Three maids of honor of the Russian court, who were glorified by scandals

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Russian noblewomen, like nobles, could serve (although they were rarely obliged) - however, only at court, as maids of honor. But each lady-in-waiting had chances for a career, good connections for the future and a place in history. Some entered not even just chronicles and memoirs, but legends. Including very scandalous.

Glafira Alymova

The official first graduate of the Institute for Noble Maidens, established under Catherine, Alymova entered the service of the court and charmed literally everyone: among themselves, she was called only the affectionate "Alimochka". One of the first harpists of Russia, the nineteenth daughter of Colonel Alymov, she was treated kindly by both the empress and the first wife of her son Pavel. But behind the happy entry into adulthood, a rather terrible story was hidden: since adolescence, Alymov was harassed by an elderly and powerful nobleman and even kidnapped her.

The girl Glafira was born after the death of her father, that is, she was an orphan. Taking into account the remaining surviving children of the colonel, she did not have a well-fed life or a successful marriage (without a dowry), so the institute for girls was for her a real fairy tale and a ticket to the future. However, while still a student, she attracted the attention of the curator of the institute, Ivan Ivanovich Betsky, a man fifty-four (!) Years older.

The old man began to charm the girl, and at first she fell under his charm. But Ivan Ivanovich allowed himself more and more frightening hints. Shortly before graduation, Betskoy asked Glafira if she would like to see him as a father or husband? Glafira, of course, said that she was a father. But Betskoy was in no hurry to adopt her officially. After graduation, he simply … took her to his home, despite the ambiguity of this gesture, and there he announced that he would give her in marriage only to someone who would agree to live in his house, obeying him. She herself also had to obey in everything.

In the end, another maid of honor, Countess Protasova, managed to use her connections to marry Alymova to the poet and senator Alexei Rzhevsky, a widower twenty years older than Glafira, but a decent and gentle man. On the day of the wedding, Betskoy, not daring to upset the marriage blessed by the empress herself, whispered to Alymova about weddings from which the suitors fled or at which something shameful was announced, poisoning her holiday. As a result, soon after the wedding, Glafira fled with Rzhevsky to Moscow, and Betsky was struck by a blow - though not to death. By the way, Rzhevsky turned out to be a wonderful husband. True, the Rzhevskys fell out of favor with Emperor Paul, but this is a completely different story.

Maria Razumovskaya

The prince's daughter, the senator's sister, she was almost deprived of the youth that many other maids of honor had - already at seventeen she was "attached" to marry an incredibly rich, arrogant, but young (a couple of years older) Alexander Golitsyn. Apparently, the parents thought that they were serving their daughter, having picked up a groom for her, both young, attractive, and noble, and capable of supporting her no worse than her father. It is also possible that at this age, young people were simply overtaken by love, and the parents considered it unnecessary to hinder it.

Despite the official stiffness of engagements and marriages at that time, in fact, young people often talked with some elderly ladies on a visit - for example, she came to a distant relative, and her other young distant relative was just bringing his friend. In general, many newlyweds before the wedding recognized each other well by talking and playing in someone else's house. So very often behind a fast-paced wedding there was a history of meetings that came to the brink of decency.

The young dandy Golitsyn, however, turned out to be a rare rude and terrible spender. He squandered his fabulous wealth in the first years after the wedding. Maria found herself under the same roof with an aggressive man and could not even console herself, as in such cases with other ladies, by the fact that she could afford expensive outfits. Is it any wonder she started sighing about the possibility of a completely different love story? At one ball, Maria Golitsyna met a man fifteen years older, but with excellent manners and courteous treatment of women - Lev Razumovsky.

Later, Maria and Leo saw their brother Maria more than once - after all, her daughter-in-law was Razumovsky's niece, so random collisions were quite decent. From these "collisions" was born the deepest feeling, and Razumovsky developed an adventurous plan to rescue Golitsyna from marriage. Her husband squandered half of his fortune in cards (and the second to show off the dust), in general, was a passionate gambler.

One evening Razumovsky sat down at the same table with Golitsyn and won EVERYTHING that he had left. And he offered to recoup, putting on the line … his wife. Golitsyn was already so inflamed that he could not stop, and a shocking bet was made. After Razumovsky won Golitsyn's wife, he announced that he forgave the entire debt, except for Maria, literally took her and left.

After that, Mary managed to get a divorce from the church, as a woman whose husband went against morality and God's law so much that he put his own wife at stake. Mary and Leo got married. The other Razumovskys were at first very unhappy with the story, but in the end they accepted Maria into their family. Golitsyn, oddly enough, was not at all angry with the lovers - apparently, he warmed his soul that everything else, except his wife, Razumovsky left him. True, for some time she was not accepted in the world, until the emperor Alexander himself, in order to correct this situation, did not publicly dance with her a polonaise.

Maria Annenkova

The maid of honor of one of the daughters-in-law of Nicholas I, Grand Duchess Alexandra, Maria Sergeevna was distinguished by rather strange ideas and a great love of mysticism. Having become a maid of honor immediately after graduation, Annenkova immediately began to arrange seances, and did it so expressively that other young maids of honor came out with them almost gray. Very quickly, Annenkova drew both the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and his wife into her sessions - and as a result, she was “impressed” to the point of miscarriage by the Grand Duchess. In addition, the princess began to be overcome by delusional ideas, almost hallucinations.

Annenkova managed to create all this in just a year. After the story of a miscarriage, she was urgently sent to Europe for health improvement. Since the maid of honor was only nineteen, for decency an older lady went with her. In France, Annenkova told Napoleon III that she was allegedly the princess of Bourbon (which the spirit of Marie Antoinette herself told her about), and bombarded with letters demanding that the Emperor and Empress of Russia recognize this fact.

Maria Sergeevna corrected her health in this way for a long time and managed to charm with stories about ghosts and her right to the title of princess, the son of a Genoese duke, an elderly and, apparently, impressionable person. At thirty-six, she married him and was satisfied with this, especially since her husband eventually became a duke himself. Their daughter Anna Maria later became the wife of Prince Borghese and a photo artist.

These ladies-in-waiting are also notorious: "Voluptuous uncle", or How Potemkin created a family "harem" from his nieces.