This love had no right to exist and was forbidden - the love of monarchs and ordinary mortals. But the passion that arises for someone else's wife or husband is a hundredfold a great tragedy for those who are clothed with power and ascended to its top - to the throne! And now at the foot of the throne there is a love relationship that cannot be kept secret . It becomes a source of innumerable gossips and rumors, acquires incredible speculations, is condemned … It is a feeling of compassion in the hearts of those people.... who himself loved and knows the irresistible power of the forbidden passion! Ivan the Terrible's mother Elena Glinskaya and her lover , Prince Ivan ObolenskyTelepnevSheep, Empress Catherine the Great and Alexander of Lanskoy , Nikolai II and Matilda Kshesinskaya - stories of their love and passion read in the novels of Elena Arseneva …