Random scenario coming to mind based on current reading: So the story/legend goes, while on his deathbed, Tsar Peter the Great started to write a quick note that would indicate his heir ("Leave/give all to..."), then lost his strength and summoned his daughter Anna to dictate his will, but couldn't speak by the time she arrived. This left the issue of a successor effectively unanswered, enabling his wife Catherine's rise and the subsequent "dynastic musical chairs" that ended with Peter's daughter Elizabeth's ascension 15-odd years later.
Presuming that the "succession note story" is true, what if Peter had managed to complete it? Would he have named Anna his official heir, as some have argued? Who else might he have seriously considered (Catherine, Elizabeth, the OTL Peter II by his son Alexei)? Would the note have been honored, given how opportunistic/bloody Romanov succession often was in actual history? If he had named Anna, and this were accepted, how differently might the succession (and Russian and European history) have played out? Would there still, to take one example, have been anything like the de facto back-to-back reigns of Elizabeth and Catherine the Great?
Presuming that the "succession note story" is true, what if Peter had managed to complete it? Would he have named Anna his official heir, as some have argued? Who else might he have seriously considered (Catherine, Elizabeth, the OTL Peter II by his son Alexei)? Would the note have been honored, given how opportunistic/bloody Romanov succession often was in actual history? If he had named Anna, and this were accepted, how differently might the succession (and Russian and European history) have played out? Would there still, to take one example, have been anything like the de facto back-to-back reigns of Elizabeth and Catherine the Great?