Charlotte Christine Sophie also known as Sophie Charlotte or simply Charlotte (28 August 1694,
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest c ...
– 2 November 1715,
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
), was the wife of
Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich of Russia
Grand Duke Alexei Petrovich of Russia (28 February 1690 – 26 June 1718) was a Russian Tsarevich. He was born in Moscow, the son of Tsar Peter I and his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina. Alexei despised his father and repeatedly thwarted Peter's ...
. She was the daughter of
Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
Louis Rudolph (german: Ludwig Rudolf; 22 July 1671 – 1 March 1735), a member of the House of Welf, was Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and ruling Prince of Wolfenbüttel from 1731 until his death. Since 1707, he ruled as an immediate Prince of B ...
and
Princess Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen
Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen (20 March 1671 – 3 September 1747) was Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She was the maternal grandmother of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, Emperor Peter II of Russia and also Charles I, Duke of ...
. She was also the great aunt of
Queen Marie Antoinette of France
Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child an ...
.
Biography
Charlotte Christine was brought up at the court of the Polish King
August II
Augustus II; german: August der Starke; lt, Augustas II; in Saxony also known as Frederick Augustus I – Friedrich August I (12 May 16701 February 1733), most commonly known as Augustus the Strong, was Elector of Saxony from 1694 as well as Ki ...
, whose consort
Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth
Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (19 December 1671 – 4 September 1727) was Electress of Saxony from 1694 to 1727 (her death) and Queen Consort of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1697 to 1727 by marriage to Augustus I ...
was her distant kinswoman and also her godmother. She received a good education for that time period. In late 1709, Tsar Peter I of Russia sent his son Alexei to
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...
to finish his education. There, he met Charlotte for the first time. 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
Torgau
Torgau () is a town on the banks of the Elbe in northwestern Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district Nordsachsen.
Outside Germany, the town is best known as where on 25 April 1945, the United States and Soviet Armies forces first ...
, Charlotte Christine married
Tsarevich Alexei
Grand Duke Alexei Petrovich of Russia (28 February 1690 – 26 June 1718) was a Russian Tsarevich. He was born in Moscow, the son of Tsar Peter I and his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina. Alexei despised his father and repeatedly thwarted Peter's p ...
, eldest son and
heir
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officiall ...
of
Peter I of Russia
Peter I ( – ), most commonly known as Peter the Great,) or Pyotr Alekséyevich ( rus, Пётр Алексе́евич, p=ˈpʲɵtr ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ, , group=pron was a Russian monarch who ruled the Tsardom of Russia from t ...
by his first wife
Eudoxia Lopukhina
Tsarina Eudoxia Fyodorovna Lopukhina ( rus, Евдоки́я Фёдоровна Лопухина́, Yevdokíya Fyodorovna Lopukhiná; in Moscow – in Moscow) was a Russian Tsaritsa as the first wife of Peter I of Russia, and the last ethnic ...
. She was allowed to keep her
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...
faith, but any children would be raised as
Russian Orthodox. This marriage was the second to break the old tradition of the Russian imperial family only marrying members of the Russian nobility, the first being
Anna Ivanovna's marriage to
Frederick William, Duke of Courland the year before. She was the first female member of a foreign European dynasty to marry a man of the Russian imperial family since
Zoe Palaiologina. In 1713 she arrived in Russia.
![Charlotte_Christine_of_Brunswick-Lüneburg_by_anonymous_(priv](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Charlotte_Christine_of_Brunswick-L%C3%BCneburg_by_anonymous_%28priv._coll.%29.jpg)
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,
Princess Juliana Luise von Ostfriesland. In the beginning her marriage to Alexei was happy, but his drunkenness soon began to strain their relationship. Peter the Great also often took his son on war campaigns with him, thus even further isolating Charlotte. In the early weeks of their marriage, Peter ordered her to return to Petersburg without him or his son, but she had run back to her father's palace. Peter was the one who retrieved her, but soothed her instead of showing anger, and told her that she was free to visit her family whenever, but would have to tell him in the future. The Tsarevich also had an open affair with
Yefrosinya Fedorov which started during Charlotte's short lifetime and continued after her death. Charlotte found some consolation in the birth of a daughter,
Natalia, and a son, later
Peter II of Russia. She died a month after the birth of her son.
Both her daughter and son died young without issue.
Fiction
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
Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
, where she married a French officer named d'Auban, with whom she later moved to
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
. Later they moved to the island of Bourbon, and when d'Auban died, Charlotte returned to Europe, living in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
and
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
,
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
, with a pension from her niece,
Empress Maria Theresa of Austria
Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina (german: Maria Theresia; 13 May 1717 – 29 November 1780) was ruler of the Habsburg dominions from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position ''suo jure'' (in her own right). ...
.
Heinrich Zschokke
Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (22 March 177127 June 1848) was a German, later Swiss, author and reformer. Most of his life was spent, and most of his reputation earned, in Switzerland. He had an extensive civil service career, and wrote hist ...
developed this legend into a
novella
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian ''novella'' meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts ...
, titled "Die Prinzessin von Wolfenbüttel";
Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer wrote a
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
about it and Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg wrote an opera, "Santa Chiara", on the subject. 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
References
Works cited
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Charlotte Christine of Brunswick-Luneburg
1694 births
1715 deaths
Deaths in childbirth
New House of Brunswick
House of Romanov
People from Wolfenbüttel
18th-century women from the Russian Empire
Russian tsarevnas
Burials at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg