Discussions about the Imperial Family and European Royalty > Rulers Prior to Nicholas II
Anna Leopoldovna, her son Ioann VI and other children
ivanushka:
Having checked the threads, I see that Ivan VI doesn't have a thread and I think he deserves one!
He has to be the most ill fated ruler in history. He becomes Tsar at the age of two months, is deposed at the age of eighteen months, is separated from his family at the age of four, grows up in solitary confinement and is then murdered at the age of 24. What an appalling life!
His siblings didn't have it much better. They grew up under virtual house arrest in Kholmogory and only when they were all nudging forty were they allowed to leave Russia for Denmark where their father's sister was the dowager Queen. It appears that they weren't happy there and in the early nineteenth century the one remaining sister actually wrote to Emperor Alexander I begging to be allowed to return to Russia. Sadly her request was never answered and she died in Denmark a few years later.
It's one of the fascinating "What if's" of history. How would Russian history have played out if Ivan had never been deposed but grown up to be Emperor. What sort of ruler would he have been? Would he have continued Russia's move towards superpower status? Who would he have married? Would his sisters have married into other European royal families and started dynasties of their own? The questions go on and on...
Does anyone have pictures of Ivan in captivity and of his siblings? It's so hard to find information about them.
Yseult:
What a fascinating thread!
If they were in russian history two grand dukes and two grand duchesses absolutely forgotten, I swear these were the four siblings of Ivan VI: Catherine, Elisabeth, Peter and Alexei. It is so strange, cause one of them -Catherine- lived until 1807.
All that I have found it is that they were settled in Jutland, but I really wish to know more about the four of them...
scarlett_riviera:
I feel so bad for Ivan VI. I've only seen a painting of his death scene on Wikipedia. Really horrible!
I can't believe they were so cruel as to actually lock-up a child and let him waste away for so many years. Surely, if they felt sooo threatened by him, there were other ways- more humane ways -to handle his banishment? Poor kid.
Yseult:
I also feel a great pity for Anna Leopoldovna. She was really a pawn, and she paid a great price for her lack of political wisdom after the death of her aunt Anna Ivanovna.
ivanushka:
I completely agree, Scarlett. How could anyone have done that to a child? The only royal fate that comes close (that I'm aware of) is that of Louis XVII, the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who was separated from his mother at the age of eight and spent months locked away in a dark room seeing no one. His treatment did improve after that but he died in prison at the age of only ten. You'd have thought they could have treated Ivan in a more humane way - especially as Empress Elizabeth was considered to be a warm hearted woman - but I suppose there was the constant fear of him being abducted and used as a tool to stage a coup if he were in any way visible to the public.
Yseult, the book "Five Empresses" by Ansimov has the most comprehensive discussion of the lives of Ivan's siblings that I've yet come across. Poor Catherine, the sibling who survived the longest and wrote the pitiful letter to Emperor Alexander was quite deaf and thus very dependant on her brothers and sisters. Apparently her hearing was damaged on the night her brother Ivan was deposed. In the scuffle in the royal appartments, Catherine was picked up from her crib and then accidentally dropped, damaging her hearing.
I also agree with you that Anna Leopoldovna was a very unlucky woman. Her own mother died shortly after Anna Ivanovna became Empress and she had no contact with her father, the Duke of Mecklenburg Schwerin. Anna Ivanovna doesn't seem to have had any great maternal feelings towards her niece and did little to prepare her to rule the country - hence the ease with which she and her son were overthrown.
The only picture I've ever seen of the internet of the adult Ivan is the one on Wikipedia that you mentioned, Scarlett. I did, years ago, see a drawing in a book that represented the meeting between Ivan and Peter the third. I don't know if it was just a drawing for the book or a copy of a painting - it looked very detailed so I suspect it was a painting, but I can't find a copy of it anywhere!!!
One rather touching aspect to this tragic story is that the children's father, Anton Ulrich of Brunswick, was offered the chance of returning to his native Germany (on the accession of Catherine the Great I think) but his children would have to stay in Russia in case they were ever needed for succession purposes. Anton Ulrich refused to leave his children and remained in Kholmogory with them for the rest of his life.
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