Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!

Today in 1709 (it was December 18th Old Style) Всепресветлейшая Великая Государыня Императрица Елисавет Петровна Самодержица Государыня Всемилостивейшая was born - Elizabeth of Russia - her full title is "Most Glorious Great Sovereign Empress Elisavet Petrovna, Autocrat and Sovereign Most Gracious".

Beautiful, brilliant, playful, and naturally indolent, she was the youngest daughter of Peter the First, the Great - legitimated after her birth, which would be used against her. When Peter's only son - Peter II - died young and without issue, their cousin - daughter of Ivan V, Peter I's brother and co-ruler - Anna became Empress. There followed even more of the tangled Romanov politics, culminating in a child-Emperor (Ivan VI, Anna's nephew and half-German), whose German mother - seeking to destroy the line of Peter I and establish her own - made plans to send the unmarried Elizabeth to a convent for the rest of her life. Elizabeth, not much motivated to be political before this, responded with bold action that demonstrated that her Romanov political genes were not missing. Enlisting the Preobrazhensky Guards to her cause with a stirring speech, she rode with them to the Winter Palace and executed a brilliant coup d'etat that left her Empress.

As a ruler she was diplomatic, judicial, and anti-German - three valuable qualities in this period of Russian history. She founded colleges, ended the war with Sweden, allied Russia with Austria and England, and joined in the Seven Years' War with the unshakable goal of containing the Prussians. Not a single person was executed during her twenty-one-year reign, and she is still one of the most popular of Russian Tsars.