Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. It is Christina of Sweden's birthday. She
Speaker 1: was born on December eighteen six. That is the New
Speaker 1: style calendar date, which was December eight in the old style.
Speaker 1: Christina is sometimes called King Christina, both because she was
Speaker 1: raised as the heir to her father's throne and also
Speaker 1: because when she was born, the midwives who attended her
Speaker 1: birth initially reported that she was a boy. There are
Speaker 1: lots of different ways that her story is interpreted today,
Speaker 1: but she is a clear example of somebody who lived
Speaker 1: outside of society's expectations regarding sex, gender, and sexuality. In
Speaker 1: This episode originally came out on October Enjoy Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the cast. I'm Tracy
Speaker 1: Vie Wilson. Today we're going back to the world of
Speaker 1: Swedish royalty. This time it is to Queen Christina. She
Speaker 1: lived about a hundred years after previous podcast subject Eric
Speaker 1: the fourteen, and she, like him, was also part of
Speaker 1: the House of Vassa and her story has a lot
Speaker 1: of our favorite running podcast themes. Most of them really
Speaker 1: started with previous hosts, but they've carried on until today.
Speaker 1: We have a sad royal childhood, we have an abdication,
Speaker 1: and we even had an exhumation. All in all, Queen
Speaker 1: Christina was not known for being a particularly great ruler
Speaker 1: of Sweden, and she abdicated her throne only about a
Speaker 1: decade into her reign. But she was extremely learned. She
Speaker 1: spoke a lot of languages. Apart from her native Swedish,
Speaker 1: there was also Greek, Latin, German, French, Flemish, Italian, Spanish
Speaker 1: and Finnish, along with a little Hebrew and Arabic. And
Speaker 1: she helped start the first Swedish newspaper in sixteen forty five,
Speaker 1: as well as Sweden's first public opera house and its
Speaker 1: first universal public school program. She amassed a huge collection
Speaker 1: of arts and literature, and her collection of books and
Speaker 1: manuscripts later went on to become part of the Vatican
Speaker 1: Library uh And a sort of a side note, her
Speaker 1: life became a movie starring Greta Garbo in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: So her whole life was marked by being this kind
Speaker 1: of contradictory, restless character, and that started basically from the
Speaker 1: moment that she was born. So Christina was born to
Speaker 1: King Gustav Adolf and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. Before she
Speaker 1: was born, her parents had had two stillborn babies, and
Speaker 1: they also had a daughter who had died before she
Speaker 1: reached the age of one, so people were really starting
Speaker 1: to be concerned about the kingdom having an air. Gustav
Speaker 1: had an illegitimate son who was aimed Gustav Gustafsson, and
Speaker 1: he was not eligible for a lot of reasons, including
Speaker 1: his illegitimacy to be on the throne. King. Gustav's Catholic cousin,
Speaker 1: uh Seismund, was king of Poland and he had two
Speaker 1: sons of his own, and people were quite worried that
Speaker 1: if something had happened to Gustav before he produced a
Speaker 1: legitimate air, uh Sismund was going to take over and
Speaker 1: make Sweden, which at that point was a staunchly Lutheran country,
Speaker 1: into a Catholic country, and since since Sigismund had two sons,
Speaker 1: it seemed like that had the potential to turn into
Speaker 1: a lasting Catholic dynasty, so it would really have upended Sweden.
Speaker 1: Maria Eleonora, so Christina's mother, also seemed to to have
Speaker 1: developed some kind of mental or emotional disorder over the
Speaker 1: course of her previous pregnancies and the children she had lost.
Speaker 1: She had always been really affectionate with her husband, but
Speaker 1: she became just desperately attached to him. She would get
Speaker 1: really agitated and distressed whenever he was away, which he
Speaker 1: had to be away quite a lot because he was king.
Speaker 1: Her language skills and her handwriting started to deteriorate, and
Speaker 1: her behavior became really erratic. People started to worry about
Speaker 1: her ability to conceive and to carry a healthy child
Speaker 1: to term. However, despite all of those potential issues UH.
