There was a terrible scene with his father, who had discovered that his son was more than perverse, he was a traitor--the center of a conspiracy, and in close relations with his enemies at home and abroad, betraying his interests to Germany and to Sweden.
The plan, instigated by Eudoxia, was that Alexis, immediately upon the death of his father--which God was importuned to hasten--should return to Moscow, restore the picturesque old barbarism, abandon the territory on the Baltic, and the infant navy, and the city of his father's love; in other words, that he should scatter to the winds the prodigious results of his father's reign! It was monstrous--and so was its punishment! Eudoxia was whipped and placed in close confinement, and thirty conspirators, members of her "court," were in various ways butchered.

Then Alexis, the confessed traitor, was tried by a tribunal at the head of which was Menschikof--and sentenced to death.
On the morning of the 27th of June, 1718, the Tsar summoned his son to appear before nine of the greatest officers of the state.

Concerning what happened, the lips of those nine men were forever sealed.

But the day following it was announced that Alexis, the son of the emperor, was dead; and it is believed that he died under the knout.
The question of succession now became a very grave one.

Alexis, who had under compulsion married Charlotte of Brunswick, left a son Peter.
The only other heirs were the Tsar's two daughters Anna and Elizabeth, the children of Catherine.