WI: Anna Petrovna, Daughter of Catherine the Great was Born Male?

Kellan Sullivan

Anna Petrovna was the short-lived daughter of Catherine the Great. Paternity is often ascribed to Stanislas Poniatowski rather than Pyotr III. What if Anna had been born male (and survived)? What name would he have been given? And would Ekaterina have been allowed to raise him or would he, similarly to Pavel, have been taken away to be reared by the Empress Elizabeth? Would Pyotr III have denied paternity of a second son (I'm unsure if he ever personally denied the paternity of Pavel, but Ekaterina certainly did in her memoirs)? And would Ekaterina (assuming much goes as OTL) attempt to position her younger son as heir to his purported father in Poland similarly to how she wanted to have her second grandson in Constantinople? I'm not saying this is feasible, but Ekaterina did sometimes have ideas that were impractical.

@alexmilman @Valena
 

Nivek

Kellan Sullivan said:
Anna Petrovna was the short-lived daughter of Catherine the Great. Paternity is often ascribed to Stanislas Poniatowski rather than Pyotr III. What if Anna had been born male (and survived)? What name would he have been given? And would Ekaterina have been allowed to raise him or would he, similarly to Pavel, have been taken away to be reared by the Empress Elizabeth? Would Pyotr III have denied paternity of a second son (I'm unsure if he ever personally denied the paternity of Pavel, but Ekaterina certainly did in her memoirs)? And would Ekaterina (assuming much goes as OTL) attempt to position her younger son as heir to his purported father in Poland similarly to how she wanted to have her second grandson in Constantinople? I'm not saying this is feasible, but Ekaterina did sometimes have ideas that were impractical.

@alexmilman @Valena
Click to expand...
Pyotr IV, to stick it to his husband. Alexai or Vlad or Nikholas are not out of reach either
 

Kellan Sullivan

Nivek said:
Pyotr IV, to stick it to his husband. Alexai or Vlad or Nikholas are not out of reach either
Click to expand...
I like a second Pavel-Pyotr combo (and chances are very good that it's Empress Elizabeth doing the naming - she did it with both Ekaterina's kids OTL, IIRC, choosing names of her siblings). Alexei might be regarded as tainted after Pyotr the Great's son/Elizabeth's half-brother. Nikolai is a possibility. Not sure about how common Vladislav would've been at that period.

In Ekaterina, Marina Alexandrova playing the young Catherine, tells Elizabeth (the day Pavel is born) that she wished to name the baby (and I'm going off the subtitles here, which seem to be translated wrong, since Elizabeth's response doesn't match with Catherine's remark):

Catherine/Ekaterina: I wanted to name him [Pavel] after his father.
Elizabeth: [with Pavel in her arms] My dear, your father is German. He [Pavel] his Russian.

Now, it could be a mistake in translation, and Liz means "his father" [Pyotr] is German. Or that Catherine's remark is "I wanted to name him after my father".

Catherine seems to be under the impression that she would've been allowed to name her son "Christian/August" in Russia. This is a possibility, since in the first/second episode, when the young Catherine is required to take a new name, Elizabeth gives her the name "Ekaterina Alexeïevna", while Catherine protests that "Sophia" is a Russian name, and her father's name was "Christian". (OTL, AFAIK, Ekaterina chose her "new" name to flatter the empress, while it was Christian August who threw the fit about the "false" patronym).
 
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