Princess Tarakanova

The famous Russian novelist Grigory Petrovich Danilevsky (1829 – 1890) gathered archival data about notable and intriguing personalities of the Russian Empire in the course of his duties. The result of this work was a multitude of historical novels. The most famous of them - «Princess Tarakanova», tells the tragic fate of an 18th-century adventuress who claimed to be the daughter of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and pretended to aspire to the Russian throne. The prototype of the heroine of the novel "Burned Moscow", dedicated to the events of the Patriotic War of 1812, is considered to be the famous «cavalry maiden» Nadezhda Durova.