ABSTRACT
At last, after interminable sessions in which there were extremely lively exchanges, the Secret High Council agreed to propose as successor to Peter II the second daughter of Ivan IV (the feeble-minded), Anna, Duchess of Kurland and niece of Peter the Great. Anna was considered to be a calm, thoughtful and thrifty woman; the verkhovniki did not question her obedience to the regime, which was a sort of constitutional monarchy ‘supported and restricted’ by the ‘great families’. Anna, who was as crafty as her mother, Prascovia Saltykov, was quick to understand the situation. When she arrived in the great hall of the Kremlin where she was to receive the verkhovniki, all the Muscovite nobility and the officers of the Guard, Anna Ivanovna took careful note of the comings and goings of the dignitaries, all the while fingering her talisman.
