For Catherine the Great, jewelry was about much more than ... Cartier eventually purchased the emerald from the Russian royal family in 1927 and had it cut into a pear shape to enhance its brilliance.

The Romanovs turned Russia from a fractured land into one of history's largest empires ...

She was such a great person, came from such a great ... This was a major lead: a family, in Catherine's town, with two sons who went to Forest Park High – the same school Catherine did ...

The most fascinating, towering figures in history deserve a prestige TV dramatization and, in The Great, empress Catherine II of Russia – or Catherine the Great – certainly gets exactly that.