Tsar Peter the Great & Eudoxia Lopukhina

What Happened

Peter the Great married Eudoxia Lopukhina on January 27, 1689, in a match arranged by his mother. The couple were profoundly mismatched. Peter was a towering, restless modernizer obsessed with Western European culture, shipbuilding, and military reform. Eudoxia had been raised in the traditional Russian terem -- the secluded women's quarters where aristocratic women lived in near-total isolation from the outside world.

Peter quickly lost interest in Eudoxia and began pursuing other relationships, most notably with Anna Mons, a German woman living in Moscow's foreign quarter. When Peter demanded a divorce, Eudoxia staunchly refused, citing the Orthodox Church's prohibition against the dissolution of marriage. Her refusal infuriated the Tsar, who asked his Naryshkin relatives to persuade her to enter a convent voluntarily -- the traditional alternative to divorce for unwanted Russian royal wives.

In 1698, when persuasion failed, Peter simply ordered Eudoxia removed from Moscow and confined to the Intercession Convent at Suzdal. She was forced to take the veil and assume the name Elena, though she reportedly removed her nun's habit as soon as Peter's agents departed. She lived in the convent for twenty years, secretly maintaining a romantic relationship with a military officer named Stepan Glebov.

In 1718, Peter's investigation into his son Tsarevich Alexei's attempted flight abroad uncovered Eudoxia's secret relationship and her continued defiance. Glebov was executed by impalement, and Eudoxia was subjected to public humiliation and transferred to a harsher convent. She was only freed after Peter's death in 1725 and briefly enjoyed a period of influence before dying in 1731. Her story remains one of history's starkest examples of coercive control in a royal marriage.

Legal Breakdown: Coercive control and forced dissolution

What This Means for Your Divorce