they move in herds
Or, a full essay shouting about Grigori Orlov because I am surprisingly passionate about this apparently.
Hello friends,
Everything’s tough these days, and I’m not here to pretend it isn’t. And I’ve spilled at least half a cup of coffee on myself before 9am every day this week, which isn’t helping. However, let’s put our general sense of malaise aside and join together for a brief distraction, in which I’ll describe one of my least favorite Russian men and tell you all why he’s a dick.
I needed a Comfort Dirtbag this week, someone who sucks and is easy to hate, and I can’t think of a better candidate than who I’ve settled on:
Grigori Orlov, The Fightin’ Himbo
Now, I’m aware this is starting to set a pattern wherein I dunk on the male favorites of Catherine the Great. I want to be extremely clear, as I was last time, that no shade on the profession. I hate some of the players while having deep respect for the game. For the record, my opinions on the other main favorites of C the G:
Sergei Saltykov: UGH THIS ASSHOLE.
Stanislaus Poniatowski: highly relatable, seems like you could spill soup on him and he would apologize, yes-ma’amed his way into the throne of Poland, in some respects the Russian Anne of Cleves.
Grigori Potemkin: as discussed, the worst.
Alexander Lanskoy: hot goldfish with three brain cells, just happy to be invited, no hate to him.
Pyotr Zavadovsky: colossally boring, I always forget him.
Platon Zubov: frat boy nightmare disaster, someone rescue his pet monkey, too gross to talk about.
But Orlov is a special kind of dirtbag. And because the English-speaking costume-drama-watching public is getting some wildly inaccurate ideas about Orlov (about which more later), let’s spend the few minutes we have together learning about what a specific piece of shit he was.
He’d Have Played Lacrosse, Is What I’m Saying
Grigori was born in 1734 to a family of medium-to-medium-high social importance. He was one of six boys, a group that would eventually grow up to be known throughout the country as the Orlov Brothers.
To explain their reputation in modern terms, you know those big Midwestern families where all the boys are named like Kirk and Bruce and Zack and there’s one who just goes by Moose or something? They all play varsity sports and drive a black Ford F-150 and host very exclusive bonfires out in the woods where they go through a case of PBR and get super stoned and shoot a kid’s eye out with a paintball gun? And they’re all dumb as a bag of rocks but they graduate anyway because the teachers know that’s just how that family is, and one of them gets a scholarship to some D3 school to play some white kid sport and it’s all anyone wants to talk about?
Yeah, that’s what the Orlov brothers were like.
(I may also be revealing too much about my own high school experience. But that’s OK, because Kirk and Bruce are never going to read this.)
Identifying early his life’s passion as punching people and causing problems, Orlov quickly rose through the ranks of the military, serving as an artillery officer during the Seven Year’s War.
(You know, the Seven Year’s War. The one everyone knows so much about that I don’t have to say anything to explain it. I’m not researching the Seven Year’s War for this newsletter, my friends, and you can’t make me. I’m here for Himbo Times Only.)
Orlov LOVED WAR. In 1758 he was wounded three times on the battlefield and refused to leave because he was having too much fun shooting and stabbing. Needless to say, this made him very popular among the people who like war, and in 1759 he was transferred to the Preobrazhensky Regiment, aka the section of the army permanently stationed in Saint Petersburg. It’s not the Secret Service exactly, but it’s in the neighborhood.
Then, Orlov met Grand Duchess Catherine, later to be Catherine the Great.
Hot, Dumb, and Ready to Stab
Orlov and Catherine hit it off immediately, which should come as a surprise to no one. Orlov was, by all accounts, really really ridiculously good-looking. Catherine’s husband was, canonically, a dick (though the world was also incredibly shitty to Peter III, but that’s another newsletter). All the pieces were in place for them to start secret sexytimes immediately, which, by all accounts, they did.
However, they didn’t stop with sexytimes, because next on the agenda was:
A SUPER-SEXY SECRET BABY!
Pictured: Alexei Grigoreivich Bobrinsky, Catherine and Orlov’s secret (not secret) baby. Let’s all take a moment and observe how badly that baby wants to stab somebody with his sterling silver teething shank, before moving on.
Shortly after Alexei’s birth, the pair moved on to the thing they’re most known for:
A SUPER-SEXY SECRET COUP!
