Both political machinations ended in failure, lending an air of despair to this portrait of a powerful woman in the last months and hours of an incredible life. The story revisits her youth, marriage and rise to power, as well as key events during her reign, but lingers longest on a period near the end of her life when she was attempting to safeguard the future of her dynasty by marrying her granddaughter to a powerful foreign prince and naming her grandson Alexander as heir, bypassing the son (Paul) whom she considered unworthy to rule Russia. The story unfolds entirely in flashbacks, in fact, as Catherine is in her last hours, dying from a stroke. In Empress of the Night, the story shifts to the later years of Catherine’s reign (although we revisit her early years in flashbacks) and the point of view shifts to Catherine herself. Eva Stachniak’s last novel, The Winter Palace, told the story of Catherine the Great’s rise to power from the perpsective of her servant-turned-spy, Varvara.
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