Princess Tarakanoff

Princess Tarakanova (c. 1745 – December 15 [O.S. December 4] 1775), was a pretender to the Russian throne. She styled herself, among other names, Knyazhna Yelizaveta Vladimirskaya (Princess of Vladimir), Fräulein Frank, and Madame Trémouille. Tarakanova (tarakan is the Russian word for cockroach) is a later name, used only in entertainment (literature, theater, filmography, pictures), apparently on the basis of how she lived her last months and died. In her own time, she was not known by that name.

Tarakanova claimed to be the daughter of Alexei Razumovsky and Empress Elizabeth of Russia, reared in Saint Petersburg. Even her place of birth, however, is not certain, and her real name is not known. She is known to have traveled to several cities in Western Europe; she became a mistress of Philipp Ferdinand of Limburg Stirum and lived off his money in the hope that the count would marry her.

She eventually was arrested in Livorno, Tuscany by Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov, who had been sent by Empress Catherine II to retrieve her. Orlov seduced her, then lured her aboard a Russian ship, arrested her, and brought her to Russia in February 1775. She was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where she died of tuberculosis that December. She was buried in the graveyard of the Peter and Paul Fortress.

A popular theory postulates that her death was faked, and she was secretly forced to take the veil under the name "Dosifea." This mysterious nun was recorded as living in Ivanovsky Convent from 1785 until her death in 1810.

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