Peter's domestic life, as we have seen, was not happy. After his divorce from his first wife, he married Catherine who, in 1702, had been made prisoner at Marienburg. It is not known where she was born, but she was probably a native of Livonia, and was a servant in the family of Pastor Glück and engaged to be married to a Swedish dragoon. She became the property of Menzikoff who gave her to the czar. There was a secret marriage which was confirmed by a public ceremony in 1712, in reward for her services at Pultowa. Peter also instituted the Order "For Love and Fidelity," in her honor. A German princess describes her thus:--"The czarina was small and clumsily made, very much tanned, and without grace or air of distinction. You had only to see her to know that she was lowborn. From her usual costume you would have taken her for a German comedian. Her dress had been bought at a secondhand shop; it was very old-fashioned, and covered with silver and dirt. She had a dozen orders, and as many portraits of saints or relics, fastened all down her dress, in such a way that when she walked you would have thought by the jingling that a mule was passing." She could neither read nor write, but she was sharp, had natural wit, and obtained great influence over Peter. They had two sons, Peter and Paul, who died in childhood, and two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth. The former married the Duke of Holstein.
Alexis, the son by his first wife, was Peter's heir. He had grown (p. 170) to be a young man before Peter realized that the result of all his efforts depended upon his successor, and the czar began to pay attention to his son's education when it was too late, when habits had been formed. The czarévitch had imbibed the prejudices of his mother; he was narrow-minded, lazy, weak, and obstinate, and associated with people to whom Old Russia was Holy Russia, who abhorred reforms of every kind. Peter sent him to travel in Germany, but the prince would learn nothing. His father warned him in very plain terms. "Disquiet for the future," he wrote to Alexis, "destroys the joy caused by my present successes. I see that you despise everything that can make you worthy to reign after me. What you call inability, I call rebellion, for you cannot excuse yourself on the ground of the weakness of your mind and the state of your health. We have struggled from obscurity through the toil of war, which has taught other nations to know and respect us, and yet you will not even hear of military exercises. If you do not alter your conduct, know that I shall deprive you of my succession. I have not spared, and I shall not spare, my own life for my country; do you think that I shall spare yours? I would rather have a stranger who is worthy for my heir, than a good-for-nothing member of my own family."