Before we start, just a little quick note. I wrote a book. It's called Anatomy, a Love Story, and it's coming out next February. It's a story about love and dead bodies in nineteenth century Edinburgh. And if you like this podcast, I have a really good feeling that you're also really going to like this book. So here's where I have to get a little bit earnest and say
pre orders are incredibly important for authors. Basically, publishers look at those numbers and decide how many eyeballs they're going to put the book in front of when it's actually published. So if you're interested at all, or even on the fence, do me a favor at least and check it out and see if you're intrigued enough for a preorder. It
would mean so much to me. Also, if you want to support the show, you can always get access to bibliography material and episode scripts on our Patreon at patreon dot com, slash Noble Blood Tales, Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. Listener discretion is advised. Christina of Sweden had an unusual birth. She was born on a frosty December day to the King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus and
his wife Maria Eleonora. The couple had achieved four pregnancies before Christina, but they hadn't had a single child survived past infancy. One son was stillborn, a daughter died before her first birthday, and so this new pregnancy was a source of joy but also of profound anxiety for the royal family. A slew of doctors were sent to examine the queen, and one by one they all turned to the king with knowing smiles and said, it's a boy.
Christina came out screaming a hoarse, strong, low pitched voice, and she came out covered in the downy fur that sometimes covers newborns. It was probably a combination of those factors and the fact that having a male heir at this point was already a foregone conclusion that Christina was initially declared to be a boy. When the mistake was identified, the attendants were humiliated. The air in the royal chambers was still and stifling with the awkwardness of the entire situation.
King Gustavus broke the tension. If he was disappointed at not having a male heir. He didn't show it. She'll be clever, he said, she has made fools of us. All The King adored his daughter, and from that point on he correctly assumed that he and his wife wouldn't be having any more children, and that Christina was going to be his heir. If she was a woman, well, that was okay by him. Technically, Christina never became a queen after her father's death. People called her Queen Christina
of Sweden, but her actual formal title was King. Swedish law didn't include the terminology for a non queen consort or a queen just married to the king without monarchical power in her own right. Christina's accidental mis gendering at birth turned out to be just the first in a long line of unusual happenings, and possibly one of the
strangest lives of Renaissance royal history. Christina was a woman who lived with a peculiar knack for doing things exactly on her terms, fond of wearing men's clothing and not combing her hair, with absolutely no interest in getting married to a man, and a much bigger interest in pursuing romantic relationships with women Christina was not the king but Sweden really wanted, which especially became true when she decided that she wanted to convert to Catholicism, even though her
kingdom was deeply Lutheran and so, citing burnout, Christina abdicated and spent the next several decades of her life bouncing between various European courts, throwing elaborate parties so expensive they could bring her hosts financial ruin, and ultimately landing at the Vatican, where she was a guest under five separate popes. Back when she was reigning in Sweden, one of her political enemies said of her quote Christina was bringing everything to ruin and that she cared for nothing but sport
and pleasure. So often Disney movies and history stories this podcast often included fall into the trap of telling the tales of beautiful, gentle princesses. Christina was neither. She was strange looking and strange in her habits. Probably the best educated woman in Europe of her day. She loved music and theater and other women, and still she's one of only three women to be buried in the papal Vatican grottos. Of course, there was murder along the way. What good
story doesn't have murder. Christina may have abdicated her throne, but she never gave up having the power of life and death over her courtly subjects. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is noble blood. Christina's mother, Maria Eleanora, didn't share her husband's calm, demeanor or collectiveness when it came to
the fact that they didn't actually have a son. Murray Eleanora was incredibly volatile, often erratic in her behavior in ways that some historians sometimes posthumously characterized as postnatal depression or at least some unspecified mental illness. The court collectively actually decided to withhold the information from the Queen that her newborn son wasn't actually a son for a few days.
When the queen was finally told that she had given birth to a daughter, she threw a tantrum quote, instead of a son, I'm given a daughter, dark and ugly, with a great nose and black eyes. Take her from me. I will not have such a monster. That quote just about to find the relationship between mother and daughter that, for the rest of their lives could charitably be described
as chili. I wouldn't go so far as some other historians do to imply that, in the queen's agitated state of mind, that she attempted to hurt her own child. But I do think it's consistent with a bitter, disinterested parent that Christina had a number of dangerous accidents when she was still young. A beam fell onto her cradle.
