The Queen Who Would Be King: Who was Queen Christina of Sweden?

This winter, an original opera from playwright Michel Marc Bouchard and composer Julien Bilodeau lifts the curtain on one of history’s most fascinating monarchs: Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89). Read on to learn more about the figure Pope Alexander VII described as "a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame"...

Christina Augusta, of the House of Vasa (known in her native Sweden as Kristina, and in the opera as Christine), was the daughter of King Gustav II Adolf and Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. The midwives at her birth initially believed her to be a boy on the grounds that she was “completely hairy and had a coarse and strong voice.” Later accounts describe Christina as having a hunchback, which may have been the result of a broken shoulder bone sustained in early childhood.

Having already lost three children in infancy, King Gustav recognized Christina as his heir from the outset. At his orders, she received a prince’s education, which included lessons in fencing, horse riding, and bear hunting. Following Gustav’s death on the battlefield in 1633, Christina became queen-elect at just seven years of age—when she was given the official title of “king” by the Riksdag.

During her regency, Sweden was governed by five councilmen headed by the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, who tutored the young queen in politics and introduced her to council meetings from the age of 14. Christina’s mother, Maria Eleonora, spent much of this period exiled to Gripsholm Castle, having displayed signs of madness following her husband’s death (declaring that the burial should not take place while she lived, she demanded that the coffin be kept open so that she might visit it regularly). Gustav was eventually interred at Axel Oxenstierna’s command, and Maria Eleonora did not return to court for over a decade.

Erudite and cultured, the adult Christina soon became known across Europe as a patron of the arts and education; in addition to a remarkable collection of books, paintings, and artefacts plundered from Prague Castle which formed the basis of her library, her reign saw the founding of the first Swedish newspaper, as well as the first national school ordinance.

She invited many foreign writers, musicians, and scholars to her court, including the famous French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician René Descartes, who arrived in 1649 to tutor her and establish a scientific academy. An arch-rationalist and one of the leading thinkers of the Scientific Revolution (whose “I think, therefore I am” is one of the most famous observations in all philosophy), Descartes in fact only met with the queen four or five times before his death from pneumonia in February 1650.

In 1654, Christina shocked the Christian world by abdicating her throne on the grounds that she found the burden of ruling too much to bear. In fact, her refusal to marry and her subsequent conversion to Roman Catholicism appear to have been the driving forces behind this decision. Having relinquished her throne to her cousin, Charles X Gustav, in 1655 Christina moved to Rome where she was warmly welcomed by Pope Alexander VII.

In Rome, Christina became a patron and friend of the composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Arcangelo Corelli and the sculptor Giovanni Bernini. Her patronage of the arts continued; the first public opera house in Rome, the Tordinona, was founded at her behest, and her substantial collection of books and manuscripts survives to this day in the Vatican library. 

Known for her masculine style of dress, comportment, and speech, all of which were unorthodox in her own time, Christina has been described by historians as having maintained heterosexual, lesbian, or bisexual relationships. After her abdication, she sent many passionate letters to her friend and former lady in waiting Ebba Sparre, which have been interpreted by some to indicate a romantic relationship. On the other hand, Christina adopted a similarly intimate style with many correspondents, including people she had never met—so the true nature of this relationship remains open to interpretation.

Only a few years after abdicating, Christina launched two failed attempts to claim the thrones of Poland and Naples. In the aftermath of both foiled plots, she returned to her beloved Rome, where she died in 1689. She is one of only three women buried in the Vatican Grottoes under St. Peter’s Basilica.

Christina’s remarkable life has inspired numerous fictionalised accounts on the page, the stage, and the silver screen. Queen Christine (a 1933 film starring Greta Garbo as Christina), as well as 1974’s The Abdication (starring Liv Ullmann) imagined romances between the queen and a Spanish emissary and a Vatican cardinal, respectively—while Mika Kaurismäki’s 2015 film, The Girl King, based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard, depicts her as the lover of the Countess Ebba Sparre. Christina (spelled Kristina) has even featured as a character in the video game Civilization VI: Gathering Storm.

One of several female monarchs who famously defied expectations of a woman and a queen—alongside other remarkable women including the Egyptian Hatshepsut, England’s “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth I, and Nzinga Mbande (of modern-day Angola)—Queen Christina remains both an enigma and an inspiration to this day.