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
Tsarevna Catherine Ivanovna of Russia V's daughters, she seems to have been the most capable. In 1708 the family moved to the new capital, Saint Petersburg. According to contemporaries, Catherine was a short, dark-haired, and pale beauty and was a popular socialite with her charm and sociability. At the request of her uncle Peter I, she was married on 19 April 1716 in Danzig to Karl Leopold, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He had initially proposed to Catherine's sister Anna (then Dowager Duchess of Courland) but Peter I instead chose Catherine to be his bride. The marriage created a political alliance between Russia and Mecklenburg against Sweden,