Alexei Petrovich Romanov (1690-1718)

Russian Royalty. Born the eldest surviving son of Peter the Great and his first wife Eudoxia Lopukhina. In 1698, his father ordered his pious and conservative mother to a convent. The czarevich was then raised largely by his aunts and tutors, studying foreign languages and mathematics. As a teenager, he was put to work in what amounted to the quartermaster corps of Peter’s army, and was nominally in charge of the defense of Moscow during the Swedish attack of 1708. In 1711, he married Princess Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, whom he disliked. She died of complications following the birth of their second child, the future Peter II, in 1715. That same year, after being berated by his father, he volunteered to relinquish his claim to the throne. The Czar ordered his son to either become a czarevich he could be proud of or become a monk. The czarevich said that he preferred monastery, but instead, he fled the country with his mistress and in 1716, turned up Vienna at the court of his brother-in-law. Against advice, however, he was convinced to return to Russia in 1718, when he was publicly disinherited. Many of his associates were then arrested or executed, and his mother was moved to an even more remote convent. When his mistress turned over his letters to avoid arrest herself, he was arrested for treason, apparently tortured, and on 24 June, condemned to death. He died in captivity before the execution could be carried out; rumors immediately surfaced, however, that he was strangled, smothered, or poisoned, but he could simply have died of wounds received.

Bio by: Iola