Peter the (not so) Great: The Man Who Tortured and Killed His Own Son
Dynastic politics is never a pretty business, and a great deal of evil has been done in the world in both the pursuit of power and the retention of it. The story of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great and his son Alexei is one such story, poignant in its tragedy and shocking in its cruelty.
Peter the Great, probably the greatest Russian imperial ruler, was a man of titanic capabilities, vast appetites and great artistic sensibility. Like all rulers of the age, in particular those at the head of great empires, in his mind the sanctity and security of the crown superseded all and every other earthy concern. In a political environment where the king – or in this case the Tsar – sits above the law, bad things are bound to happen to anyone suspected of treachery, and manipulation of the facts and tampering with justice were often a small price to pay for royal security.
In a nutshell, the Tsarevich Alexei was the firstborn son of Peter the Great, born of his unloved first wife who was exiled to a convent soon after the birth. For the first nineteen years of his life, Alexei saw little if anything of his father, but the great Sword of Damocles that hung over his head was his status as first in line for the succession. Peter had fixed ideas on what he wanted from his heir, and Alexei, who was, by all accounts, a frail and weak minded character, offered none of them
There were also rumors that Alexi was under the influence of Russian aristocrats opposing Peter’s various reforms and projects, which may or may not have been true, but it all gave Peter fair grounds for suspicion. Alexei, however, had absolutely interest in the Russian Crown, or power, or any such thing. He wanted merely to live quietly, in anonymity and as far away from his father as he could. Thus, Peter despised his son, and simply could accommodate the idea that such a weakling as he would one day inherit the empire.
This, of course, was an extremely perilous situation, and Alexis eventually made the smart decision to seek exile in Austria. However, in the complex power play of imperial Europe, a Russian prince would have no hope of being forgotten, and soon enough, drifting south to Italy, Alexei found himself under pressure to return. Peter promised not to punish him, and Alexei pleaded for nothing more than a normal life in a village somewhere.
No such thing, however, for no sooner was he back in Peter’s orbit than official charges were laid, and a confession extracted under the most blood chilling torture. Under those circumstances, Alexei was prepared to admit to anything, implicate anyone and sign whatever was set before him. A rampage of grotesque reprisal killings then followed, and in the end Alexei died at the age of twenty-eight after two concluding sessions of flogging with the dreaded knout.
The bottom line in all of this is that, no matter how you despise your family, how do you do that to them? Peter the Great may well have been a towering figure of Russian history, but he was also an utter bastard.