The ultimate symbol of Russian imperial power was not Russian at all, and her birth name was not even Catherine. This deep dive unpacks how an impoverished teenage German princess, shipped off as a political pawn, transformed herself into a geopolitical mastermind who expanded her empire by 200,000 square miles.

We trace the survival tactics of a 15-year-old dropped into a freezing foreign court, and how she learned from the Roman historian Tacitus to see power politics as they truly exist.

• Fanatical assimilation: learning Russian barefoot at night and converting to Orthodoxy against her father’s wishes
• A disastrous unconsummated marriage to the immature, Prussia-worshipping Peter III
• Building a shadow government through calculated alliances that masqueraded as romance
• The 1762 coup, backed by an enraged military, and Peter’s suspicious death days later
• An enlightened despot’s hard limits: founding a women’s institute yet crushing Pugachev’s rebellion and serfs