Katie Lambert

She reinforced them. She made it sure that if there was any sort of escape attempt, any kind, you were supposed to kill him.

Sarah Dowdey

In that case, this would be a politically motivated assassination with Mirovich under Catherine’s control.

Katie Lambert

People already thought that perhaps Catherine had had Peter the Third killed, and there were many who thought she was also responsible for Ivan’s death. It made her very unpopular in parts of Europe. She was even called the “Devil in a Diadem” by a prime minister.

Ivan the Sixth was buried in a secret place, and then his grave destroyed, but his legend lived on because this story of the sad little ruler locked away for life on the orders of two powerful women, how could that not mean something? It sounds like a really scary fairytale.

Sarah Dowdey

Of course, people persist in believing that he’s really alive and would return sometime. It reminds us of our Romanoff episode. This podcast keeps on throwing back to earlier ones. The Romanoffs, people keep on believing in them.

Of course, Ivan the Sixth was just this political pawn, again with our theme of how unfortunate it is to be born a royal child, he spends his infancy in a crown, and the rest of his whole short life in a prison, all because of what he symbolized. How many times will we explore this idea in the podcast?

Katie Lambert

While we were researching this podcast, we did get much more intrigued by the story of our possibly murderous Catherine the Great, so get ready for a podcast on her.

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