Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
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| Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel | |
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| Tsarevna of Russia | |
.jpeg) Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel | |
| Born | 28 August 1694 Wolfenbüttel, Germany |
| Died | 2 November 1715 (aged 21) Saint Petersburg, Russia |
| Burial | |
| Spouse | |
| Issue |
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Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel | |
| Mother | Princess Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen |
Charlotte Christine Sophie also known as Sophie Charlotte or simply Charlotte (28 August 1694, in
Early life and education
Charlotte Christine was brought up at the court of the Polish King August II, whose consort Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth was her godmother and her relative. She received a good education for that time period. In late 1709, Tsar Peter I of Russia sent his son Alexei to Dresden to finish his education. There, he met Charlotte for the first time.
Marriage
She seemed a good match to Tsar Peter for his son because her elder sister Elizabeth Christine was married to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and the support of Austria in the upcoming fight with the Turks was appreciated by Russian diplomats.
On 25 October 1711 at
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Charlotte enjoyed the favour of Tsar Peter the Great, but lived an isolated life with her own court, which was composed almost entirely by foreigners and headed by her first cousin,
Children and death
Charlotte found some consolation in the birth of a daughter,
Legend
Some fifty years after her death, a legend developed, according to which Charlotte did not die in 1715 and, instead of her corpse, a wooden doll was put in her coffin. According to this, she fled to
In popular culture
Heinrich Zschokke developed the legend of Charlotte into a novella, titled "Die Prinzessin von Wolfenbüttel". Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer wrote a libretto about it.
Santa Chiara opera
Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg wrote the opera "Santa Chiara" about the wife of the Tsarevich. In the version of this opera, which takes places in the magnificent palace of the tsarevich in Moscow, Charlotte Christine, who suffers because of her abusive husband, desperately wants to return to Germany. She sent her secretary, Herbert, to Germany to ask for permission to return, but it was rejected. It is revealed that she is secretly in love with Victor de St Auban. With the intention of getting rid of his wife, the tsarevich Alexis tries to kill Charlotte Christine with a glass of poisoned wine. After drinking it, Charlotte Christine falls lifeless.
However, she is not dead but only asleep because instead of poison what she drank was just a narcotic (which the physician Aurelius gave to the tsarevich Alexis, making him believe that it was poison). During the funeral and just before the coffin was closed, Aurelius and Herbert abduct Charlotte Christine without being noticed.
Ten months later, Charlotte Christine is happily living unrecognized in the port of Resina, near Naples, southern Italy, where she is called Chiara and worshipped by the local population as a saint ("Santa Chiara"). The tsarevich Alexis also arrives in Resina, fleeing from Russia after a failed conspiracy against his father. On the orders of the Tsar, Victor de St Auban and Aurelius followed him. After meeting his prosecutors and Charlotte Christine, whom he thinks is a ghost, the tsarevich Alexis commits suicide.
Ancestry
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References
- ^ Montefiore, p. 188
- ^ Montefiore, p. 196
- ^ "Collections Online | British Museum". britishmuseum.org. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
Works cited
- Montefiore, Simon Sebag (2016). The Romanovs: 1613—1918. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
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