When she was an infant, a nursemaid was accused of dropping the baby onto a stone floor injuring Christina's should older as a young child, Christina accidentally fell down a flight of stairs, breaking her collar bone. Her collar bone never healed correctly, and for the rest of her life, Christina would be in a perpetual shrug, with one shoulder sitting higher than the other. In stark contrast to her
mother's disinterest, Christina's father, the King, adored her. When the King noticed that the toddler clapped and giggled upon hearing the cannons booming the royal salute at Colmar Castle, he made sure to take his young daughter with him often when he went on military reviews. Christina was technically going to be the King of Sweden, and so Gustavus made sure that she was raised like one. But as in all unhappy stories of princesses, Christina's devoted parent didn't stay
in her life for long. The Thirty Years War was being fought across Germany and Central Europe, and when Christina was six years old, King Gustavus left to fight on behalf of Protestantism. If the king didn't know then that he was never going to return, he at least prepared for the possibility, formerly securing Christina in the line of succession and making plans for her regency and her custody until she came of age. Her erratic mother, Maria Eleonora,
was not to be included in either plan. To Axel Oxensterna, one of the kingdom's most prominent statesman, the king said quote, if anything happens to me, my family will merit your pity. The mother lacking in common sense, the daughter a minor, hopeless if they rule, and dangerous if others come to rule over them. The plan was that if Gustavus died, Christina's guardian would be the king's half sister Catherine, and the king's half brother Carl would be the head of
a regent council. Lo and behold, the king was killed in battle. Maria Eleanora was so distraught at her husband's death that she refused to allow them to bury his body. For eighteen months, she kept his casket open in a room draped with black velvet, and the dowager Queen, who had once been so cold and removed from any aspect of her child rearing, now became deeply invested in being a part of little Christina's life. Maria Eleonora, in a bid to re establish her power, actually tried to ban
the king's half sister Catherine from the castle. In the end, it was Maria Eleanora who would be banished by Axel Oxensterna to grip Shawn Castle, forty miles west of Stockholm. Though Uncle Carl was head of the regency Council in name, it was Axel Oxensterna who actually ran the nation while Christina was a child, and who helped shepherd her princely education the way her father had instructed. When Christina was twelve,
her guardian, her aunt Catherine, died. From that point on, oxen Sterna appointed a group to be Christina's collective guardians, rather than giving her individual foster parents. The idea was that because Christina would go on to have so much power, she shouldn't be biased in favor of any nobleman and grow to pick favorites as an adult, technically the king of Sweden already at six years old, Christina received an
absolutely phenomenal education. She was tutored as if she were a boy in politics, philosophy, and theology, and to the point of fluency in seven languages, not counting Swedish. Christina was very possibly the best educated woman of the entire seventeenth century. Axel oxens Jarna even hired a French ballet troop to teach Christina how to move gracefully. That lesson was the one that never quite took. Christina was never
accused of being graceful. By the time she was an adult, she swore like a sailor, refused to brush her hair, neglected all sense of fashion or polite decorum. She was uncomfortably blunt and outright refused things that she saw as feminine. From a young age, she was drawn to the Catholic doctrine, particularly the idea of celibacy. As a teenager, she was briefly secretly engaged to her cousin Charles, but pretty quickly Christina made it very clear to everyone around her that
she had no intention of ever getting married. Christina's most important romantic relationship was with a girl named Ebba Sparr, the daughter of a political family. Ebba arrived to Court as a teenager to serve as one of Christina's ladies in waiting. The two were inseparable, they shared a bed and wrote a fusive letters to each other. It's almost besides the point to ask if the relationship was explicitly
sexual when it was so obviously romantic. Christina referred to Ebba as Belle, and when Ebba finally got married, it was to a man Christina selected who would keep Ebba close at Court. I am not a queer scholar who can determine whether or not it's academically useful to call Christina a lesbian when she wouldn't have thought of herself in those terms. But it seems unnecessarily reductive and a little silly to discount what was obviously a queer relationship.
In terms of her leadership, Christina was more focused on the big picture than the details of policy. In running Sweden. She wanted Stockholm to be a cultural center, and to that end she created a theater in the palace and appointed the scholar gay Or extreme Home to be court poet. He would go on to write a number of plays that Christina would actually perform it in front of very
small and very private audiences. Christina also corresponded with the famous philosopher Renee Decart of I think therefore I am fame. Decartes actually came to Swedish court, but it wasn't really a successful visit for a few reasons. First, Decarte and Christina did not get along in person, which might have had something to do with Christina's slightly uncouth manner. But second, and maybe more important, Christina invited Decarte to give her lectures.
Early in the Chili Swedish mornings, decart caught a chill, which turned into pneumonia, and then he died. Christina's other big picture goal for Sweden was establishing peace and ending the Thirty Years War that had killed her father. On any terms, Axel Oxensterne had slightly different feelings when it came to war. He and the Queen began to butt heads as soon as she became of the age of majority. Axel wanted to end the war too, but on their terms.
