Building Connections

Another year in this world, the key difference being that my grandmother thought it was instrumental that I had a tutor to 'polish' my intelligence according to her, though I find it funny that the word 'polish' has a longer life span than the country of Poland.

However, the subject selection is stupid, I get dancing is important not to make a fool out of myself in the ballroom but the indoctrination is ridiculous.

Virtue, Honor, Chivalry? useless subjects for a guy who will inherit the throne in the future, you can count many rulers who were corrupted with their education thinking being a Virtuous Kind Benevolent leader would give them a happy ending, let me tell you one lesson thing I've learned through history, a 'Good Guy' is only good when he has all the power to crush all opposition, and 'Good Guy' with no power? He's just a walking dead man.

Anyways, my nanny Masha should have left me when I turned 4, and the head governess thought so but I threw a fit and begged my grandma not to take her away, I had grown attached to Masha, and I took a lot of time to make her loyal to me, not to the royal family which she was previously. Of course, she doesn't have the loyalty that if I tell her to kill herself she would but I hope it never comes to that.

Furthermore, it seems I'm moving up in the world, Andrey has a lot of old mates of his from when he was part of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment, and those old mates of his are in a nice spot, many of them being sergeants and say if they get dissatisfied by an incompetent Tsar who just so happened to be my father and I were to intervene in the situation by making them proclaim me as Tsar instead of my mother it give me a considerable edge.

A problematic enemy is the Orlov Family, those guys are staunch supporters of Catherine, so I think I should just get rid of them, but how does one try to get rid of 2 influential figures?

Potemkin was said to have many lovers so maybe I can instigate a lovers' quarrel that escalates? or make him have too many enemies by circulating rumors that an influential guy has a beautiful wife and he just so happens that the husband 'coincidentally' enters and the enraged husband kills him? Doesn't seem too hard to get rid of him.

Alexei Orlov is a much tougher guy to kill, the dude is quite popular in the Imperial Army, and he is a sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment, if he were to oppose my coup to support Catherine that could jeopardize my plan as I need the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment on my side to successfully carry it out. I could try to get his support, I don't think he supported Catherine out of passion but mostly because he was dissatisfied with Peter and his brother invited him to the plot to crown my mother Catherine.

I'll try getting him on my side as I don't want to kill the guy, he was a competent commander and Russia needs all the help it can get, but if he were to oppose me? Looks like I'll have to exterminate the Orlov Family.