What Do You Know About Christina, Queen Of Sweden?

Question

What Do You Know About Christina, Queen Of Sweden?

Answer 1

Christina, Queen Of Sweden web-site searches.

Answer 2

She's another Euro-trash royal who spends all her time on the French Riviera when she's not home living some scandal or other.

Answer 3

Christina (1626 – 19 April 1689), later known as Maria Christina Alexandra and sometimes Countess Dohna, was Queen regnant of Sweden from 1632 to 1654. She was the only surviving legitimate child of King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden and his wife Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. As the heiress presumptive, at the age of six, she succeeded her father to the throne of Sweden upon his death at the Battle of Lützen in the Thirty Years' War. After having converted to Catholicism and abdicated her throne, she spent her latter years in France and Rome, where she was buried in St. Peter's Basilica.

Christina was born in Stockholm and her birth occurred during a rare astrological conjunction that fueled great speculation on what influence the child, fervently hoped to be a boy, would later have on the world stage. The king had already sired two sons, one of whom was stillborn and the other lived only one year, heightening pressures for a male heir to be produced. She was educated in the manner typical of men, and frequently wore men's clothes (such as dresses with short skirts, stockings and shoes with high heels - all these features being useful when not riding pillion).

Christina's mother, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, came from the Hohenzollern family. She was a woman of quite distraught temperament, and her attempts to bestow guilt on Christina for her difficult birth, or just the horror story itself, may have prejudiced Christina against the prospect of having to produce an heir to the throne. Her father gave orders that Christina should be brought up as a prince. Even as a child she displayed great precociousness. Christina also took the oath as king, not queen, because her father had wanted it so. Growing up, she was nicknamed the "Girl King."

Kristina was interested in theatre and ballet, a French ballet-troup under Antoine de Beaulieu was employed by the court from 1638, and there were also an Italian and a French Orchestra at court, which all inspired her much. She invited foreign companies to play at Bollhuset; she was also herself an amateur-actor, and amateur-theatre was very popular at court in her days.

Christina abdicated her throne on June 5, 1654 in favour of her cousin Charles Gustavus in order to either practice openly her previously secret Catholicism, or to accept the same publicly so as to be at the centre of a scientific and artistic renaissance. The sincerity of her conversion has been questioned. Her conversion was however not the only reason for her abdication, as there was increasing discontent with, in the words of her critics, her arbitrary and wasteful ways. Within ten years she had created 17 counts, 46 barons and 428 lesser nobles; to provide these new peers with adequate appanages, she had sold or mortgaged crown property representing an annual income of 1,200,000 riksdaler. There were clear signs that Christina was growing weary of the cares of what remained a provincial government in spite of a large conquered territory.

Upon conversion she took a new name, Maria Christina Alexandra, and moved to Rome, where her wealth and former position made her a centre of society. Having run out of money and surfeited with excess of pageantry, Christina resolved, in the space of two years, to visit France. Here she was treated with respect by Louis XIV, but the ladies were shocked with her masculine appearance and demeanour, and the unguarded freedom of her conversation.

After the death of Charles Gustav in 1660, she took a journey to Sweden to recover her crown; but her estranged subjects rejected her claims and submitted to a second renunciation of the throne; after which she returned to Rome, and cultivated a correspondence with the learned men there, and in other parts of Europe, as well as acting as patron to musicians such as Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti. She died on April 19, 1689, leaving her large and important library behind. She is one of only three women to be given the honour of being buried in the grottoes of St. Peter's Basilica, alongside the remains of the popes. A monument to her was carved later on and adorns a column close to the permanent display of Michelangelo's Pietà. At the opposite pillar across the nave is the Monument to the Royal Stuarts, commemorating the other 17th century monarchs who lost their thrones due to their Catholicism.