At a larger peace conference in Austin Brook, the Chancellor auction Sterne sent his son Johann to negotiate. Christina, not satisfied that Johann would push for peace hard enough, sent her own delegate. Peace was reached, but Oxensterna was a little bitter about how meager the territorial gains were for Sweden. But even political disagreements weren't the biggest problem that Queen
Christina was having with her politicians. Her distaste for marriage, which had seemed like a youthful fixation, was now that she was the age of majority, a legitimate problem. Christina had reached the age of majority in sixteen forty four, but her official coronation was delayed because of war with Denmark. She was crowned officially in sixteen fifty and the clashes with her politicians reached new heights. Christina told her counsel quote, I do not intend to give you reasons. I am
simply not suited to marriage. In her mind, she was a successor in the spirit of Queen Elizabeth, the first of England. Christina wouldn't want to marry a man, which would simply mean sifening her own power away and turning her husband into the kingdom's de facto ruler. Her counsel secretly thought, that's sort of the point. Christina did have one relationship with a man, a relationship that would come
to define the rest of her life. It was a friendship with the Jesuit secretary and interpreter for the Portuguese ambassador to Sweden. She and the ambassador spoke of religion and philosophy of Copernicus, Tikobray, Bacon, and Coupler. When Christina expressed her fascination with Catholicism, the secretary smuggled one of her letters to Italy and invited two more Jesuit scholars to sneak into Stockholm in disguise to chat with Christina. Not only did Christina not want to get married, she
wanted to convert to Catholicism. Now, that's all well and good for a person, but not a person who is the monarch of a country, especially not since one of the terms of the peace treaty at Austinbrook was that the religion of the ruler determined the religion of a kingdom. Christina, almost twenty seven years old, had reigned for nearly two decades. Her days were filled with ten hours of lessons and
policy meetings on financial minutia. It was, in short, hell of a lot of work for someone who didn't want the job. On June six, six fifty four, Christina abdicated the Swedish throne on behalf of her cousin Charles. For the ceremony, she wore all of her royal regalia a
top of a simple white taffeta gown. Her counsel one by one came up and removed the royal items, but the final counselor, who was supposed to remove Christina's crown, wasn't able to do it, and so Christina stood in silence for a moment and then just took off her crown herself. She gestured for the new king, Charles to come up and sit in the throne she vacated, but he politely refused, and the two of them left the
ceremony together. Three days later, Christina left Sweden. Christina's journey from Sweden was forcing her to travel through Denmark, still one of the country's enemies, and so she cut her hair short more men's clothing and posed under the fake
name Count Donna to sneak across the border. While traveling through sympathetic Catholic kingdoms, Christina privately converted to Catholicism, although she kept it a secret temporarily because she still needed alimony from the Swedish government and she didn't want to compromise that. When she did eventually announced our conversion, it was at the palace of Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand Charles in Austria. He threw her a multiday party so extravagant it nearly
led to his financial ruin. That event is a good keystone for what Christina's life would look like as she continued around Europe, attending parties, plays, and concerts at the behest of various Catholic noblemen. Finally, her travels took her to Rome, where Pope Alexander the seventh, an early adopter of having a mustache and a square little goatee unconnected
to the mustache, welcomed her as a triumph. He threw her an opulent reception that began with a procession with six thousand onlookers crowding the streets to catch a glimpse of her. The rest of the parade included camels and elephants. It was the Roman equivalent of the Prince Ali song from Aladdin. The pope was thrilled to have a monarch,
even a former monarch, who publicly converted to Catholicism. Maybe it was the first step in Sweden coming back to the Church, or maybe Christina could influence other royals to follow her lead. Christina entered the Vatican through gates specially designed by the sculptor Bernini. Bernini also designed the coach
that she wrote in. Christina would remain in Rome for a good portion of her adult life, only occasionally popping into other countries when there seemed like there might be an open position for a monarch, and the hopes that maybe she wouldn't have to financially rely on the pope any longer. For a period, the most promising vacant position
for Christina was the throne of Naples. It wasn't actually vacant, it was currently occupied by Spain, but it had gone back and forth between Spain and France, and Christina that she might be able to persuade France to sponsor her becoming queen and Naples if only to weaken their enemy. So Christina traveled to France to meet with the teenage King Louis the fourteenth and his mother, the regent, Queen Anne,
but their reaction was a little lukewarm. But Christina's time in France would lead to what became one of the defining incidents of her adult life. She caught a trader in her midst and the woman who had been raised to be king knew exactly what to do with him. Christina's court was staying in the Grand Apartments at the
Palace Fontainebleue outside of Paris. She had already met with Queen Anne about the whole Naples thing, and she was set to return back to Rome, but there were rumors of plague in Italy, and Christina figured that if she stuck around France a little bit longer, she might persuade the French to hurry up with that military support. While she was there, Christina discovered that her master of the house, a man named Rinaldo Monaldeshi, had been copying her letters
and sending them to the Pope. In short, it was a full betrayal behind her back. Around one p m. One afternoon, she summoned Monaldeshi to her chambers and publicly accused him with evidence of the letters. He denied wrongdoing, but Christina just rolled her eyes. She allowed him to receive confession, and though he and the priest both begged Christina for mercy, Christina didn't grant it. Monaldeshi was disloyal, and so that very afternoon she sentenced him to death.
