It was Victory which announced my name on the fateful field of battle – Victory, a herald at arms proclaiming me King.1
So, at least, Christina was to write, many years later, at a time when she needed to call upon her every credential of greatness. She was, she continues, ‘the link, weak as it was, which united so many good men, so many diverse and opposing interests, all dedicated to sustaining the rights of the girl who began to reign at that fatal moment’. All the generals, she says, all the men of the army, and ‘the great Chancellor’, too, submitted to the name of Christina.
In rhetorical terms, there is some truth in this tale, but in reality the crown did not pass to the little girl quite so smoothly. Gustav Adolf’s generals stood firm, and announced their loyalty to his fragile Vasa dynasty from their battlefields in Germany, giving the Chancellor, who now assumed power in the King’s stead, the means to continue the war. But in fact there was no guarantee that Christina would inherit her father’s throne at all. Only five years before, when she was just a year old and no male heirs seemed likely, Gustav Adolf had had to confirm her right, as a female, to succeed him.2 His own royal line was not so ancient that he could be sure of its continuance against all odds; his cousin Sigismund, the Catholic King of Poland, had his own, arguably greater claim to the Swedish throne. Moreover, heredity was not enough; for many centuries the Swedish monarchy had been elective, and the principle, established by Christina’s great-grandfather, applied to males only. It was by no means certain that the Estates would accept a woman – indeed, a little girl – as their ‘King’, as the Swedes always formally referred to their sovereign. There were even some who might have preferred to oust the monarchy entirely and install a republic in its place.
In the Senate, or so Christina was later to write, it was a different story. All the senators declared themselves in her favour. They all felt that her right to the throne was ‘incontestable’. They were ‘only too happy’ to have this child, who was ‘their only strength and Sweden’s only hope of salvation at such a dangerous time’.3 Histrionic as the words may seem, they were probably true – indeed, the ‘strength and salvation’ phrase was the Swedes’ very definition of their monarchy. And it was certainly a dangerous time, with Swedish armies exposed in Germany and elsewhere, and the constant threat of the Catholic Poles taking power at home. It was no doubt this double peril which persuaded the senators’ now to support Christina’s succession, for they had much to gain by opposing it. For the noble families from which every senator was drawn, the three generations of the Vasa dynasty had meant, above all, a steady waning of power. Their own grandfathers had only grudgingly accepted the first Vasa King, Gustav I Eriksson. Though he had driven out the Danes by his energy and bravery, they had regarded him as an upstart with no very ancient lineage. Resentment had rankled into the next generation; Gustav’s son Karl IX had been determinedly opposed by the noble families. He had sought support instead from the common people, earning the nobles’ disdainful epithet of ‘the rabble King’. But the people’s support had allowed Karl to govern on his own terms. Power had drained from the noble families and collected around the crown. In 1600, the King had finally secured his position in the infamous ‘Bloodbath of Linköping’, where his five leading opponents, including four members of Sweden’s highest nobility, were beheaded in the town’s market square. It had required the extraordinary gifts and the no less extraordinary personality of Karl’s son, Gustav Adolf, to quiet the outrage of the noble families and persuade them to support their malefactor’s heir. But now the golden-haired King was gone, leaving no son to succeed him. His sole heir was female; the principle of heredity could at last be abandoned, and the nobles could reclaim their ancient right of electing their own grateful and manageable sovereign.
It says much for the senators’ patriotic spirit, or perhaps for their fear of Poles and popery, that they decided to forgo this right and give their support to a continuing Vasa dynasty. But, although the Senate stood unanimously behind the little ‘King’, she was not so quickly accepted by the men of the Riksdag, a socially more diverse group with differing views of the perils facing their homeland. The Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, comprised four Estates: the clergy, the nobles, the burghers, and the peasants. It was among these last, as Gustav Adolf had feared, that opposition to a female ruler now proved strongest. The story is told that, in March 1633, when the Riksdag was assembled to affirm Christina’s succession to the throne, the marshal was interrupted in the middle of his address by a member of the peasants’ Estate, a man bearing the almost symbolically Swedish name of Lars Larsson. The peasants, it seemed, were not convinced by the senators’ arguments. ‘Who is this girl?’ Larsson demanded. ‘We don’t know her. We’ve never even seen her.’ Larsson was seconded by a growing number of the men, and the child was sent for. Happily for her, and for the senators, Christina’s resemblance to her father was clear. Larsson recognized at once the great King’s forehead, his blue eyes, and, starting out from the solemn little face, his long, distinctive nose. The succession was assured. Christina was unanimously acclaimed Elected Queen and Hereditary Princess of Sweden – ‘elected’ as a warning to the Polish Vasas that their hereditary rights would not be enough to claim a Swedish throne.
The little blonde-headed girl, just six years old, now bore the titles of Queen of the Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Great Princess of Finland, Duchess of Estonia and Karelia, and Lady of Ingria, the last owing to the Peace of Stolbova concluded with the Russians a few years before. If Christina’s own story is to be believed, she bore them all, even at this early age, with appropriate aplomb. She did not really understand what was happening, she writes, but nonetheless she was delighted to see all the great men of the land – among them the Count Palatine, Johann Kasimir – on their knees at her feet, kissing her hand. Her delight is understandable, for Johann Kasimir was her uncle, and she had already spent a good deal of time in his castle at Stegeborg, in his care, no doubt kindly, but also under his no doubt authoritative eye. Here was a reversal indeed.
Christina has left a description, addressed to God, of the first convening of the Riksdag in 1633, following her acclamation. Before all the men of the four Estates, she ascended the throne of her great father:
The people were amazed by my grand manner, playing the role of a Queen already. I was only little, but on the throne I had such an air, such a grand appearance, that it inspired respect and fear in everyone…You had planted on my forehead this mark of greatness…Everyone said, ‘How can it be that a child inspires such feelings in us after we have seen Gustav Adolf on the throne?’ They noticed that You had made me so grave and so serious that I wasn’t at all impatient, as is the usual way with children. I never went to sleep during all the long ceremonies and all the speeches I had to sit through. Other children have been seen going to sleep or crying on occasions like this, but I received all the different signs of homage like a grown-up person, who knows they are his due…I remember very well being told all this, and being