Princess Tarakanova
Princess Tarakanova (c. 1745 – ) was a pretender to the Russian throne. She styled herself, among other names, "Knyazhna Yelizaveta Vladimirskaya" (Princess of Vladimir), "Fräulein Frank", and "Madame Trémouille". Tarakanova ("tarakan" is the Russian word for cockroach) is a later name, used only in entertainment (literature, theater, films, paintings), apparently on the basis of how she lived her last months and died. In her own time, she was not known by that name. Life. Tarakanova claimed to be the daughter of Alexei Razumovsky and Empress Elizabeth of Russia, reared in Saint Petersburg. Even her place of birth, however, is  not certain, and her real name is not known. She is known to have traveled to several cities in Western Europe, and to have become a mistress of Count Philipp Ferdinand of Limburg Stirum, apparently in the hope that he would marry her. She eventually was arrested in Livorno, Tuscany by Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov, who had been sent by Empress Catherine II to retrieve her. Orlov seduced her, then lured her aboard a Russian ship and took her to Russia in February 1775. She was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where she died of tuberculosis that December. She  was buried in the graveyard of the fortress. A popular theory postulated that her death was faked and that she was secretly forced to take the veil under the name Dosifea. The mysterious nun of this name is recorded as having lived in the Ivanovsky Convent from 1785 until her death in 1810.