Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten: Fast-paced, brimming with atmosphere, menace, intrigue and brutality - book review -

There are few who have not heard tales of Catherine the Great of Russia, a central figure of the Enlightenment, and the dangerously unstable Alexandra, wife of the last doomed Tsar, Nicholas II… but there was another, earlier tsarina whose story is just as remarkable.

The illegitimate daughter of a peasant family in a backwater Baltic village, Marta Skowrońska was a serf who rose to become Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great, and the reformer empress who turned the traditionalist Tsardom of Russia into a modern Western empire.

Drawing on real people and events, and the few sketchy details that exist of Marta’s early years, debut novelist Ellen Alpsten – who first dreamt of writing Marta’s story when she was only thirteen – employs her heart, soul, imagination, and a wealth of painstaking research to bring to spectacular life one of history’s forgotten but most powerful women.

And what a big, intoxicating and enthralling adventure it is as we travel through fascinating timelines of 18th century European history, get up close and (very!) personal with a cast of larger-than-life characters – each portrayed with pinpoint precision – and sweep across the vast landscapes of imperial Russia.

Born to an unmarried mother in a shabby hut in a village in the vast plains of Swedish Livonia, one of the Baltic territories under the rule of Stockholm, young Marta Skowrońska’s chances of success in life are extremely low.

Marta’s mother dies in childbirth and she grows up with the family of her father and his wife but at the age of fifteen, after another harsh winter, the strikingly beautiful girl is sold as a maidservant to a merchant from the town of Walk.