At first glance his official portrait corroborates this view: depicted in the fashionable attire of the 18th century, complete with powdered wig, the Emperor looks almost prissy and decidedly unimposing. A closer look at his eyes, however, reveals an entirely different story, one of much sadness and suffering. While absent from history annals, this very different view of Tsar Paul is supported by the crowds who attended his funeral as well as the 50th anniversary of his tragic death, and by the fresh flowers and burning candles which, until the Revolution, were always found by his grave in the Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St, Petersburg.
I prefer to be hated for a rightful cause than loved for a wrong one. -- Emperor Paul I
In order to understand this Tsar-Martyr, we must first understand his mother and the 18th century revolution which Holy Russia suffered in consequence of Peter I's infatuation with the West. The ambitious Catherine did nothing to heal the wounded national consciousness and only furthered the rift between the Westernized nobility and the lower classes. Born Sophie Augusta Fredericke of the German house of Holstein-Gottorp, she converted to Orthodoxy when she married the Empress Elizabeth's heir, the future Tsar Peter III. Her conversion was prompted by reasons of state, not by heartfelt conviction, and she remained foreign to Holy Russia, although she easily cultivated the favors of the spoiled court circles which accepted her liberal views imported from the French Enlightenment thinkers.
