How ‘The Great’ Tackled the Legend that Catherine the Great Had Sex With a Horse

Hulu’s The Great takes a lot of liberties with the life of real-life monarch Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning), but there’s one thing it gets so very right: the horse rumor. For centuries, it’s been gossiped that Catherine the Great not only slept with a horse, but that she died in the throes of bestiality. The Great not only tackles this scandalous legend head on, but in a kind, witty way that illuminates the awful way great women are often smeared by history.

Created by The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara, The Great is an irreverently feminist look at the early life of Catherine the Great. We follow the idealistic German princess as she travels to the Russian court of Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) to be his bride. Almost immediately, she finds herself at odds with her cruel and simple-minded husband and his seemingly vapid court.

In Episode 4 of Hulu’s The Great, “Moscow Mule,” the ladies of the Russian court suddenly start neighing in their empress’s direction. At first, Catherine assumes they are mocking her because she rode a very slow mule to the palace, but it is then revealed that one of her bitterest rivals has started a rumor that Catherine wasn’t a virgin when she married Peter because Catherine had already had sex with a horse.

While Catherine, ever a fan of reason and enlightenment, initially laughs off the rumor, she soon learns that it has taken hold of the entire court. As the Swedish Queen Agnes (Grace Molony) later tells Catherine, the first lie wins. Since the sensational rumor is the first slander attached to Catherine, it follows her like a shadow through the court. Even her lover Leo (Sebastian de Souza) uses it to hurt her after he feels slighted by the time she’s spending with her husband.

The thing that is genius about this subplot is that the legend that Catherine the Great slept with a horse has stuck to her reputation over the centuries more than any of her accomplishments. It has stained her legacy, reducing a shrewd politician, brilliant strategist, and all around heroine of the enlightenment into a dirty joke.

Rather than ignore this aspect of Catherine’s reputation, The Great tackles it head on. The show not only explains how it was a fanciful rumor started by Catherine’s most jealous rivals, but also how it managed to keep hold in people’s imaginations. The whole thing could have been a throwaway line, but McNamara keeps circling back to it, sometimes in winking, and sometimes in devastating ways.

When Catherine succeeds in introducing the printing press to Russia, she at first believes she has done a great deed. And theoretically, she has! She has given people the freedom to express and circulate their ideas. However, she’s also given the court the ability to spread rumors, hatred, and vitriol. Case in point: cartoons of her sleeping with a horse. This image undercuts her reputation and puts the monarchy, ironically enough, at risk. If Peter and Catherine can be ridiculed, they can be reduced down to their human size, proving they are not religiously-appointed leaders.

The Great gets a lot about Catherine’s life wrong, but it totally nails how the persistent horse rumor started and why it will never go away. It’s so fabulously out there that it overshadows anything else you might hear about her. More than that, it says something about just how powerful she was. Unable to outmaneuver her in court or on the battlefield, her detractors clung to the most specious rumor they could find. And why was it believable at all? Because Catherine was a proudly sexually liberated woman who was known for keeping lovers, as did most people in the Russian court.

The rumor that Catherine the Great had sex with a horse will never die. The Great knows that, and The Great wants you to understand how and why vicious rumors are attached to great female leaders in the first place: when you can’t conquer a queen, you have to do all you can to kill her reputation.

Watch The Great on Hulu