The Great Is Only 'Occasionally' True. But These Aspects of Hulu's Catherine the Great Series Are Based in History

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In 1768, countries across Europe were scrambling to find ways to prevent and cure the deadly smallpox disease, a centuries-old parallel to today’s race to find a successful vaccine to end the coronavirus pandemic. A British doctor, Thomas Dimsdale, was exploring the method of inoculation, in which a patient is deliberately infected with a mild form of smallpox to guard against future infections—a precursor to vaccinations as we know them today. Catherine was impressed with his work. At a time when smallpox was sweeping Russia, she invited Dimsdale to the Russian court to perform inoculations on herself and her son, Paul. While most of her contemporaries saw the treatment as controversial and dangerous, Catherine and her son responded well to the inoculation. Catherine’s willingness to lead by example was a risk that paid off and led to a mass program across Russia; historians estimate that by 1780, 20,000 Russians had been inoculated, and by 1800, that figure rose to 2 million. Catherine made Dimsdale a Baron of the Russian Empire, and she also ennobled the peasant boy who had provided the smallpox matter used for her own inoculation. She was a target of gossip Hulu Despite Catherine’s achievements and the complexities of her long reign, sensationalist legends about her have persisted throughout the centuries. The myth that she died while trying to have sex with a horse is categorically untrue, as she died of a stroke in November 1796. “It’s not even worth discussing,” historian Simon Sebag Montefiore previously told TIME. The Great satirically alludes to the malicious gossip that plagued Catherine both before and after her death. Much was made of her personal and sexual life by her subjects, and by historians in the centuries since then, with some branding her a nymphomaniac. At the time, it wasn’t unusual for monarchs across Europe to have multiple affairs and lovers, yet later in her life Catherine drew scrutiny for engaging in relationships with men much younger than herself. It’s no coincidence that other powerful female historical figures, including Cleopatra, Anne Boleyn and Catherine de Medici, have also been targets of rumors about their sexual lives rooted in misogyny. Catherine foresaw the need to write her own story through her memoirs, counteracting rumors that had spread as a result of her rise to power. While the genre of autobiography didn’t exist as we know it at the time, historian Monika Greenleaf has said that Catherine’s writings “were a pre-emptive strike against the memoirists and biographers who were eager to write her history for her.”