A rollercoaster called Romanov: the joys of hidden historical heroines

My ladies are like Tutankhmun: the Tsars preceding them, such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, and succeeding them - Catherine the Great and the tragic last Tsar - caused them to slide into obscurity. I believe my hidden historical heroines were waiting for me, possibly because Germans and Russians share a millennial history (my father grew up in the GDR), or because they lived as raw and fearless as I would like my writing to be. These women survive wars, vicious jealousies and court intrigues, making for an epic cloaked in ice and snow. The brief reign of my Tsarina Catherine I was understandably overshadowed by her husband Peter the Great and later by her namesake, Catherine the Great. That Elizabeth, the jaw-droppingly gorgeous and courageous heroine of The Tsarina's Daughter, has been hitherto ignored by literature, is an unbelievable stroke of luck.