The life story of the wife of Peter the First, Evdokia Lopukhina, is of great interest to history buffs because of their mystery, ambiguity and tragedy. She was the first and not too beloved wife of Peter the Great and the last Russian tsarina, while all subsequent spouses of the Russian emperors were foreigners.
Origin and family
Despite the fact that you can often find information that the wife of Peter the Great, Evdokia Lopukhin, was a noble noble family, she is not entirely reliable. The fact is that the father of the future tsarina really was the son of a duma nobleman, but the family received the boyar title only after the wedding of Evdokia with Tsarevich Peter Alekseevich.
Hilarion Lopukhin, father of the future queen, made a prominent career at the royal court. He served as a solicitor, and a streltsy head, and a metropolitan, and even a roundabout. However, after his daughter fell out of favor with the sovereign, his career abruptly ended, as did his sons.
In general, the history of this family saw not only a tremendous rise at the end of the seventeenth century from a seedy noble family to the top of power, but also a tragic fall, which not all members of the family of Evdokia Fedorovna Lopukhina managed to survive.
Choice as a bride
The political situation in Russia at the end of the XVll century was extremely unstable. Numerous boyar clans were unhappy with Tsarevna Sophia and were preparing for the coming to power of a new king, who was about to grow up and reach adulthood.
In such a situation, the mother of Peter Alekseevich, nee Natalya Kirillovna Naryshkina, in a hurry began to look for a convenient bride for her beloved son. The choice fell on the representative of the withering and poor family of the Lopukhins, who was nevertheless numerous and was able to protect her from enemies, if necessary. The bride for the prince was Praskovya Illarionovna Lopukhina, who changed her name after the wedding to Evdokia Fedorovna.
Following the wedding of her daughter, her father received the boyar title, and the brothers received high posts at the court, which subsequently cost them dearly.
Early years in marriage
The marriage allowed Peter Alekseevich to change the status and remove Princess Sophia, since it was traditionally believed in Russia that after marriage the young man became a man and an adult.
The young queen was immediately given the obligation to give birth to heirs. It is believed that in the first three years, Evdokia Lopukhina gave birth to three children, two of whom died in infancy. Some researchers, however, doubt the existence of one child and believe that there were two of them. Only one of them was destined to grow up, but his fate was sad. Tsarevich Alexei died at the hands of his own father, who accused him of conspiring and attempting to organize a Polish-Swedish intervention in Russia.
The first years of the life of the royal couple are known from the memoirs of Boris Ivanovich Kurakin, who was the husband of the sister of Tsarina Evdokia Lopukhina. He came from a noble family of Gedeminovichs and went down in history as the closest associate of Peter the Great and the first permanent ambassador of Russia abroad. This brilliant official for a century served as an example for his followers in the diplomatic field.
Sources about the Queen's Family Life
In his book “The Story of Tsar Peter Alekseevich,” Kurakin writes that the queen was pretty, stately, but unauthorized, stubborn and conservative. The latter, most likely, played a fatal role in the distance from her future emperor.
Kurakin also reports why they did not like Evdokia Lopukhina, speaking about her squabulous character. However, it is worth noting here that, despite her waywardness, she was nevertheless brought up in the traditions of Domostroi, therefore, up to a certain point, she recognized her husband's right to make fundamentally important decisions.
The first year, as the same Kurakin recalls, Evdokia Lopukhin and the king lived in perfect harmony and loved each other very much, but soon the situation changed a lot. Perhaps the reason for this was the acquaintance of Peter the Great with his first favorite - Anna Mons, who went down in history as the Queen of Cucum. Peter met her through the mediation of Lefort.
The clouds are gathering
While the mother of the young king was alive, he did not show excessive aggression towards his wife, who continued to live in the palace, was called the queen, despite the king's mistress. However, Natalia Kirillovna herself got a little cooler with her daughter-in-law for her stubbornness and complacency.
In 1694, the king went to Arkhangelsk, but did not begin to maintain correspondence with his wife, although she still lived in the Kremlin. At the same time, her brothers and father fell into disgrace, and the queen herself began to communicate with people who were unhappy with the policies of the ambitious ruler. Thus began an irreversible tragic fall, which overshadowed the biography of Evdokia Lopukhina and her immediate family.
Irreversible changes in the relationship of the spouses came in 1697, when Peter gathered in the Great Embassy, on the threshold of which the father and two brothers Lopukhina were exiled away from Moscow under the pretext of being appointed governor. Already from the embassy, the king wrote a letter to his uncle asking him to persuade his wife to voluntarily tonsure the monastery. As expected from the stubborn queen, she refused this offer.
Sheared and Link
Upon his return from Europe, Peter first went to his mistress without visiting his wife. This event, of course, caused alarm in Eudokia Lopukhina, but it was no longer possible to change the situation. Soon, Peter met with his wife in the house of one of the officials and urged her to leave for the monastery. She again refused. However, this time Evdokia Lopukhin was escorted to the monastery (Suzdal-Pokrovsky) under escort.
It is believed that initially Peter the Great wanted to execute his wife, but all the same Lefort persuaded him to limit himself to exile and monasticism. The monastery, where the queen arrived, traditionally served as a place of exile for disgraced royal wives and lovers.
Life in the monastery
The queen sent to the monastery did not receive state support and was forced to ask her relatives to send her money, to buy food and clothing. In this mode, the disgraced queen lived for a year, after which she began to live a secular life in the monastery.
Soon, through the mediation of the monastery rector, she appeared lover Major Glebov, who was in charge of the recruitment in Suzdal. His fate was also very tragic, in 1718 he was accused by the emperor of plotting and executed.
After the conspiracy was exposed, Evdokia Lopukhin was first transported to the Alexander Assumption Monastery, and later to the more severe Ladoga Assumption Monastery. In the latter, she spent seven years under strict supervision until her ex-husband passed away.
After the death of Peter the Great
The successor of Peter l was Catherine l, who, sensing the danger emanating from the former queen, resettled her in the Shlisselburg fortress. Soon, however, the grandson of Tsarina Evdokia Lopukhina Peter ll ascended the throne.
After the coronation of the grandson, Evdokia solemnly returned to Moscow, where she first settled in the Ascension Monastery of the Kremlin, and later moved to the Lopukhinsky chambers of the Novodevichy Convent. All indictments were seized and destroyed, and a significant amount of money and a special court were allocated for the maintenance of Lopukhina. At the same time, it did not exert any influence on domestic politics.
According to some reports, Evdokia Lopukhina was among the potential heirs of Peter ll, but the story decreed otherwise. The Tsarina lived a long, dangerous and tragic life, but was buried with honor and due respect in 1731 in the Novodevichy Convent. Anna Ioannovna, in whose favor she gave up power, treated her relative with due respect. Having lost her father, brothers, son and lover because of the king’s suspiciousness, Evdokia showed humility and stoicism, and her last words were: "God let me know the true price of the greatness and happiness of the earth."