Speaker 1: Five years into Gustave and Maria Eleanora's marriage, Maria became
Speaker 1: pregnant with Christina, who was born on December eighth of
Speaker 1: sixty six, that's in the Julian calendar uh, which would
Speaker 1: be December eighteenth under the modern Gregorian calendar. And she
Speaker 1: was a little early and born in Call, so that
Speaker 1: means her amniotic membrane was still intact and covering her
Speaker 1: once she was born, and so the midwives removed the
Speaker 1: membrane and they declared her initially to be a boy
Speaker 1: uh and words spread around the castle to a great
Speaker 1: deal of celebration. However, once the excitement was over and
Speaker 1: they took a longer and more careful look at her,
Speaker 1: they almost immediately realized she was actually a girl, and
Speaker 1: everybody was sort of afraid how the King would react.
Speaker 1: I mean, they had had all of these previous strategy
Speaker 1: tragedies and all this build up, and they had just
Speaker 1: told him joyfully that he had a son. Now. Um,
Speaker 1: so nobody told him about the mistake until the next day.
Speaker 1: That kind of cracks me up. Uh. There's been a
Speaker 1: great deal of speculation about what may have caused this
Speaker 1: misidentification on the part of the midwives to believe that
Speaker 1: Christina was a boy rather than a girl. There have
Speaker 1: been theories bandied about that she had an intersex condition
Speaker 1: and some kind of chromosomal disorder, and that her external
Speaker 1: genitalia may have exhibited both male and female traits. Another
Speaker 1: theory is that her body was simply ambiguous and that
Speaker 1: the lighting was poor, and that there could have been
Speaker 1: a little wishful thinking in the mix, and that the
Speaker 1: midwives saw initially what they wanted to see, which would
Speaker 1: have been a male heir. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: family memoirs from this time who portray the King is
Speaker 1: being just enormously and immediately welcoming and accepting of the
Speaker 1: fact that he actually had a daughter. Uh, And some
Speaker 1: of that is kind of glossing over the initial shock
Speaker 1: and upset that he did have. Um having a daughter
Speaker 1: instead of a son was a big upset. They had
Speaker 1: been trying for a long time to have a male
Speaker 1: heir and now they didn't. But he did quickly warm
Speaker 1: to the idea of having a daughter and of raising
Speaker 1: his daughter like a prince. Christina's mother, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: was devastated that after so many attempts, now she had
Speaker 1: a daughter and not the son that she had been,
Speaker 1: you know, basically tasked with providing for the kingdom. So
Speaker 1: she basically shunned her daughter for a lot of her
Speaker 1: early life. Uh. And Gustav decided that Christina, in spite
Speaker 1: of being female, would indeed be his heir, and he
Speaker 1: wanted her, as Tracy said just a moment ago, to
Speaker 1: have a princely upbringing. And this was not just in
Speaker 1: terms of her agication and her intended role as as
Speaker 1: the leader of the country, but also in terms of
Speaker 1: her sort of day to day exercise and the pastimes
Speaker 1: that that they would kind of nurture her into as
Speaker 1: she grew up. This suited her just fine. She was
Speaker 1: not at all fond of the duties and pastimes that
Speaker 1: genuine that generally fell to women at the time. Her
Speaker 1: father wanted her to learn to ride and to fight
Speaker 1: and to handle a bow, and she did all that,
Speaker 1: and she did it well, and her demeanor was not
Speaker 1: at all typically feminine. I think today people would have
Speaker 1: called her a tomboy. And just for clarity, it really
Speaker 1: was not unheard of for girls to have the same
Speaker 1: education as boys, especially when they were in line for
Speaker 1: the throne, and so Christina's schoolmates were part of her
Speaker 1: childhood were actually two female cousins. The fighting and the
Speaker 1: hunting and the bow work, however, we're not really typical
Speaker 1: pursuits for girls or women. So the idea of Christina
Speaker 1: as his air was not just an idle fancy on
Speaker 1: Gustav's part. He started making real plans to confirm her
Speaker 1: as his successor while she was still a baby. The
Speaker 1: Thirty Years War had been going on for about eight
Speaker 1: years by the time Christina was born, and Adolf knew
Speaker 1: that it was very possible that he would be killed
Speaker 1: in battle. So in addition to officially naming her as
Speaker 1: his successor. He started looking for suitable candidates for her
Speaker 1: to marry when she got older to cement the hereditary
Speaker 1: line to the throne. The primary candidate was a cousin
Speaker 1: of hers named Carl Gustav. He also had his chancellor
Speaker 1: named Axel Oxenstierna, along with five regents to rule in
Speaker 1: his and his daughter's stead. However, he didn't really have
Speaker 1: an active part in raising his young heir. He was
Speaker 1: needed in the war and Christina's mother wanted nothing to
Speaker 1: do with her. So Christina spent most of her early
Speaker 1: childhood living with cousins, except for being dropped once she
Speaker 1: was a baby, and that was possibly on purpose by
Speaker 1: someone with Catholic leanings. It was mostly a happy few years.
