Legends were made about her, she became the heroine of novels and films. I must say that, although this person was, without a doubt, a clever adventurer, many were filled with sympathy for the fragile girl who fell victim to the intrigues of Empress Catherine II, who feared for her power. Meanwhile, even the real name of Princess Tarakanova remained a secret …
They said about the Alekseevsky Ravelin of the famous Peter and Paul Fortress: "They don't leave here, they just take them out." Since the time of Catherine II, there was a special prison here - the so-called Secret House, where criminals were placed "by special imperial command", usually without any trial or investigation. It was here in 1775 that a woman was brought, who went down in history under the name of Princess Tarakanova.
Until now, there is no reliable information about who this girl was, who claimed that she was the daughter of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and her secret spouse, Count Alexei Razumovsky.
Princess Tarakanova (by the way, they began to call her by this name much later, and, it seems, she herself did not know about him) lived in Europe under different names. Either she pretended to be a certain maiden Frank or Shel, or Madame Tremuil, or she was called the daughter of the Turkish Sultan Ali-Emete, or Princess Eleanor of Azov, or the Russian Princess Elizabeth of Vladimir …
She appeared now in Ghent, then in London, then in Paris, and everywhere she found admirers who were ready to lend her money at the expense of a mythical future inheritance. No one even really knew how old she was: some gave twenty, others - thirty. Finally, she appeared in Poland and called herself the daughter of Empress Elizabeth. She really had a daughter from Razumovsky, born in 1744, who lived abroad for a long time as Princess Augusta Daragan (in Russia she was baptized into Tarakanova!) And died in the Ivanovsky monastery under the name of nun Dosithea … But many people really found the impostor outwardly similar to Elizabeth …
The then Russian Empress Catherine II ordered the elder brother of her favorite Grigory Orlov, Count Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky, to deliver "Princess Tarakanova" to Russia, promising her reinstatement on the throne. Orlov had an affair with the impostor, but this did not prevent the count from "handing over" his mistress to Catherine, who immediately imprisoned her in a dungeon, where she died. According to rumors, "Tarakanova" was even pregnant from Orlov: the child either died or was taken away from his mother immediately after birth …
There is a version that the "princess" died in a flood, when the chambers of Petropavlovka were flooded. The famous painting by the artist Konstantin Flavitsky "Princess Tarakanova" also speaks in favor of this version: she depicts a young woman standing on a bed and in horror pressing herself against the wall, as a stream of water gushes from the window …
This is how this legend was born. In 1777, during another flood on Vasilievsky Island, a prison with three hundred prisoners was washed away. Rumors immediately spread that the Peter and Paul Fortress was also flooded … However, there was nothing like that, and the one who was called Princess Tarakanova died of consumption two years before the flood …
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Nowadays, the ghost of Princess Tarakanova allegedly appears at the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress in rainy, damp weather. She is usually seen facing the wall and crying.
Here is the story of Maxim K.: “It was late autumn, and despite the relatively earlier time, it was already completely dark. We were walking around the fortress when my youngest son, who ran ahead, came back and said that "some aunt is crying there." I walked faster, soon saw a female figure near the wall and heard sobbing. It was rather dark, it was impossible to see her clearly.
But I noticed that the woman was dressed in an unusual way, in something old. I decided that maybe some kind of filming was being carried out here, not far from Lenfilm, and this is an actress. But when I went to her, the figure disappeared, it seemed to me that it had just entered the wall. My sons got scared, they saw it too and began to ask me to go home faster. I agreed, I, who do not believe in ghosts, felt uneasy."
However, if during her lifetime Princess Tarakanova was a legendary person, it is not surprising that even after her death legends are told about her. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that the famous adventurer just took it and sunk into eternity …
TRINITY MARGARITA