The story goes like this:

During his first marriage, Peter the Great (Pyotr Alekseyevich) took for his mistress a peasant woman named Marta Helena Skowrońska.  When his first wife died, he married Marta in secret, she changed her name to Catherine, and would go on to bear him twelve children.  Peter spent much of his reign rooting out corruption in his government, and Willem Mons, Catherine’s secretary, was accused of peddling access to the royal family through his position.  Catherine supposedly knew, but chose to ignore the offense out of affection for her secretary.  After Peter ordered his summary execution Catherine was furious — the couple didn’t speak for months.

The story also goes like this:

At some point during their marriage, Catherine took for herself a lover, a man named Willem Mons.  When Peter found out, he had Mons beheaded, and his severed head preserved in a jar of formaldehyde.  Then he forced Catherine to take time each day to sit and look at it.

So… Yeah.

Andy Hull’s song tells the second version, from the alternating perspectives of Peter and the head.  It’s almost pornographically gruesome, yes.  And there appears to be no evidence for any of it.  And I absolutely hate when art requires extensive contextual explanation, or a background in obscure esoterics, before it makes any god damn sense.  But this obtuse erotic torture fantasy somehow won me over, because despite all of that, what it really is, is a love song.  And it’s just brilliant.

“Oh Catherine tell me, was it worth it for him?”

a Bad Books song

Also, it’s worth noting here that when Peter died he had no male heirs.  During the succession crisis, the “new men” whom Peter had raised to prominence, for merit rather than birth, pulled off a successful coup against the return of the old aristocracy.  For the face of this new government, they chose Peter’s popular widow.  So this peasant woman, born Marta, now known as Catherine, would succeed Peter to the throne of Russia, and rule for two years as Empress Catherine I.  As the first female to sit the throne in her own right, she would set a legal precedent for the position that would come to include her own daughter, Elizabeth, and in time her great-granddaughter-in-law, Catherine the Great.

So?  How’s that for a happy ending?

Yeah, still pretty dark, I know.