their breath started freezing
Speaker 1: before their faces, the warmth of it being sucked forth
Speaker 1: from their lungs by the greedy colt. The wedding celebrations
Speaker 1: ended with a fireworks display over the frozen Neva River.
Speaker 1: The entire spectacle was meant as a reminder to all
Speaker 1: of the nobles in Russia, so that they could see
Speaker 1: the power that Anna wielded with such capriciousness. Look what
Speaker 1: I can imagine, the palace said, Look what I can construct,
Speaker 1: Look what I can force you to endure. They say
Speaker 1: that nine months later Mikhail and ev Dotie became the
Speaker 1: parents of twins, and that their marriage, for its brutal origins,
Speaker 1: went on to become a long and happy one. I
Speaker 1: like that story, the idea that something beautiful and human
Speaker 1: emerged from that ice palace. You can believe that if
Speaker 1: you want. It was so long ago. No one will
Speaker 1: fault you for imagining a pair of bright, cheek to
Speaker 1: Russian babies clenching their fists around their father's fingers and
Speaker 1: cooing into their mother's curls, Babies who always seemed to
Speaker 1: run cold and needed layers of extra blankets before they
Speaker 1: could finally fall asleep, peaceful in a warm home with
Speaker 1: parents who loved them. But the truth is that Avdotia
Speaker 1: caught a chill that night and she never recovered, and
Speaker 1: she died a few days later. McHale continued to serve
Speaker 1: at Anna's pleasure until the Empress too died within the year.
Speaker 1: It was a slow and painful death for her, from
Speaker 1: ulcers on her kidney. With her final words, she called
Speaker 1: out for her lover, Ernest Brown and proclaimed him regent.
Speaker 1: Barron's regency was short lived, a hated figure in Russian court.
Speaker 1: Three weeks after the Empress's death, he was banished to
Speaker 1: Siberia exile out in the cold. That's the story of
Speaker 1: Empress Anna Ivanovna's ice palace and her icy rein. But
Speaker 1: stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear more
Speaker 1: about what came next in Russia. Princess who married Catholics
Speaker 1: weren't the only enemies that in Braziana held. Of her
Speaker 1: most hated rivals was her first cousin, Elizabeth, a woman
Speaker 1: nearly two decades younger than her and famously beautiful, whereas
Speaker 1: Anna had always been diplomatically described as sturdy. A foreign
Speaker 1: minister had once come to Anna's court, where Anna had
Speaker 1: asked him who the most beautiful woman in Russia, was
Speaker 1: not understanding the game of forced flattery. The noble instantly
Speaker 1: pointed to Elizabeth. Anna fumed with no marriage setups from
Speaker 1: her bitter cousin. On the horizon, Elizabeth took a lover,
Speaker 1: a handsome soldier named Alexis Shubin. The Empress took her
Speaker 1: revenge when she discovered the affair by having Shubin's tongue
Speaker 1: cut out. Years later, after Anna's death, Elizabeth would rise
Speaker 1: to power in a coup over Anna's infant nephew. Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: who was the daughter of Peter the Great, got the
Speaker 1: nobles on her side by pledging that she would never
Speaker 1: declare a single death sentence as Empress. Elizabeth reigned as
Speaker 1: Empress for over twenty years, and she kept her word.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. The show is written and hosted by Dana
Speaker 1: Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at
Speaker 1: Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the
Speaker 1: show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.