The Grand Duchesses: The daughters of Tsar Paul I:          Part IV: Grand

The Grand Duchesses: The daughters of Tsar Paul I:          Part IV: Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna (1788- 1819) The fourth daughter and sixth child of Emperor Paul I and Empress Maria Feodorovna was named “Ekaterina” after her paternal grandmother, Catherine the Great. Her family called her “Katya.” She was born at the Catherine Palace in Tsarkoe Selo. Like her sisters, she received a good education. She loved to read. She was said to have been beautiful and had a pleasant and vivacious personality. Katya was close to her brother Alexander I. They remained close throughout her life. Ekaterina was Alexander’s favorite sister and one of the few persons he loved unconditionally. In his letters to her, he includes phrases like “I am yours, heart and soul, for life,” “I think that I love you more with each day that passes,” and “to love you more than I do is impossible.” Although Paul and Maria Feodorovna were initially disappointed at the birth of a fourth daughter, Ekaterina later became her mother’s favorite daughter.At one point, Napoleon Bonaparte, who needed a young and suitably high-born bride to provide him with an heir and had decided to divorce Josephine, showed an interest in Ekaterina. The union would have been advantageous to Napoleon in more than one way. Still, its prospect horrified Ekaterina’s family, who promptly arranged for the young woman to marry a maternal cousin, Duke Georg of Oldenburg (1784-1812). Their descendants became the Russian branch of the Oldenburg.Although the marriage had been hastily arranged, the bride and groom seemed compatible. They had two sons:  Peter Georg (b. 1810 – I could not find any paintings or photographs of him - he died at age 19) and Constantine Friedrich Peter (b. 1812). The couple resided in Tver, where George had been appointed governor-general. Catherine lived a lavish court life and entertained with balls, grand dinners, and similar events in the pattern of the Russian court to create “a Small Saint Petersburg” in Tver. Like her sister Maria, she greatly enriched the cultural life of her adopted country. Unfortunately, Ekaterina’s husband died of typhoid barely three years into the marriage.During the years immediately after the death of her husband, Ekaterina stayed with her siblings and traveled with her brother Alexander I; she traveled to England with him to meet the future George IV and accompanied him to the Congress of Vienna.In England, Ekaterina met the Crown Prince Wilhelm of Württemberg (1781-1864). They fell in love at first sight. However, Wilhelm was already married to princess Caroline Augusta of Bavaria. Crown Prince Wilhelm and Caroline Augusta sought and got an annulment of their marriage; apparently, no love was lost between them; their marriage had been an unsuccessfully arranged one, and after its dissolution, Caroline Augusta married Emperor Franz of Austria as promptly as Wilhem married Ekaterina. The couple’s first daughter was Princess Marie Friederike Charlotte, who was born on the same day that her grandfather died, and her father acceded to the throne of Wurttemberg; her mother thus became Queen Katharina of Württemberg. As Queen, Ekaterina supported elementary education and organized a charity foundation during the hunger of 1816. In 1818, she gave birth to another daughter, Sophie Frederike Mathilde, who would marry Ekaterina’s nephew Willem III of Orange and become Queen of the Netherlands.While researching this piece, I read two different versions of the causes of Ekaterina’s death. Ekaterina dies of erysipelas (not caught on time) complicated by pneumonia at Stuttgart in the first one. In the second version, Ekaterina travels to Italy, where he finds her husband with a mistress (although he loved Ekaterina, he had not given up “dalliances”). Heartbroken, Ekaterina returns home not caring to dress warmly enough and catches pneumonia that kills her at age thirty. What is certain is that Ekaterina died six months after the birth of her youngest child, leaving four small children scattered across two families behind. Her (perhaps) unfaithful and surviving husband, built Württemberg Mausoleum in Rotenberg, Stuttgart, dedicated to her memory. He promptly married his first cousin, Pauline of Wurttemberg. -- source link

More pics about