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Ekaterina II Velikaya (Catherine the Great to the English-speaking world) dreamed of Russia conquering Constantinople and setting her second grandson, Konstantin Pavlovich, on the throne of a restored Neo-Byzantine empire.

Her contemporaries considered it faintly ridiculous. Friedrich the Great commented that 'she has named her first grandson Alexander and he is to be as great, her second is named Constantine and she intends for him to be a Byzantine caesar, her third she would probably like to name after/become the Great Moghul'. And when Josef II went on a tour of the newly acquired Crimea - New Russia - with her and when returning to his coach after helping her lay two foundation stones for a planned cathedral larger than St. Peter's in Rome, remarked "The Empress has laid the first stone, and I have laid the last".

Even a contemporary cartoons poked fun at her ambitions.

The Taming of the Shrew - by James Gillray.
And another cartoon showing the Devil offering Catherine Warsaw and/or Constantinople.

But what if Catherine's plan for a grandson as a Byzantine Caesar was perhaps not so far fetched? The rest of Europe who would see Constantine (or Alexander, since Paul I clearly preferred his second to his first son, so he might name Alexander as Byzantine ruler and leave Konstantin to succeed in Russia) as Russia's puppet would be sort of like the view that D. Felipe V of Spain would be in France's thrall. But already at an early stage (albeit perhaps strongly influenced by his wives or the princesse des Ursins) he showed an independent policy from France. Konstantin might do the same - he was certainly in conflict with Alexander and most Russians tended to view him as too liberal, while the Poles hated him as the Tsar's arm in Warsaw.

What if Konstantin had become King/Emperor Constantine I of Greece (/the Hellenes/Byzantium)?
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