Speaker 1: She was surrounded by other children close to her own age.
Speaker 1: She had playmates and friends, and other girls who were
Speaker 1: studying with her, so this part of her earlier life,
Speaker 1: in spite of being separated from her parents, was not
Speaker 1: all that bad. But when she was just five, so
Speaker 1: still very young, her father was killed in the Battle
Speaker 1: of Lutzen, and Christina's mother, of course completely distraught. Uh
Speaker 1: We talked about how clingy and sort of almost obsessive
Speaker 1: she had become with king, so her mother had the
Speaker 1: king's heart removed and placed in a golden casket so
Speaker 1: that she could keep it with her. Her behavior continued
Speaker 1: to become increasingly bizarre, and she spent a lot of
Speaker 1: money on a really elaborate funeral. She also did not
Speaker 1: bury the king's body right away. Now this was not
Speaker 1: entirely a heard of at the time, especially when it
Speaker 1: was wintertime and the ground was frozen and it was
Speaker 1: difficult for people to travel for that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But Gustav's body wound up being buried nineteen months after
Speaker 1: his death, and this was over the fierce objections of
Speaker 1: his wife, who had kept it lying in state and
Speaker 1: spent hours and hours at a time viewing it. At
Speaker 1: some point she even kept the coffin in her own
Speaker 1: bedroom so she could have it close by. So, as
Speaker 1: we said, not a typical for there to be a
Speaker 1: long delay at this point between when king was when
Speaker 1: the king died, and when the king was buried. But
Speaker 1: this was a really long time, and Maria Eleanora's displays
Speaker 1: of grief were not at all typical for the time.
Speaker 1: So the king was finally buried, and once that happened,
Speaker 1: Maria Eleanora took custody of Christina, and she took her
Speaker 1: out of the home where she had been and had
Speaker 1: friends and playmates, and she moved her into a much
Speaker 1: more lonely and erratic and just sort of cold existence
Speaker 1: that was largely just the two of them together. And
Speaker 1: this is where Christina's royal childhood became kind of sad.
Speaker 1: She started having these really sudden illnesses, and the general
Speaker 1: agreement is that these were brought on by the stress
Speaker 1: of the situation. She generally got better pretty quickly, but
Speaker 1: she got sick over and over again. It was a
Speaker 1: frequent occurrence. In part to get some distance from her mother,
Speaker 1: she really threw herself into her education and into training
Speaker 1: and into exercise. She sort of dove even farther into
Speaker 1: the more masculine parts of her upbringing. And before we
Speaker 1: move into when she actually ascended to the throne, Holly,
Speaker 1: would you like to take a minute for a brief
Speaker 1: word from a sponsor. It sounds like a capital idea.