While Monaldashi stood before Christina in her chambers, he was stabbed in the stomach and the neck by Christina's servants. The problem was Monaldeshi was wearing chain mail and the weapons didn't kill him, and so he was chased around the adjoining room for several minutes until one of Christina's servants finally managed to stab him in the throat. Christina didn't regret it at all. The only thing she said she was sorry for was that she had been forced
to undertake the execution at all. She didn't ask God's forgiveness. She asked God to forgive Monaldeshi. Though her let's say, informal trial and execution was fully legal because he was a member of her court. The action made Christina massively unpopular both in France and back in Rome, where Monaldeschi's
family was politically important. The pope, who had once thrown her a massive parade, now described Christina as quote a woman born of a barbarian, barbarously brought up and living with barbarous thoughts, with a ferocious and almost intolerable pride. In July nine, Christina moved to the Palazzo Riario in trust of her where she would live for the remainder
of her life. She would return briefly to Sweden after cousin Charles died, thinking maybe there was a chance she might retake the throne again, but her Catholic conversion being non negotiable, that was no go. While she was there, Christina tried to see her former love of a Spar, but the Spar family prevented it. It was on her way back from another ill fated trip to Sweden when Christina heard the news that Pope Alexander the seventh died and that his replacement would be Pope Clement the ninth.
Christina was delayed. Did she knew Clement the ninth. He had been her guest a number of times. She was so thrilled for her friend that she threw a massive party in her rented house forgetting. It seems that she was staying on the road temporarily in very Lutheran Hamburg, where they were not at all. A fan of all the banners, Christina hung in the street to celebrate a new pope. Christina's party had wine of flowing from fountains. The night ended with a riot and eight deaths, and
Christina needing to flee out the back in disguise. She remained a troublemaker for the rest of her life, Though the next two popes would be against theater, with Pope Innocent the Eleventh forbidding women from acting, singing, or wearing low cut gowns. Christina just flat out ignored him and continued to higher female actors for her private theater. She also declared herself protectress of the Jews in Rome, and she was the one who pressured the pope into banning
the chasing of Jews through the streets during carnivals. Yep, that wasn't just a thing in boor at movies. That was Christina through her middle age, enjoying art and culture, creating a hub for herself as the Catholic queen of the counterculture. One French writer visiting Rome wrote a fairly harsh description of Christina, but one that I will read because I think it paints such a compelling picture of
the figure. She cut as an adult quote. She is over sixty years of age, very small of stature, exceedingly fat and corpulent. Her complexion and voice and face are those of a man. She has a big nose, large blue eyes, blonde eyebrows, and a double chin, from which brought several tufts of beard. Her upper lip protrudes a little. Her hair is a light chestnut color and only a palm's breadth in length. She wears it powdered and standing on end uncombed. She is very smiling and obliging. You
will hardly believe her clothes. A man's jacket in black satin, reaching to her knees and buttoned all the way down, a very short black skirt and men's shoes, a very large bow of black ribbons instead of a cravat, and a belt tightly drawn under her stomach, revealing its rotundity all too well. Christina died at age sixty two, and though she requested a simple burial at the Pantheon, for all the trouble she caused, the Pope still wanted to use her as a pr opportunity from beyond the grave.
Christina was one of three women buried in the Vatican Grotto, and she was buried with the honors of a hope in three coffins of cyprus, lead and oak, with her intestines in a high urn. Her body, wearing a silver mask, draped with fur and jewels, was on display for four days. It was a strange burial for a strange women, a woman who replaced social cues and restrictions with her own impulses and turned whatever palace she was at into a party. That's the story of Queen or should I say King
Christina of Sweden. But keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about how her story has been told in popular culture. Several movies and operas and books have been written about Christina of Sweden, but one of the most interesting is the critically acclaimed N three MGM film Queen Christina, featuring the Swedish actress
Greta Garbo. That movie made the incredibly Hollywood choice to turn Christina into a classic romantic heroine by inventing a male love interest, a Spanish ambassador whom she's unable to marry because he's Catholic. Of course, that has the added benefit of turning Christina's conversion to Catholicism into a move of love and not philosophy. I doubt the real Christina would have loved that twisting of her narrative, but I do think she would have liked Greta Garbo. You see,
just like Christina herself. There are rumors that Garbo was also queer, that she might have been bisexual or even gay. There's a scene in the film where Christina kisses her lady in waiting Ebba, and although it's played completely platon nickally, maybe secretly Garbo knew how the scene was supposed to be played. Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Monkey. The show was written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by
Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com. For more podcasts from i heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.