Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric. Veronica Buckley

in her later years, Christina admitted that ‘it doesn’t take much to admire a child, and even less a child of the great Gustav, and perhaps flattery has exaggerated all this’. But in fact ‘all this’ reflects an idea that was to remain absolutely consistent throughout her life, the idea that sovereignty was something which she carried within herself. For Christina, kingship was a personal attribute which had nothing to do with the rights and regalia of monarchy. Her right to rule, she believed, was innate; she could not be divested of it. God Himself had planted ‘this mark of greatness’ on her forehead, and even in her childhood, it had inspired ‘respect and fear’ in all who saw it.

      A large delegation of diplomats from Muscovy supposedly observed this inborn sovereignty at about the same time, and, we are told, it left them quaking in their fur-lined boots. The Russians had arrived to offer their condolences on the King’s death and to extend a formal greeting to the new monarch; they had also to ensure that the peace which Gustav Adolf had made with them at Stolbova, after eight years of fighting, would now be ratified.⁵ According to Christina’s ‘little story’, the regents were anxious that their six-year-old Queen would not be able to endure the rigours of the formal reception with the necessary gravitas:

      I was such a child that they thought the Russians would frighten me with their strange clothes and their wild manners. They told me not to be frightened, and I was quite stung by this, in fact quite annoyed. Why should I be frightened, I said. Oh, they said, the Russians were dressed very differently from us. They had great big beards, and they were terrible-looking, and there were lots of them. As it happened, two of the regents themselves had big beards, and I laughed and said to them, Why should I be frightened by their beards? Haven’t you got big beards, too? ‘I’m not afraid of you, so why should I be afraid of them? Just give me the proper instructions, and leave it all to me.⁶

      And when the Russians finally approached the little Queen, seated on her throne, looking ‘so assured and so majestic’, they felt ‘what all men feel when they approach something that is greater than they are’.

      Closer to the truth, no doubt, is Christina’s subsequent remark that all her people were ‘overjoyed’ with her behaviour, admiring her delightedly ‘as one admires the little games of a beloved child’. Perhaps, despite her later, inverted interpretation of the event, she was herself awed into good behaviour by the strange-looking visitors and the solemnity of the occasion. Or perhaps she was induced to behave herself by the ‘magnificent presents’ which the Russians had brought for her, ‘according to their custom’. They were rewarded in any case with the ratification they sought, and were ‘sent off with the usual tokens’.

      The ratification itself had been agreed by Christina’s regents, the ‘five great old men’ who had accepted the charge of government until their little Queen should reach her eighteenth birthday. Though it had been a mighty blow, Gustav Adolf’s death entailed no difficult transition for those who governed the country. During the King’s frequent absences on campaign, the regular business of government had been left in the hands of ten nominated men of the Senate, and now, despite their loss, they adapted easily to the new situation. The King himself had chosen five of them to form a regency in the event of his death, five noblemen who were also to hold the five great offices of state: Grand Chancellor, Grand Treasurer, Grand Marshal, Grand Admiral, and High Steward. The government was now dominated by what amounted to Sweden’s second royal family, the Oxenstiernas. The premier office of Grand Chancellor was held by Baron Axel Oxenstierna, the late King’s close friend and undoubtedly one of the ablest administrators of the age. The Grand Treasurer was the Chancellor’s cousin, Baron Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna, and the High Steward his younger brother, Baron Gabriel Gustavsson Oxenstierna.⁷ The office of Grand Marshal was held by one of Sweden’s finest generals, Count Jakob De la Gardie; to him Gustav Adolf had lost his former love, Ebba Brahe; their son Magnus was to prove a contentious figure during Christina’s own reign. The Grand Admiral was Christina’s uncle, Baron Karl Karlsson Gyllenhjelm, illegitimate half-brother of the late King. On his broad soldier’s shoulders, and on those of his four fellow senators, the burden of government now lay.

      Christina herself has left us a picture of her regents. Of Axel Oxenstierna, primus inter pares, she writes with respect and affection, indeed almost with awe: he was, she says, a man ‘of great capacity, who knew the strengths and weaknesses of every state in Europe, a wise and prudent man, immensely capable, and greathearted’.⁸ Tireless in the affairs of state, he nevertheless always found time to read, so continuing the studious habits of his youth. She notes that he was ‘as sober as a man can be, in a country and at a time when that virtue was unknown’, and adds that the Grand Chancellor was a great sleeper, by his own admission having spent the first sleepless night in his life after the death of his beloved friend and King. Christina describes him as an ambitious but loyal man, and incorruptible, if a little too ‘slow and phlegmatic’ for her taste, but she loved him, she says, ‘like a second father’.

      The Chancellor’s cousin, Gabriel Bengtsson, Sweden’s Grand Treasurer, Christina regarded as ‘upstanding’, and ‘capable enough’ of his high office. Of the younger Oxenstierna brother, Gabriel Gustavsson, now High Steward, she writes that he was well liked and well spoken, but in the natural way of the Swedes, without the burden of much erudition, since he had ‘only a smattering of Latin’. But he was, she adds consolatorily, ‘a very good man’. The Grand Marshal, Jakob De la Gardie, is described as able and personally courageous; this pre-eminent soldier had distinguished himself in the Swedish campaigns against Poland and Russia. Christina notes that his personality was direct, even brusque, but that he liked to chat. He had been a favourite with her father, she says, and was always competing with Axel Oxenstierna for the King’s favour. In Karl Karlsson Gyllenhjelm, the Grand Admiral, ‘bastard brother of the late King and my uncle’, Christina recognized ‘a good, brave, old-fashioned man, a good Swede, bright enough’, but worn down by the twelve years he had spent in irons in a Polish prison, refusing to abjure his Lutheran faith for the despised Catholicism of his captors.⁹ He was ‘absolutely devoted to the house of Vasa,’ she writes, ‘and he loved me like his own child’.

      For the next twelve years, the ‘five great old men’ were to rule in their little Queen’s name, though in fact Christina may not have been intended to rule at all, or at least not to rule alone. The steps which her father had taken to ensure her succession to the throne had been, as it were, an emergency precaution, anxiously put in place as he himself prepared to go back to the war from which he felt he would not return. The pious King, almost fearful of his extravagant successes in the sight of ‘a jealous God’, had had premonitions of his own death. The succession must be assured if civil war, or worse, were not to overtake his homeland. A long period of regency was certain, but in time the girl would marry; her husband would rule alongside her, or even in her place. Besides, Sweden’s name was now great in Europe; Gustav Adolf himself had made it so. A king’s daughter was an opportunity incarnate to forge new alliances, and shift the balance of power.

      Negotiations for the little girl’s betrothal had consequently been in place for some time. The chosen prince was her own first cousin, Friedrich Wilhelm, her senior by seven years, the eldest son of the Elector of Brandenburg, and now, in the summer of 1633, thirteen years of age.¹⁰ The boy was Protestant, and seemed promising, and, crucially, he stood to inherit the duchy of Pomerania, whose long coasts were strategically important for both trade and warfare. Pomerania was now, insecurely, in Swedish hands – Gustav Adolf had concluded a treaty with its Archduke Boguslav XIV – but Boguslav’s heir was the Elector Georg Wilhelm, and in time the vital Pomeranian coasts would pass to his son, Friedrich Wilhelm. A marriage between Friedrich Wilhelm and Christina would thus ensure Sweden’s continuing access to them. It would make Brandenburg a safe neighbour and, moreover, would serve as a mighty cornerstone for the new bloc of Protestant powers once envisaged by Gustav Adolf, and now promoted by Christina’s regents. Above all, the marriage would give