Speaker 1: And now let's get back to Christina of Sweden and
Speaker 1: now when she's going to actually become queen, and becoming
Speaker 1: queen and her ascension to the throne really was not
Speaker 1: as simple as just being the king's daughter and surviving
Speaker 1: to adulthood to be crowned. Sweden was an elective monarchy,
Speaker 1: so even if someone had inherited the throne, they still
Speaker 1: had to be accepted by the Reek's Dog, which was
Speaker 1: Sweden's parliament, as well as the Swedish senators. This meant
Speaker 1: that the four estates of the reeks Dog, which were
Speaker 1: the clergy, the nobles, the burghers and the peasants, all
Speaker 1: had to be in favor of Christina's presence on the
Speaker 1: throne in order for her to actually become the queen.
Speaker 1: And the end they were and Christina became the Queen
Speaker 1: of the Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Great Princess of Finland,
Speaker 1: Duchess of Estonia and Karelia, and Lady of Ingria, and
Speaker 1: she basically carried herself as a ruler right from the beginning.
Speaker 1: The Chancellor began to allow her to attend council meetings
Speaker 1: and participate as early as the age of fourteen. She
Speaker 1: was officially crowned at the age of eighteen, so she
Speaker 1: was kind of doing the work of this job for
Speaker 1: several years before it was made official. She was at
Speaker 1: that point simultaneously. A diminutive young woman, she had very
Speaker 1: fine hands and beautiful blue eyes, but she was also
Speaker 1: a very masculine, for she walked the walk, she talked
Speaker 1: to talk, and she swore like a soldier. Christina and
Speaker 1: Chancellor Axel Oxensternia did not see eye to eye. The
Speaker 1: Chancellor had done a really good job of ruling between
Speaker 1: the death of her father and her age of majority,
Speaker 1: and even when the king was still alive, the two
Speaker 1: men had really worked together to run the kingdom and
Speaker 1: to plan and make decisions. Axel had been an efficient
Speaker 1: and pragmatic diplomat, and he was well respected among the Reeks,
Speaker 1: dog and among Sweden's military leaders. But Christina was a
Speaker 1: proud and arrogant eighteen year old, and she really felt
Speaker 1: like it was her time to shine, and so she
Speaker 1: and Axel butted heads. They did so repeatedly and often.
Speaker 1: If this were a modern day film, you would maybe
Speaker 1: expect them to end up falling in love somehow, but
Speaker 1: things that would work out that way in real life. Yes,
Speaker 1: that would definitely be the romantic comedy version version of
Speaker 1: Christina of Sweden. They also started to have financial problems
Speaker 1: in the kingdom Pretty early in her reign, she tried
Speaker 1: to continue her father's generosity with the royal coffers, but
Speaker 1: she wasn't nearly as careful about it as he had been.
Speaker 1: She got into this cycle of giving away too much
Speaker 1: and then selling noble titles to try to earn some
Speaker 1: more money, and then raising taxes on the people she
Speaker 1: had just promoted. It did not work out well. It
Speaker 1: was it was not an efficient way of ridging the gap,
Speaker 1: kind of like a cascading circle of bad decisions. Um Naturally,
Speaker 1: in the midst of all of this, everyone wanted her
Speaker 1: to marry Uh. In addition to Carl Gustav, another suitor
Speaker 1: was Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg, who ended up marrying someone else,
Speaker 1: and Christina had a not all that clandestine affair with
Speaker 1: one of the ladies of her court, which led to
Speaker 1: some speculation about her sexual orientation, her sex, and her gender,
Speaker 1: which of course tied back into that initial Uh mistake
Speaker 1: in identifying her sex. In the midst of all of this,
Speaker 1: popular opinions started to turn against her, and when she
Speaker 1: was twenty a man armed with daggers tried to kill
Speaker 1: her while she was at prayer. Her life being apparently
Speaker 1: legitimately at risk put a lot more pressure on her
Speaker 1: to get married, which was an idea that she continued
Speaker 1: to resist. And about this same time, the Thirty Years
Speaker 1: War was drawing to a close, which was something she
Speaker 1: herself was greatly in favor of, but not everyone felt
Speaker 1: the same. Many Protestant clergy wanted the war to continue
Speaker 1: until there could be a decisive Protestant victory over Catholicism.
