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
Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg (Duke Peter Friedrich Georg von Oldenburg) (21 November 1868 – 11 March 1924) was the first husband of Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, the youngest sister of Tsar Nicholas II. He was born in Saint Petersburg, the only child of Duke Alexander Petrovich of Oldenburg (1844–1932) and Eugénie Maximilianovna of Leuchtenberg (1845–1925). His mother was a granddaughter of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia through Nicholas's daughter, Grand Duchess Maria Nikolayevna, and his father was a great-grandson of Tsar Paul I of Russia through his paternal grandmother Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna.