Christina

Christina (Swedish, Kristina, 1626-1689), Queen of Sweden (1632-1654). The death of Gustav II Adolf at the Battle of Lützen in November 1632 meant that Sweden had to be governed by a regency led by the chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, until the dead king’s sole heir, his daughter Christina, could assume full royal power at the age of 18 in 1644.

During these 12 years, Oxenstierna succeeded in establishing Sweden’s claim to be considered a great European power as a result of its contribution to the Thirty Years’ War. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 gave Sweden territories in northern Germany, and in consequence a say in the affairs of the Holy Roman Empire. Sweden was also able to use the presence of its armies in Germany to advantage against Denmark, soundly defeating the old rival in a brief war (1643-1645) and forcing territorial concessions in the Baltic Sea and on the Norwegian frontier. The strain of sustaining a large army to defend these gains created many social and economic problems, however, which Christina was unable to resolve. Her relations with the ageing chancellor grew tenser, and the extensive alienation of crown lands, mostly to members of the high nobility, fostered resentment.

In 1650 the non-noble estates of the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament) demanded a “reduction”, or return, of fiefs and donations to the crown, and other reforms. Christina affected to side with their demands, but only as a means to pressure the nobility into agreeing to recognize her cousin Charles (Swedish, Karl) Gustav as hereditary prince and successor to the throne (see Charles X Gustav). Determined not to marry, and attracted by Catholicism, the queen of this staunchly Protestant country abdicated at the 1654 meeting of the Riksdag in Uppsala and went into exile, announcing her conversion to Catholicism en route to her final destination, Rome. Although she did return on two further occasions to Sweden, and was occasionally touted as possible ruler of other states, the rest of her life was spent as a private person.

Highly intelligent, witty, and articulate, Christina encouraged the arts in her native land, and sought to attract to her court foreign luminaries, chief of whom was the French philosopher René Descartes. She appears to have had a genuine affection for her cousin Charles Gustav, with whom she spent much of her childhood at the castle of Stegeborg, the Swedish home of the exiled Johann Casimir of the Palatinate and his wife Katarina, the sister of Gustav II Adolf, but rejected the idea of marriage with him, or indeed any other man.