Speaker 1: Others wanted it to continue just so that Sweden could
Speaker 1: continue to act additional war booty to potentially supplement their
Speaker 1: their money situation. Yeah, the Thirty Years War was this
Speaker 1: massive and obviously very lengthy conflict, and different nations had
Speaker 1: different motivations for being involved in it. We haven't really
Speaker 1: talked about that part of it because it's kind of
Speaker 1: ancillary to this podcast. But yeah, for Sweden in particular,
Speaker 1: there were people who felt like ending the war at
Speaker 1: that point was too soon. But to Christina, as long
Speaker 1: as the war went on, she could never really be
Speaker 1: in charge. While she had been accepted as Sweden's queen
Speaker 1: and she was making lots of decisions for herself as
Speaker 1: the ruler, she really had no authority over military matters.
Speaker 1: War was pretty much exclusively a man's game, especially when
Speaker 1: it came to running the show. So as long as
Speaker 1: the war went on, the Chancellor and the regents continued
Speaker 1: to have a major hand in making decisions that Christina
Speaker 1: could have no control over. Ending the war would and
Speaker 1: did put an end to one of their sources of
Speaker 1: power and gave Chrisdna more direct control over pretty much
Speaker 1: everything that was going on in the kingdom. So the
Speaker 1: Thirty Years War did indeed end with the Peace of
Speaker 1: Westphalia in sixty eight, and once the war had concluded,
Speaker 1: Christina turned her attention to her own court, and she
Speaker 1: began inviting artists, writers and thinkers to the Swedish court.
Speaker 1: The most famous among all of these was mathematician and
Speaker 1: philosopher reneed A Cart, who she invited to stay in
Speaker 1: the palace at Stockholm. He did not really want to go.
Speaker 1: Sweden was too cold and it was too far away,
Speaker 1: and he really doubted that the Lutheran court was going
Speaker 1: to welcome him with open arms since he was Catholic.
Speaker 1: But in the end he was convinced to come, and he,
Speaker 1: in a translator, went to Sweden in September of sixteen
Speaker 1: forty nine. His misgivings about going and about staying once
Speaker 1: he got there were unfortunately prescient. He got the flu
Speaker 1: the following January and died. Uh Some people blamed Christina
Speaker 1: both for bringing him there and for putting huge demands
Speaker 1: on his time and effort while he was visiting courts.
Speaker 1: Yet another source of pressure for Christina to marry came
Speaker 1: in sixteen forty nine, when her cousin Jan kazim Years
Speaker 1: ascended to the throne in Poland. This was the second
Speaker 1: of Sigismund's two sons who had so worried people before
Speaker 1: Christina was born. Jan succeeded his late brother and married
Speaker 1: his late brother's widow, who was still young enough to
Speaker 1: have children. So once again people were threatened by the
Speaker 1: idea that the monarchy in Poland was going to come
Speaker 1: to power over Sweden. Instead of marrying, though, Christina did
Speaker 1: something completely different. She went to the Reek's Dog and
Speaker 1: said that she wanted her cousin, Count Palatine Karl Gustav,
Speaker 1: the one that she had been intended to marry, to
Speaker 1: be named as her successor. The Reek's Dog pretty much
Speaker 1: scoffed at that entire idea. They were like you're gonna
Speaker 1: marry him anyway, So what's the point. Like, that's the
Speaker 1: guy you're gonna get married to and have babies with,
Speaker 1: so naming him as your successor now seems silly. They
Speaker 1: thought this even though she was still having sudden illnesses.
Speaker 1: Even even though she was sick pretty often, people still
Speaker 1: thought she was young and healthy enough to have a baby. Uh.
Speaker 1: Christina not delighted by this reaction, she went back to
Speaker 1: them and she said it was going to be impossible
Speaker 1: for her to marry. In her words, quote, I am
Speaker 1: absolutely certain about it. I do not intend to give
Speaker 1: you reasons. My character is simply not suited to marriage.
