1. Gospodin Petrova.
Katerina loved her father more than she ever loved anyone for sixteen years. She was his only daughter and he cherished every moment spent with her, to her delight. Though Gospozha, her dear mother had tried numerous times, she could not bear him the son she thought he so dearly desired, and though Katerina celebrated with her mother through every beginnings of pregnancy and cried with her after every miscarriage, a dark part of her rejoiced as she was no longer threatened for her father's undivided love and attention.
She would yearn for the times when he patted his lap, encouraging her to curl up into him and intake a deep breath as he told her epic stories of Slavic folklore and his own experiences with the demons, vampires, likho and vodnik. The stories would inevitably end in her whimpering and gripping onto her father closer. "Papa, no more, please!" and he would assure her that she was far too pure to be touched by any of these unclean creatures; that the mere sight of an innocent soul like hers would be enough to vanquish any demon.
They would have heated rows as Katerina progressed though adolescence, often due to her growing vanity and unconventional ideas, much too liberal for the 15th century. Katerina enjoyed attention in every possible sense of the word. She enjoyed her parents' overprotective attention, she enjoyed the leering attention of her fathers plump acquaintances as she caught their eye, the awed attention of their strapping young sons as she would be playfully courteous and innocently desirable. She enjoyed the disapproving looks other girls and their mothers would give to her, for it was jealousy, and jealously was the best form of flattery. So their rows would be passionate and angry, but would only last a day, and never any lashings – Gospodin would never lay a hand on his beautiful daughter, leading others to think she was spoiled. Her family did not have much – they were affluent in the village, but the village was a poor one and her clothes were made only by their seamstress but anything they could give to her, they did. They had a small number of servants, orphan boys and girls which Gospodin 'adopted' into their home as he was a great man – the best man to ever live, according to his daughter – to work for them. She didn't want to think it was because of his inability to father any more children, because Katerina hoped everyday that she was enough. It's true that he had a paternal fondness of his servants, particularly the males, but it was different to one of his own blood and descent.
Gospozha once swore to Katerina they would never let any harm come to her – Gospodin was already searching for the prefect man for his daughter (though none would be perfect enough), and they would court and fall in love and he would provide for her all the things Gospodin could not – to which Katerina would insist to him that he had given her everything she ever wanted.
In late November 1490, with Katerina barely 16 years of age, her dear father ordered her to leave. Leave his house, leave their village. She had disgraced him, and should never return.