Petrine Russia

Peter the Great was six foot eight, personally terrifying, and convinced that Russia needed to be dragged into modernity by force. He traveled Europe in disguise to learn shipbuilding. He came home and forced the Russian nobility to shave their beards. He moved the capital from Moscow to a swamp on the Baltic and called it St. Petersburg. He modernized the army, the navy, the alphabet, and the calendar. He executed his own son.

Catherine I — a Lithuanian peasant girl who rose through the ranks of his court to become his wife and then Empress — outlasted him and stabilized the empire after his death. His son Alexei opposed his father's reforms, was condemned for treason, and died in the Peter and Paul Fortress under circumstances that have never been fully explained. This is a story about what happens when one man's vision of the future collides with everyone around him.