Speaker 1: I have prayed God fervently that my inclination might change,
Speaker 1: but I simply cannot marry. This once again, was a
Speaker 1: completely foreign and kind of silly idea to the Reeks,
Speaker 1: dog and they refused her suggestion. Again. They basically thought,
Speaker 1: she's just gonna agree to marry him eventually. They've been
Speaker 1: friends since their childhood, they get along fine. Of course
Speaker 1: they should be married. It seems so clear to them.
Speaker 1: They were. They were really like, well, obviously, you're just
Speaker 1: going to marry him, so why is why is this
Speaker 1: a big thing, are you being fussy? So the thing
Speaker 1: that ended up changing the Reeks Dommas minds on this
Speaker 1: issue was the execution of Charles the First of England.
Speaker 1: When that happened, leaders began to fear rebellion on multiple fronts,
Speaker 1: so they wanted to ensure that the line of succession
Speaker 1: was not going to be interrupted. So in March of
Speaker 1: sixty nine, they finally agreed to officially named Carl Gustav
Speaker 1: as Christina's successor, although at that point they really still
Speaker 1: thought she would end up marrying him and make it
Speaker 1: all a sort of a moot gesture. Yeah, they thought
Speaker 1: they were humoring her. She, on the other hand, thought
Speaker 1: she was getting exactly what she wanted. She was still
Speaker 1: going to get to rule, but she was not going
Speaker 1: to have to get married and produce an air Carl
Speaker 1: was going to have to do that. She was off
Speaker 1: the hook. And before we talk about getting further off
Speaker 1: the hook, let's take another brief moment for a word
Speaker 1: from a sponsor that sounds grand. And now let's return
Speaker 1: to the story of how Queen Christina, having fought so
Speaker 1: long and so hard to get total control over the throne, abdicated.
Speaker 1: So although She had started to rule officially at eighteen,
Speaker 1: and that was after she had already been kind of
Speaker 1: involved in some government duties. She still wasn't actually crowned
Speaker 1: until she was twenty three, so it really took quite
Speaker 1: a long time for her to kind of get all
Speaker 1: of the dust settled on her official ascension. By the
Speaker 1: time she was actually planning her coronation, which was scheduled
Speaker 1: for October of sixteen fifty, she was already thinking abdicating
Speaker 1: might sound like a good plan. Before she had told
Speaker 1: anyone about this plan, she started trying to convince the
Speaker 1: reeks dog not just to make Carl Gustav her successor
Speaker 1: if she died, but to make him the actual next
Speaker 1: hereditary king of sweet not just someone to sort of
Speaker 1: run things in the event of her untimely death until
Speaker 1: another real king could be found and elected. And they
Speaker 1: said no, um, so she pulled a series of political
Speaker 1: strings until they finally agreed. She basically pitted all of
Speaker 1: the different classes against one another, and like played up
Speaker 1: the you know, the noble sphere of the common people
Speaker 1: taking over and the common people's fear of the nobles,
Speaker 1: until they all agreed that if if she would just
Speaker 1: give them a break, that they would do what she asked. Uh.
Speaker 1: In August of sixteen fifty one, so less than a
Speaker 1: year after her very extravagant coronation, she informed the Senate
Speaker 1: that she planned to abdicate, and she spent the next
Speaker 1: several months trying to convince the Reefs dog to allow it.
Speaker 1: I feel like she spent her entire time trying to
Speaker 1: convince the Reefs dog of things. That is pretty accurate.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of her trying to get the
Speaker 1: Reeks dog to do what she wanted. Um, they not
Speaker 1: buying this at all. And so after this couple of
Speaker 1: months of really trying to convince them, she dropped the
Speaker 1: matter for a couple of years. But during the interim
Speaker 1: she started meeting with Jesuits and talking about converting to Catholicism.
