Holstein-Gottorp.

Peter, then a mere youth of seventeen, was delighted with so
splendid a future, and came at once to St. Petersburg. The empress
next sought for a girl who might marry the young prince and thus
become the future Czarina. She thought first of Frederick the
Great's sister; but Frederick shrank from this alliance, though it
would have been of much advantage to him. He loved his sister--
indeed, she was one of the few persons for whom he ever really
cared. So he declined the offer and suggested instead the young
Princess Sophia of the tiny duchy of Anhalt-Zerbst.

The reason for Frederick's refusal was his knowledge of the semi-
barbarous conditions that prevailed at the Russian court.

The Russian capital, at that time, was a bizarre, half-civilized,
half-oriental place, where, among the very highest-born, a thin
veneer of French elegance covered every form of brutality and
savagery and lust. It is not surprising, therefore, that Frederick
the Great was unwilling to have his sister plunged into such a
life.

But when the Empress Elizabeth asked the Princess Sophia of
Anhalt-Zerbst to marry the heir to the Russian throne the young
girl willingly accepted, the more so as her mother practically
commanded it. This mother of hers was a grim, harsh German woman
who had reared her daughter in the strictest fashion, depriving
her of all pleasure with a truly puritanical severity. In the case
of a different sort of girl this training would have crushed her
spirit; but the Princess Sophia, though gentle and refined in