As her servant summoned help, Catherine lapsed into unconsciousness from which she never awakened and died at 9:45 PM the next day.
Rather than challenge the existing premise of women being woefully inferior to men, ordinary human nature would have caused those of both sexes looking for explanations for the apparent conundrum to find one that accounted for Catherine the Great.
Remember, women of those times who killed their husbands were guilty not of murder but of petite treason, a legal term that makes it abundantly clear what the proper relationship between husband and wife was supposed to be.
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