Speaker 1: So we have talked about up to this point, you know,
Speaker 1: some pretty deep seated um discord between the religions, and
Speaker 1: so for her to want to convert, that's big stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: Catholicism was a religion that had really appealed to her
Speaker 1: since she was quite young. When she was nine, a
Speaker 1: tutor had told her that Catholicism did not allow lay
Speaker 1: people to read the Bible, it encouraged celibacy, and believed
Speaker 1: in purgatory, and her reaction to all of that was, oh,
Speaker 1: what a lovely religion. In early sixteen fifty four, when
Speaker 1: everyone thought this whole matter of abdicating had just been dropped,
Speaker 1: Christina announced once again that she was going to abdicate.
Speaker 1: She negotiated a settlement that I did her some lands
Speaker 1: and some money, and it kept her as the sovereign
Speaker 1: of Sweden, so she didn't have to handle any of
Speaker 1: her royal responsibilities. But she was still a queen regardless
Speaker 1: of how you feel about her her various ways of
Speaker 1: running the kingdom that we're not all that great. This
Speaker 1: was kind of a masterful string pulling to get exactly
Speaker 1: the best possible situation for her to be in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all of the benefits, none of the responsibilities. So
Speaker 1: she abdicated that may, leaving the palace before midnight on
Speaker 1: the night of Karl Gustav's coronation. She was like the
Speaker 1: person that leaves the wedding reception early in this case,
Speaker 1: she was like, yeah, I have fun, I'm out of here.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of theories about exactly why
Speaker 1: she was so set on abdicating. Her explanation was that
Speaker 1: she thought that they really needed a man to rule
Speaker 1: the country, in particular to lead the army. So if
Speaker 1: you know, there were another future war that the country
Speaker 1: was going to participate in, they would be better off
Speaker 1: with a male king than with a female queen. She
Speaker 1: also said that the pressures of ruling had been too
Speaker 1: much for her and that she needed to rest. And
Speaker 1: as we've made pretty clear, she was really deeply opposed
Speaker 1: to the idea of marrying and she was under immense
Speaker 1: pressure to do so as queen, And as soon as
Speaker 1: she was out of Sweden, she adopted a more masculine dress,
Speaker 1: more masculine mannerisms, and a more masculine demeanor, and she
Speaker 1: converted to Catholicism. She took the names Maria and Alexandra
Speaker 1: after Alexander the Great. And I want to make clear
Speaker 1: here she was not living as a man. She tended
Speaker 1: to wear trousers instead of dresses and to just behave
Speaker 1: in a more coarse way than women were expected to,
Speaker 1: but she did not present herself as a man. She
Speaker 1: was still apart from a couple of times as she
Speaker 1: was traveling in disguise, she was still Christina. Her conversion
Speaker 1: to Catholicism was an enormous deal. Sweden was a Lutheran
Speaker 1: nation and as Queen Christina was the head of the church,
Speaker 1: and even though she had abdicated her rule, this was
Speaker 1: still pretty monumental on and she was still sovereign, so
Speaker 1: they still had a lot of stock in her religion.
