Background
She was the daughter of Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen.
She was the daughter of Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen.
She was also the great aunt of Marie Antoinette. Charlotte Christine was brought up at the court of the Polish King August II, whose consort Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth was her distant kinswoman and also her godmother. She received a good education for that time period.
There, he met Charlotte for the first time.
She was allowed to keep her Lutheran faith, but any children would be raised as Russian Orthodox. This marriage was the first to break the old tradition of the Russian imperial family of only marrying women from the Russian nobility.
In 1713 she arrived in Russia. Charlotte enjoyed the favour of Tsar Peter the Great, but lived an isolated life with her own court, which was composed almost entirely by foreigners.
He also had an open affair with Yefrosinya Fedorov which started during Charlotte"s lifetime and continued after her death.
Thus Charlotte was the first member of the Russian imperial family who came from a foreign European dynasty since Zoe Palaiologina.