Editing Paul I of Russia (section)

===Relationship with Catherine the Great===
Catherine and her son and heir Paul maintained a distant relationship throughout her reign. Empress Elizabeth had taken up the child and proved an obsessive but incapable caretaker, as she had not raised children of her own.<ref name="McGrew1992">McGrew, Roderick E. (1992), ''Paul I of Russia''. (Oxford: Clarendon Press) {{ISBN|0-19-822567-9}}</ref>{{rp|28}} Paul was supervised by a variety of caregivers. Roderick McGrew briefly relates the neglect to which the infant heir was sometimes subject: "On one occasion he fell out of his crib and slept the night away unnoticed on the floor."<ref name="McGrew1992"/>{{rp|30}} Even after Elizabeth's death, relations with Catherine hardly improved. Paul was often jealous of the favours she would shower upon her lovers. In one instance, the empress gave to one of her favourites 50,000 rubles on her birthday, while Paul received a cheap watch.<ref name="Sorokin, 185">Sorokin, 185.</ref> Paul's early isolation from his mother created a distance between them that later events would reinforce. She never considered inviting him to share power in governing Russia. Once Paul's son Alexander was born, it appeared that she had found a more suitable heir. The use made of his name by the rebel [[Yemelyan Pugachev]], who impersonated his father Peter, tended no doubt to render Paul's position more difficult.

Catherine's absolute power and the delicate balance of courtier status greatly influenced the relationship at Court with Paul, who openly disregarded his mother's opinions. Paul adamantly protested{{clarifyme|date=July 2024}} his mother's policies, writing a veiled criticism in his ''Reflections'', a dissertation on military reform.<ref name="Sorokin, 185"/> In it he directly disparaged expansionist warfare in favour of a more defensive military policy. Unenthusiastically received by his mother, the ''Reflections'' questioned her authority and added weight to her suspicion of an internal conspiracy with Paul at its centre. For a courtier to have openly supported or shown intimacy towards Paul, especially following this publication, would have meant political suicide.

Paul spent the following years away from the Imperial Court, content to remain at his private estates at Gatchina Palace with his growing family and perform Prussian drill exercises. As Catherine grew older, she became less concerned that her son attend court functions; her attentions focused primarily on the future Emperor Alexander I.

It was not until 1787 that Catherine may have in fact decided to exclude her son from succession.<ref name="McGrew1992"/>{{rp|184}} After Alexander and his brother [[Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia|Constantine]] were born, she had them placed under her charge, just as Elizabeth had done with Paul. That Catherine grew to favour Alexander as successor rather than Paul is unsurprising. She met secretly with Alexander's tutor, [[Frédéric-César de La Harpe]], to discuss his pupil's ascension, and attempted to convince Alexander's mother Maria to sign a proposal authorizing her son's legitimacy. Both efforts proved fruitless, and though Alexander agreed to his grandmother's wishes, he remained respectful of his father's position as immediate successor to the Russian throne.