Legends of Catherine the Great

During and after the reign of the Empress Catherine II of Russia, whose long rule led to the modernisation of the Russian Empire, many urban legends arose, some based on true events, concerning her sexual behaviour.

(Lord Byron's Don Juan, around the age of 22, becomes her lover after the siege of Ismail (1790), in a fiction written only about 25 years after Catherine's death in 1796.

After Mamonov eloped from the 60-year-old Empress with a 16-year-old maid of honour and married her, the embittered Catherine reputedly revenged herself of her rival "by secretly sending policemen disguised as women to whip her in her husband's presence",[7] though another account claims that there is no truth in this story.

Her children Ana and Alexei were also rumored to be illegitimate, and some historians even question the legitimacy of Paul I, due to the fact he was conceived so late into their marriage.

Their friendship was cut short when Bruce was found "in an assignment" with Catherine's youthful lover, Rimsky-Korsakov, ancestor of the composer; they both later withdrew from the imperial court to Moscow.

By the first of these passions, she was never so far governed as to become a Messalina, but she often disgraced both her rank and sex: by the second, she was led to undertake many laudable projects, which were seldom completed, and to engage in unjust wars, from which she derived at least that kind of fame which never fails to accompany success".

[5] An urban legend states that an erotic cabinet was ordered by Catherine the Great, and was adjacent to her suite of rooms in Gatchina.

Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias
Catherine II's bedroom in the so-called Zubov Wing of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo was constructed between 1781 and 1783 and adorned with thin plates of milky white polished glass; contemporary drawing in the National Museum in Warsaw .