Christina, Queen of Sweden : the restless life of a European eccentric / Veronica Buckley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Buckley, Veronica.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christina, Queen of Sweden, 1626-1689.

Christina.

Sweden--Kings and rulers--Biography.

Sweden.

Kings and rulers.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

x, 370 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fourth Estate, [2004]

Summary:

She was born on a bitterly cold December night in 1626 and, in the candlelight, mistakenly declared a boy. On her father's death six years later, she inherited the Swedish throne. She was tutored by Descartes, yet could swear like the roughest solider. She was painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist; in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label. She was learned but restless, progressive yet self-indulgent; her leadership was erratic, her character unpredictable. Sweden was too narrow for her ambition. No sooner had she enjoyed the lavish celebrations of her official coronation at twenty-three than she abdicated, converting to Catholicism (an act of almost foolhardy independence and political challenge) and leaving her cold homeland behind for an extravagant new life in Rome. Christina, Queen of Sweden, longed fatally for adventure.

Freed from her crown, Christina cut a breathtaking path across Europe: spending madly, searching for a more prestigious throne to scale, stirring trouble wherever she went. Supported and encouraged in turn by the pope, the king of Spain, and France's powerful Cardinal Mazarin, Christina settled at the luxurious Palazzo Farnese, where she established a lavish salon for Rome's artists and intellectuals. More than once the cross-dressing queen was forced to leave town until a scandal died down. She loved to buckle on a sword and swagger like the men whose company she adored, but the greatest mystery in her life was the true nature of her elusive sexuality, which biographer Veronica Buckley explores with sensitivity and rigor. For a time it seemed there was nothing this extraordinary woman might fear attempting, until a bloody tragedy of her own making foreshadowed her downfall.

Pairing painstaking research with a sparkling narrative voice and unerring sense of the age, Veronica Buckley reclaims a protean life that had been preserved mostly as myth. Christina was a child of her time, and her time was one of great change: Europe stood at a crossroads where religion and science, antiquity and modernity, peace and war all met. Christina took what she wanted from each to create the life she most desired, and she dazzled all who met her.

Contents:

Genealogy xiii

Birth of a Prince 9

Death of a King 22

The Little Queen 35

Love and Learning 49

Acorn Beneath an Oak 63

Warring and Peace 77

Pallas of the North 92

Tragedy and Comedy 106

Hollow Crown 118

The Road to Rome 135

Abdication 152

Crossing the Rubicon 163

Rome at Last 180

Love Again 192

Fair Wind for France 204

The Rising Sun 216

Fontainebleau 227

Aftermath 239

Old Haunts, New Haunts 249

Debacle 263

Mirages 278

Glory Days 292

Journey's End 309.

Notes:

Originally published: Great Britain: Fourth Estate, 2004.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-347) and index.

ISBN:

0060736178

OCLC:

55130452