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
Maria Alekseyevna of Russia Maria Alekseyevna of Russia Tsarevna Maria Alekseyevna (; 18 January 1660 - 9 March 1723) was a Russian Princess, daughter of Tsar Alexis of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya, sister of Tsar Feodor III of Russia and Tsar Ivan V of Russia and half sister of Tsar Peter the Great. Maria Alekseyevna did not actively participate in the political plots of the Kremlin, but her open passive sympathy for Tsarevna Sophia Alekseyevna, Eudoxia Lopukhina and Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia made her relationship to Tsar Peter tense. She maintained a contact with Eudoxia Lopukhina after Lopukhina had been placed in a