Anna of Russia Anna of Russia Anna Ioannovna (; – ), also spelled Anna Ivanovna and sometimes anglicized as Anne, was regent of the duchy of Courland from 1711 until 1730 and then ruled as Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740. Anna was born in Moscow as the daughter of Tsar Ivan V by his wife Praskovia Saltykova. Ivan V was co-ruler of Russia along with his younger half-brother Peter the Great, but he was mentally disabled and incapable of administering the country, and Peter effectively ruled alone. Ivan V died in February 1696, when Anna was only three years old, and
Anna of Russia husband, but her enemies said she conducted a love affair with Ernst Johann von Biron, a prominent courtier, for many years. In 1730, Tsar Peter II (grandson of Anna's uncle Peter the Great) died childless at a young age. His death rendered extinct the male line of the Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for over a century, since 1613. There were five possible candidates for the throne: the three surviving daughters of Ivan V, namely Catherine (b.1691), Anna herself (b.1693) and Praskovya (b.1694), and the two surviving daughters of Peter the Great, namely Anna (b.1708) and Elizabeth (b.1709). Ivan