They say that marriages are made in heaven! But is this true of the crowned bridegrooms and brides, who met only on the eve of the wedding? Their princes and rulers of large and small countries waited for popular love and worship. But they did not have the right to their own love …. It was necessary to acquire secret and official favorites ,. appearing with his "second half" only at official receptions But sometimes married royal persons fell in love with each other and then their union became a poetic tradition, The Queen of France Anna Yaroslavna and her husband Henry I , Maria Temryukovna and Ivan the Terrible . Catherine II and Peter III these and other stories of love and hatred tell the historical novels of Elena Arsenieva.