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
Princess Catherine Ivanovna of Russia from the capital and her mother followed her husband into exile. Catherine and her brother Vsevolod remained in the care of her grandmother, the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Mavriekievna of Russia. On 18 July 1918, their father Prince John was killed, and their mother Princess Jelena was arrested and spent several months in Soviet prisons. Grand Duchess Elizabeth was able to take Catherine and her brother to Sweden. Sometime later, they were reunited with their mother. The family lived in Serbia, then moved to England. There, Catherine received an excellent education, although she never learned the Russian language because her mother,