![]() ![]() There were few greater transformations of fortunes in history. When Catherine II died in St Petersburg in 1796 the world sensed the loss of the most celebrated monarch of Europe - something no one would have predicted at the birth 67 years before of an obscure German princess, Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, later married off to the pathetic heir to the Russian throne. Sophie/Catherine had come to rule in her own right over the largest state in existence since the fall of the Roman Empire. ![]() ![]()
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