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
Peter II of Russia post-Petrine Russian monarch given that honor; along with Ivan VI (who was murdered and buried in the fortress of Shlisselburg), he is the only post-Petrine monarch not buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. With Peter's death, the direct male line of the Romanov Dynasty ended. He was succeeded by Anna Ivanovna, daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother and co-ruler, Ivan V. Peter II of Russia Peter II Alexeyevich (Russian: Пётр II Алексеевич, "Pyotr II Alekseyevich") ( – ) reigned as Emperor of Russia from 1727 until his death. He was the only son of Tsarevich Alexei