Orlov, no doubt thinking that getting the woman he was sleeping with on the throne of Russia would be beneficial to him politically, took the lead role in plotting the coup that would dethrone Peter III and turn Grand Duchess Catherine into Catherine the Great. Also involved in this coup were all the rest of the Orlov Brothers, because apparently Orlovs are like brontosauruses in that they have brains the size of a walnut and when one does something all the rest have to do it too.
The coup was a success, and by the end of 1762, Catherine was the most important woman in Russia, and Orlov her most important hot idiot.
“Orlov No!” “Orlov Yes.”
Of course, not all was well in Imperial Russia, as Peter III was still very much alive, just living grumpily in exile.
But not if Stabby Stabblovich had anything to say about it!
Eight days after the coup, Orlov’s brother Alexei Orlov had dinner with Peter III, and by the end of the meal Peter was dead. Coincidence? A surprising number of historicans would have you think so! Despite the fact that Alexei Orlov sent Catherine the following panicked note:
We ourselves know not what we did. But we are equally guilty and deserve to die.
Which, I don’t know, sounds fairly decisive? But what do I know about anything.
Whether Peter was killed by the guy who literally said he killed him or by some “mysterious unknown cause,” this was all good for Team Catherine. Catherine made our boy Grigori Orlov basically the richest man in the empire, gifting him palaces and swords covered in diamonds and all sorts of other practical things. Basically, Grigori Orlov was Scrooge McDuck-ing his way across the Russian Empire.
I Put the Diamond in the Coat…AND THEN I PUT THE COAT ON CATHERINE THE GREAT
Every source I consulted to write this newsletter used the same delicate phrasing to explain that Orlov was dumb as a bag of rocks: “He never distinguished himself as a statesman.” Which, like, yeah. That wasn’t his job. His job was to look pretty, have sex with the empress, and stab people when required, a job he was to all appearances extremely good at.
On the few occasions Catherine tried to use her favorite in political machinations, it was a stunning failure. Orlov was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire in 1771, which failed because—according to Catherine the Great’s chief advisor Nikita Panin—Orlov was an asshole. I have no trouble believing this.
He also started swanning around the palace being generally insufferable, surprising no one.
However, in addition to being bad at politics, Orlov was also bad at doing the one thing he was specifically asked to do: not cheat on the Empress of All Russia. When he started sleeping around, Catherine banished him from court. He tried to win back her favor with—and I shit you not—the biggest fucking diamond I have ever beheld with my own eyes.
Like, seriously. Here’s the Orlov Diamond:
Bruh. Where did you get this.
Catherine, unsurprisingly, accepted the diamond. (Wouldn’t you?) She did not, however, accept Orlov, because Catherine had already taken up with her next favorite, another Grigori. We have already discussed Potemkin in glittering detail, so I’ll merely drop the link for those curious.
Orlov didn’t take his own replacement well. He sulked off to Switzerland and married his less-than-half-his-age second cousin, which sure is one way to have a midlife crisis.
The remaining decades of his life, Orlov spent whining, complaining, and gradually descending into clinical madness. He died in 1783 at the age of 48, somehow not by being stabbed by someone he pissed off.
Epilogue: The Opposite of Huzzah
If Grigori Orlov’s name sounds faintly familiar to you, it’s probably because of the show The Great. For 90% of Americans, this show is literally the only source of information folks have about Catherine II. And The Great has a character who helps Catherine seize the throne named Count Orlo, played by the extremely attractive and very talented Sacha Dhawan.
Orlo is basically Cogsworth in a waistcoat: a bookish nerd who loves tactics and is afraid of everything. He’s notorious for uttering lines like:
Which, as we all know now, does not sound a whole fucking lot like the pugilistic himbo we know and hate. I am wildly unconvinced Orlov could read.
“But Allison!” you say. “It’s Orlo, not Orlov! And it’s a whimsical story loosely based on real historical events! Everyone knows it’s fake! Why do you hate fun?”
To which I reply, “Either change his NAME or just make the character a VIOLENT HIMBO! That’s a fantastic character for a whimsical historical comedy! You can be irreverent without deliberately teaching people wrong information! The only way these wild parodies actually work is if everyone already knows the real story and no one watching this show knows! MAYBE I DO HATE FUN!”
Anyway. The disrespect on the dirtbag memory of Grigori Orlov is one of the approximately six dozen reasons this show drives me up a wall. The absolute shitshow of a job they did with the character of Empress Elizabeth is another. Anti-huzzah to all of this.
Until next time, all, be well, and if you see a diamond the size and shape of a chicken egg please do send it to me, I promise I will forgive you any wrongs,
-Allison
That description of the brothers tho.... I got u...