I live in Russia, so this episode was a welcome surprise.

The few female heads of the country that we had, even as far back as Olga of Kiev, brought quite some progressive changes.

Obviously, Catherine II is the one that comes to mind when we talk about women in Russian rule, even though her reign was marred by the careless money spending that drained the state's budget and the infamous "reformation" of the serfdom law that ended up leaving peasant serfs worse off than before. Needless to say, she was NOT a good person, nor a great mother to her successor Paul I, who grew up a contrarian to his mother's internal politics. That, in turn, informed his rule, during which he, sure, relaxed the serfdom law, but also militarised the shit outta Russia, as well as banned a bunch of just random things, such as dancing, foreign literature, fringes/sideburns etc. I mean, it just goes on and on, up to our today's "tsar" Mr Putler.

In spite of all this, peasants in Russia usually love(d) their rulers almost ubiquitously. This phenomenon is called "Faith in the benevolent tsar", or just naive monarchism, which is a trait attributed to the mentality of the Russian people — the ruler is kind and benevolent, it's the people around her/him (boyars, ministers) who are bad and evil, and they definitely hide how bad the situation is from the ruler, so the people just need to get to her/him and convey that for the happy ending. So the sex didn't really matter; if anything, these days it's way worse in that regard. Sorry for the rant lol

What needs to follow this episode is to determine whether Russian history leading up to the Romanov dynasty was reactionary to the impact of the reign of Catherine the Great.

Would this contribute to the facets of Russian culture that prevented Nicolas II from considering that appointing one of his daughters as succeeding Tsarina was an option?

Maybe the people were not in favor or something.

Which is odd when you consider that Catherine the Great, Queens Victoria, Elizabeth I & II of England, all had multi-decade reigns that were far more prosperous and peaceful than their predecessors.