A brilliant future has been prepared for his daughter Maria by the most illustrious and powerful Prince Menshikov: her wedding to Emperor Peter II will be right around the corner. But the long-standing enemies of the upstart— the high-born Dolgorukovs—intervened, and he was toppled from the heights of power into the abysses of suffering, oblivion—and with him, the whole family and his daughter. And no one can imagine that the “bride of the emperor” might only rejoice at such a tragic turn of fate, for her heart has been given to Fyodor Dolgorukov, whose secret wife she has become… Earlier, the novel “The Tsar’s Bride” was published under the title “The Emperor’s Bride.”