History of Russia (1721–96) drills on the Russian army, and depriving Russia of a military victory by establishing his sudden alliance with Prussia. Making use of the discontent and fearing for her own position, Peter III's wife, Catherine, deposed her husband in a coup, and her lover's brother, Aleksey Orlov, subsequently murdered him, so in June 1762 Catherine became Catherine II, empress of Russia. Peter the Great had two wives, Yevdokiya Lopukhina (the daughter of a minor noble) and Marfa Skavronskaya (a Lithuanian peasant, renamed Catherine after her conversion to Orthodoxy). Catherine I's rise through Peter I's Table of Ranks from a simple peasant
Catherine I of Russia Order of Saint Catherine was instituted by her husband on the occasion of their wedding. Catherine and Peter had twelve children, all of whom died in childhood except Anna and Elizabeth: Upon Peter's death, Catherine found her four siblings, Krystyna, Anna, Karol and Fryderyk, gave them the newly created titles of Count and Countess, and brought them to Russia. In 1724 Catherine was officially crowned and named co-ruler. The year before his death, Peter and Catherine had an estrangement over her support of Willem Mons, brother of Peter's former mistress Anna, and brother to one of the current ladies in