Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures.

Catherine the Great stands out from the other rulers of Imperial Russia, a philosopher empress, whose wit, political savvy and unyielding ambition

transformed that empire into a European powerhouse.

Seizing the throne through an audacious coup against her own husband,

she wielded her authority with an iron grip, balancing the volatile ambitions of her

courts while nurturing her vision of an enlightened rule. In today's Life of the Week episode,

historian Janet Hartley speaks to Danny Bird about how Catherine corresponded with the era's leading philosophers,

navigated scandalous love affairs, and earned her glittering, but contentious reputation,

not just as an innovator, but as the architect of Russia's might.

Hello, Janet, thank you for joining me today.

And we're diving into the life of one of history's most fascinating and powerful rulers,

Catherine the Great.

There's so much to unpack with her from her relatively modest beginnings

to becoming one of Russia's greatest monarchs.

Let's kick off by talking about her early years.

What do we know about them?

Well, we know when she was born.

She was born in 1729 in Stettin, now in Poland. We know she was, indeed, from an obscure

German princely family. So she's Princess Sophia of Anhalt Serbst. We know she spent her

childhood partly in Stettin, which wasn't a

terribly fascinating place, but also in other courts in Germany. And like many German

and princesses of that time, she was really brought up in order to be marriageable material,

...