“There Will Not Be Any Direful Reversions”

Abstract

This chapter examines the royal weddings in the two branches of the Romanov dynasty from 1725 to 1745 — the Miloslavskii line (descended from Ivan V) and the Naryshkin line (descended from Peter I). It analyzes the ceremonies held for Peter I's daughter Anna Petrovna in 1725; his grand-niece Anna Leopol'dovna in 1739; and his grandson Peter Fedorovich (the future Peter III), who married Catherine Alekseevna (the future Catherine II) in 1745. The chapter then argues that each swing of the pendulum between the Miloslavskii and Naryshkin lines was marked by a wedding designed to keep the succession in one or the other, once and for all. Only when Lomonosov's exalted Peter and Catherine — the refounders of the Romanov dynasty — married in 1745 did the story of the tsar's happy occasion, a story that stretches back to the end of the fifteenth century, arrive at its denouement. Ultimately, it traces the intertwining narrative of dynasty and weddings down to the wedding of Peter and Catherine in 1745, about which Lomonosov wrote his effusive ode.