Christmas Every Day

The perils of being a royal mistress 1

Writing the little bio of Peter the Great a few days ago introduced me to the story of Mary Hamilton, aka Maria Danilovna Gamentova, and from that to musing on the often unlucky fate of young women who catch the eyes of sovereigns. For the next few days this blog will recount their sad tales.

Mary Hamilton was the descendant of a Scots family which had emigrated to Russia in the sixteenth century and entered into the service of the tsars.By the early 1700s they were prominent enough to have a girl, Mary, chosen as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress  Catherine, wife of Tsar Peter. It is quite common for women such a position to come to the attention of the royal spouse and for that wayward husband to take one as a mistress. So it was with Peter and Mary. 

Empress Catherine was of a tolerant nature and for a while all was well with the illicit couple but then, as so often happens, the concubine’s charms fade and the emperor looked elsewhere for his pleasure. Mary remained at court and fell in love with Peter’s military aide-de-camp Ivan Orlov. He was an abusive drunk who beat her; to please her paramour she began to steal from the Empress to buy him gifts. She also aborted two pregnancies and strangled to death a child she was unable to kill in the womb. 

In early 1725 she was betrayed by Orlov; Mary was tortured in the Tsar’s presence and confessed to her crimes. The penalty for murdering a child of the royal blood (the dead baby may have been Peter’s) was to be buried alive but the emperor spared her that, condemning her to be beheaded. He told her, “Without breaking the laws of God and the state, I can’t save you from death, so take your execution and believe that God will forgive you.” The painting above shows her awaiting her end.