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
Sophia Alekseyevna of Russia except on Easter day. She died in the Novodevichy Convent six years later. She was fictionally portrayed in Chinese novelist Jin Yong's novel "The Deer and the Cauldron" in which the young protagonist Wei Xiaobao went to Russia and helped her lead the coup against her half-brother Peter I. It was suggested that this event led to the peace between the Qing Empire and Russia in the Nerchinsk Treaty. Vanessa Redgrave portrayed the character of Sophia Alekseyevna in the 1986 miniseries "Peter the Great". Her performance received an Emmy award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries. Sophia Alekseyevna