Catherine the Great was one of the most remarkable women in Russia’s history. But her first twenty years in Russia were fraught with danger, intrigue and misery. For, gifted with beauty, intelligence and ambition, Catherine was forced to suffer the unpredictable and neurotic whims of Empress Elizabeth and a loveless marriage to her half-witted nephew Peter. Against the fascinating background of eighteenth century Russia, the tremendous figure of Catherine is brought vividly to life - from her arrival in Russia to her successful bid to overthrow her husband after his accession to the throne.

The tale of the treacherous battle for the throne between Catherine the Great and her son Paul, set against the backdrop of late-eighteenth-century Russia The year is 1773. Catherine the Great has been in power for a decade. Since the assassination of her husband, Peter III, in a coup d'état, she has been empress of all the Russias. She rules with enlightenment and grace, driven by ambition and her secret dream to free Russia’s millions of serfs. Tonight she is celebrating the wedding of her son Paul Petrovitch. He was nine—and the rightful heir to the throne—when Peter died and Catherine seized power. Her son has neither forgotten nor forgiven, and hatred for his mother—and his father’s murderer—festers in his heart. He doesn’t know that Catherine committed a terrible crime to safeguard his liberty and his life. She prays that marriage will be the solution to his violent rages and the dangerous enmity between them. Curse Not the King chronicles the struggle for dominance between mother and son. Notorious for her love affairs, Catherine ruled an empire shadowed by treachery, intrigue, and deadly betrayals. But she was never able to make peace with Paul, who would go on to become czar, finally attaining his long-awaited revenge, and whose own son Alexander would reign after him. Curse Not the King is the 2nd book in the Romanov Trilogy, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Alexander I, Czar and Autocrat of all the Russias, was an ambitious man and vowed never to rest until Napoleon, the conquering Emperor of France, was brought to heel. From Russia’s defeat at Tilsit to Napoleon’s catastrophic invasion of Russia, Alexander feigned friendship with his enemy in a cunning but desperate bid to save his beloved country, a tactic that was to surround him with unrest and intrigue. This book vividly conveys the life-or-death struggle for power in Europe between these two formidable opponents. This volume is part of the Ulverscroft Large Print Historical Romance series.