Catherine the Great tried to pass over her son Paul for the throne, and Paul made a law that no ruler could choose an heir again

On 5 February 1722 Peter the Great made it law that the ruler could name any successor. Anna confirmed it in 1731 and Peter III in 1761. Catherine II took the throne from her husband, Peter III, in 1762 and kept her son Paul away from power. According to the Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia, in the last decade of her life she decided to remove Paul from the succession in favour of his son Alexander. She put the plan to her council in 1794. It met opposition and was withdrawn, and she found no support for other routes. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says she may have left a will giving the crown to Alexander, which Paul was free to destroy "if any such will was ever made." She died on 6 November 1796 and Paul became emperor. On his coronation day, 5 April 1797, he published an act of succession that he and his wife had written in 1788 as heirs. It ended the ruler's right to choose. The crown passed in order of seniority through the male lines; a woman's line could inherit only after every male line had died out. Only an Orthodox Christian could reign. On the night of 11 to 12 March 1801 officers led by General Bennigsen, in a plot organised by Counts Pahlen and Panin, entered Paul's bedroom in the Mikhailovsky Palace and tried to force him to abdicate. He refused, and they killed him. Alexander was in the palace and became emperor.