Catherinian Russia

Catherine the Great came to power through a coup against her own husband, and then spent thirty-four years proving she deserved it. She corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot, expanded Russia's borders in every direction, commissioned the Hermitage, and maintained a succession of favorites — men she elevated, loved on her own terms, and eventually replaced. She was the most powerful woman in Europe, and she ran her court like a philosopher-queen who understood that power and intelligence were the same thing.

Around her: Potemkin, the great love she never fully released, who built cities in the south and gave her the Black Sea. The Orlov brothers who killed her husband and made her Empress. Princess Dashkova, who ran the Russian Academy of Sciences and was, in her own way, as formidable as Catherine herself. Pugachev, the Cossack rebel who nearly tore the empire apart from below. And the sons and grandsons who inherited her empire and didn't know what to do with it.