Catherine's Diary Analysis

Catherine’s memoirs are a detailed account of her life, from her journey to Russia to just before the death of Empress Elizabeth. It would be easy to have reservations about Catherine’s account of events because it would necessarily be biased in her favor, but I sympathize with her narrative more than I see reason to doubt its overall validity. I believe her because I do not think it would be in her nature to ask for pity, or to do something like construct a story of fictitious enemies in the Russian court and a false atrocious personality for her late husband only to justify herself and her actions. Though she was undoubtedly telling her side of the story to make herself more sympathetic to her subjects and the world at large, it is her attempt
Moreover, it would certainly benefit her legitimacy as more than a usurper empress if the “rightful emperor” were taken to be entirely incompetent. Catherine details his personality as he grows older-- an apparent mix of entitlement and sadism. She writes how he would force dogs run back and forth across their bedchambers, and whip them severely if they fell behind, even holding a small dog up and beating it severely until Catherine cried at the sight. He did similar to his guards, though without the brutal whippings. He was graceless, having poor manners and even drilling a hole in the Empress Elizabeth’s door to spy on her and her
She never treats this “deception” as something worth hiding from her readers, but rather, a necessary means of survival that any reader with an instinct towards self-preservation would sympathize with. On the young Peter’s complaints about how he should not allow himself to be dominated by his wife, Catherine wrote: “I took good care not to share his remarks with anyone, but I did not fail to reflect seriously on the destiny that awaited me. I resolved to show great consideration for the grand duke’s confidence so that he would at least view me as someone he could trust, to whom he could say everything without any consequences. I succeeded in this for a long time.” This shows how Catherine behaved to encourage openness from the Grand Duke, despite the fact that she was obviously worried about a future with the boorish man. This type of behavior continues, and she manages to charm the people around her-- it was how she humanized herself to a world that dismissed princesses and most women in