The King had promoted the match with some energy, travelling to Berlin himself, when Christina was only four years old, to suggest the project personally to the Elector.11 Maria Eleonora, too, had been very much in favour of it. Her nephew, it was planned, would abjure his Calvinist religion and become a Lutheran; this had been agreed by the Elector’s own theologian. The boy would move to Sweden for the rest of his education and for his military training, learning the language and the ways of the Swedes while still in his impressionable years.
The Berlin meeting had not borne much fruit. The Elector distrusted Gustav Adolf; he had not wanted his sister to marry the King, and he did not want his son to marry the King’s daughter. Unwilling to state the matter so plainly, he prevaricated: the religious clause was objectionable, he said; he had hoped instead for some kind of union between Calvinist and Lutheran believers. Besides, his son was too young to be sent away from home, and Gustav Adolf might yet have a son of his own. Privately, Georg Wilhelm had sought the advice of other German princes, most of them still smarting from the Swedes’ riding roughshod over their own territories in the recent years of fighting. Their advice was consistent: the Elector should not pursue the plan; the pair were too young, and the political situation might be different by the time they had come of age. The Swedish climate was too harsh, and the Swedes themselves ‘not very nice people’, who would not welcome a German king. Besides, Sweden’s enmity with the Holy Roman Empire might drag Brandenburg into the same fearful morass. And the marriage would make Sweden much too powerful; the German princes, and many others even within Sweden itself, feared that Gustav Adolf would use it as a stepping-stone to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite encouragement from his own Chancellor and renewed attempts on the part of the Swedes, the Elector had decided to let the matter drift.
At the end of 1632, when the news arrived of Gustav Adolf’s death at Lützen, the Danish King Kristian IV had decided to try his luck in arranging a marriage for his own son, the Archduke Ulrich, now in his early twenties, to the little Queen of Sweden. It was a second attempt on Kristian’s part; the previous year, his hopeful embassy had been rejected by the Swedish King himself. Now, it seemed, a window had opened in the house of his old enemy, through which he might insert some Danish influence. A measure of dissension among the land’s new governors would serve his interests well; an official embassy of condolence would provide the perfect opportunity. Barely a week after the news had arrived, his envoy received instructions to seek a private audience in Wolgast with the late King’s grieving widow.
Kristian hoped, at the very least, to create a rift between Maria Eleonora and Sweden’s five regents, already in office for some time on account of the late King’s long absences on campaign. Early in the new year, Chancellor Oxenstierna, still in Brandenburg, received a letter from the Danish King, relaying his renewed hopes of the match. Oxenstierna, unpleasantly surprised, replied that Christina was too young for any marriage plans to be made for her as yet, and added that there were ‘many other considerations’ besides. But he took the precaution of writing at the same time to the regents in Stockholm to ensure that, if consulted, they would give the same reasons for declining Kristian’s offer. The Danes were near neighbours, after all, and their alliance was very recent. It would be unwise to offend them, for they might also prove to be uncertain friends.
Meanwhile, amid the increasing chaos of the castle at Wolgast, Maria Eleonora was able to master her grief sufficiently to begin negotiations of her own with the Danish envoy. Though Friedrich Wilhelm was her nephew, that did not ensure her constancy now to his cause. As fervently as she had wished for the match while her husband was alive to promote it, so now, in the first months of her widowhood, she turned determinedly against it. She decided, or was persuaded, that it would never do; Christina was the daughter of a king: only a king’s son could be a suitable husband for her.
An anxious Chancellor Oxenstierna wrote to Wolgast, urging the widowed Queen to caution. Denmark was Sweden’s oldest enemy, he reminded her. The two would never be brought together ‘without great bloodshed or the complete extinction of one or the other’. The Queen should speak to the envoy, or indeed anyone else, ‘only in the most general, non-committal terms’.12 She replied, duplicitously, that she had ‘given no yes or no’ to anyone. But throughout the winter and the spring, she kept constant company with the Danes, and the rumour spread that the young Archduke Ulrich himself was soon to visit Wolgast.
In April, at home in Stockholm, the Senate met to discuss the matter. There could be no better prince than Friedrich Wilhelm, said the Count Per Brahe. Sweden could find no better supporter, and the marriage would make Sweden formidable among all nations. On the contrary, said the Chancellor’s cousin, Gabriel Oxenstierna, it would be better to choose a poor Swedish nobleman who would be more dependent on the Senate. Foreigners in the past had only tyrannized the country. He would rather have a local man. But, said Per Banér, if the foreigner were the husband of a Swedish princess, he would not tyrannize anyone. No foreign ruler had ever married a Swedish princess before. Quite true, said Jakob De la Gardie. A Swedish consort would only sow dissension, having his own support among the local people. However, said Gabriel Oxenstierna, a Swede would be more easily constrained by the law. On the other hand, a royal marriage was an excellent way for a nation to increase its power, and certainly a connection with Brandenburg would be politically advantageous, particularly in relation to Poland. It might be wise, then, said Per Brahe, to come to a decision soon. If the Brandenburgers thought they were being led around by the nose, they would turn their backs on Sweden and embrace the Poles instead.
A letter from the Chancellor, favouring Friedrich Wilhelm, was then read once again to the assembled noblemen. They were duly impressed. Per Banér noted that the boy’s father had been very friendly to Sweden, at least since the beginning of 1632, and Admiral Klaes Fleming wondered aloud whether it would be wise to overrule the wishes and plans of His Holy Royal Majesty, their late lamented King. Various senators now remembered that a Brandenburg marriage would keep Pomerania in Swedish hands jure perpetuo. That would be good security against the Dutch, and against the city of Jülich as well. They reassured one another that Friedrich Wilhelm would have a duty to appoint all his officials exclusively from Swedish families. All things considered, the Elector’s son was to be preferred to any other foreign prince.13
In short, the little Queen was to serve as a chattel in the crudest old terms. One senator did remark that she might not actually want to marry Friedrich Wilhelm when she grew up; at only six years of age, she could hardly be consulted now. This was agreed, and a message sent to Axel Oxenstierna in Berlin, conceding him full powers of negotiation, but suggesting that he proceed slowly. He took the senators at their word, and kept the discussions going for a further fifteen years.
In the meantime, the Danish assault continued. From the Brandenburg court, the Chancellor relayed his growing concern to the senators at home: the Danes, he wrote, were trying to bribe the ‘weak women’ in Wolgast with presents and flattery, ‘though I am sure that the Queen would never disgrace Sweden, in word or deed’. And as a gallant, if improbable, afterthought, he added, ‘I am equally sure that of her daughter’s marriage Her Majesty has spoken little or not at all’.14 He urged the senators nonetheless to send one or two of their number quickly to Wolgast to oversee matters there – the King’s body had still to be brought back to Sweden – and at the end of May 1633, his own cousin Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna, Sweden’s Grand Treasurer, presented his hawk-eyed compliments to Her disconcerted Majesty.
It was just as well, for Maria Eleonora was soon declaring, ‘in decided tones’, that the match would never be made between Friedrich Wilhelm and her only daughter: the prince was a Calvinist, and they were too closely related. The first objection could be quickly overruled; the Queen’s own Calvinist father, after all, had permitted his wife and children to be Lutheran.15 Besides, the Reformed Church in Brandenburg had already given its consent to the boy’s abjuration. The second objection might have appeared more pressing, but in fact no