Speaker 1: So Christina traveled to Rome, where she was a guest
Speaker 1: at the Vatican, something women were not generally allowed to do,
Speaker 1: and she later moved into a palace in Rome, which
Speaker 1: was her permanent home until her death, although at various
Speaker 1: times she was away from that palace in Sweden, in Hamburg,
Speaker 1: and elsewhere. While in Rome, she fell in love with
Speaker 1: Cardinal Ducchio at Alino, who was the Pope's representative and
Speaker 1: a priest, and this seems to have been more like
Speaker 1: a romantic friendship than a physical relationship, but he did
Speaker 1: basically break up with her in a letter later in
Speaker 1: their relationship when he quote freed her. In sixteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: while traveling, she became embroiled in an anti Habsburg plot
Speaker 1: to seize control of Naples. This plot had to be
Speaker 1: abandoned when she learned that one of her officers had
Speaker 1: revealed her plans, so she had last rites administered to
Speaker 1: him and then had him executed in her presence. This
Speaker 1: was a long and gory execution, and the Pope did
Speaker 1: not approve of it, and so when she returned to Rome,
Speaker 1: she was no longer allowed in the Pope's presence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: her conversion had basically been viewed as this giant coup
Speaker 1: among the Catholic Church. They she was sort of their
Speaker 1: golden example of of awesomeness for a while, but not
Speaker 1: anymore after this. Uh. Later in her life, she also
Speaker 1: sort of wanted to rule again. She had hoped to
Speaker 1: take the throne of Poland Lithuania, another elective monarchy, after
Speaker 1: Yan Kazimir's abdicated Um. She really did not have any
Speaker 1: tie to that throne apart from being a cousin of
Speaker 1: the previous king. Um she was, you know, a vassa
Speaker 1: and now she was Catholic and that was really all
Speaker 1: that she had to show for herself on the matter,
Speaker 1: and so that attempt failed. She also hoped, for a while, uh,
Speaker 1: in her sort of mere curial desires, that she would
Speaker 1: become Queen of Sweden again after Karl Gustav's sudden death
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty eight. His own successor at
Speaker 1: the time was only five, But she did not get
Speaker 1: her wish in this case and did not become Queen
Speaker 1: the ruler of Sweden again. She spent her last year's
Speaker 1: mostly keeping to herself, and she was basically broke When
Speaker 1: she died in sixteen eighty nine at the age of
Speaker 1: sixty two. All of her possessions passed to Ducchio Atzelino,
Speaker 1: although there wasn't enough money to pay off her debts
Speaker 1: or to set up legacies for some people who had
Speaker 1: worked with her and deserved them, which normally would have
Speaker 1: been part of what a ruler's estate would have done.
Speaker 1: Her tomb is in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Her
Speaker 1: body was exhumed in nine to try to determine whether
Speaker 1: she had an intersex condition or whether there was some
Speaker 1: other explanation for the midwives early confusion about what her
Speaker 1: sex was, and then whether that might explain her more
Speaker 1: masculine behavior later on. The results of that were totally inconclusive.
Speaker 1: In Christina's description of herself, she said she had quote
Speaker 1: an ineradicable prejudice against everything that women like to talk
Speaker 1: about or do in women's words and occupations. I showed
Speaker 1: myself to be quite incapable, and I saw no possibility
Speaker 1: of improvement in this respect. And that is Christina. She's
Speaker 1: quite a fascinating character. She has kind of fascinating character.
Speaker 1: One of the papers that I read about her, that
Speaker 1: which not a lot from it, made its way into
Speaker 1: this outline because this outline became very long, Uh, was
Speaker 1: about the erotic art in her artwork and how her
Speaker 1: artwork collection, um, and how a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who had previously been owners of this artwork had kind
Speaker 1: of kept that off in the corner, um and not
Speaker 1: really wanted to be associated with the fact that this
Speaker 1: more erotic art was part of their collection. UM. She
Speaker 1: on the other hand, hung it all in her grand salon,
Speaker 1: which was right outside her bedroom, and she would greet
Speaker 1: visitors with these erotic nudes hanging all around her. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She just was a whole pile of contradictions her whole
Speaker 1: her whole life, because she, on the one hand, did
Speaker 1: not seem super interested in, uh, having relationships of a
Speaker 1: romantic sort with people. She You know, she had a few,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really last. But you know, then she's
Speaker 1: greeting visitors in a room with hung with these erotic
Speaker 1: nude paintings. There there are some fascinating juxtapositions there her
Speaker 1: many fay so much for joining us on this Saturday.
Speaker 1: Since this episode is out of the archive, if you
Speaker 1: heard an email address or a Facebook U r L
Speaker 1: or something similar over the course of the show, that
Speaker 1: could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History
Speaker 1: Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old health
Speaker 1: stuff works email address no longer works, and you can
Speaker 1: find us all over social media at missed in History.
Speaker 1: And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: Google podcasts, the I heart Radio app, and wherever else
Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.