“The father wanted to arrange for them, as the daughters of a powerful European potentate and, at that, rare beauties and clever women, possibly brilliant dynastic matches... There were rumors that Peter was inclined to bequeath the crown to his daughter Anna, educated and gifted... Never in In our country, and, it seems, in no other state, supreme power has passed along such a broken line...” V. O. KlyuchevskyThe novel by the modern writer Faina Grimberg tells about the time (1725 - 1741), which went down in history as the era of palace coups. After the death of Peter the Great, power passed from one claimant to the throne to another, until Peter’s daughter Elizaveta Petrovna reigned; many pages of the novel are dedicated to her and her sister Anna.