No, I was not aware of that! Thanks. Despite my low attention span for TV and movies*, I've actually been checking out (at a rate of a few minutes at a time on well-spaced-out days), Ekaterina, the subtitled Russian TV series about Catherine, which begins with her arrival in Russia. I'm not sure I would like it as an introduction to Catherine, but since I'm already in the fandom, I've been enjoying it in small doses. An anachronistically old-looking Fritz with some--are those Borzois?--non-Italian greyhounds gets to be a bit player, so far mostly paying people to spy on the Russian court and getting invoked and imitated by Pyotr in every other scene, to the point where I've predicted Pyotr's dialogue more than once. :P "Pyotr, don't do that!" "But Frederick the Great does it!" (Me: "I knew Frederick the Great. Pyotr, you are no Frederick the Great.")

* I *still* haven't finished Mein Name ist Bach (just barely got to the roleplaying scene recently, and oh, god, it killed me inside, I have *so* many thoughts and feelings, it was not at all what I was imagining from your description), nor the two Fritz documentary films I've been crawling through.

Haha, so, confession, when you mentioned Alexander and the post-Catherine inheritance shenanigans, it gave me flashbacks to that historical AU novel I spent most of high school writing. Namely, the part in which my OC protagonist's granddaughter went to Russia to marry a teenage Alexander. They ended up doing a little one-upmanship over their respective grandmothers' accomplishments as expansionist queens, and at the end, my character did the insincere "I am a young woman newly arrived in a foreign court and will defer to my betrothed" thing by saying, "Yes, you're right, your grandmother is far greater, I will model myself on her instead."

At which point Alexander got very flustered, as intended. :-P

(cahn, if this is unclear, remember that Alexander's grandmother, Catherine the Great, had come to Russia to marry the heir to the throne, Peter III, then staged a coup and overthrown him 6 months after he inherited. She hasn't been implicated in his murder afaik, but he did die rather suspiciously "of natural causes" 8 days after being overthrown, so if she didn't give the order, my guess is someone knew she'd look the other way. Unless he really wasn't assassinated, which remains possible, although the timing is a hell of a coincidence if not.)

By way of contrast, my OC protagonist had spent her life playing Joan of Arc to her husband and conquering more and more territory for him to rule, so that's where Alexander's "But I should talk up my grandmother!" "But my own wife should be supportive of me and not overthrow me!" confusion comes in. My OC protagonist was modeled on Joan, both explicitly in-universe and in terms of authorial choices, but with Alexander the Great's level of success at incorporating new territories into her growing empire, lol forever, plus a longevity that is only remotely plausible if you know she was a time-traveler from the future, oh god, I'm laughing so hard.

While my novel was not very good, OOC historical figures and an extremely implausible plot being the least embarrassing of its faults, writing it was one of the most educational things I ever did, especially since I was in an academically poor US high school where *none* of this was covered. I'm like 99% sure we never even learned who Fritz was. I have a specific memory of invoking Machiavelli during a discussion in advanced US History in junior year, and having the guy who would later be salutatorian ask, "Who or what is Machiavelli?" on behalf of the entire class, who were all nodding vigorously and looking confused.

So I regret nothing!

I've actually been thinking lately that all that research I did is paying off in cahn's delight, because like I said, most of what I remember comes from that time in my life, plus the ability to double-check Wikipedia just to refresh my memory on names and dates. :D