Queen Christina and Europe
The golden wings of Victory spread
a new spirit over Land and Court.
Genius awakes, protected by Christina:
already growing on the banks of Lake Malar
are the flowers of Mount Pindus; alas! they wither
without the care, Stiernhielm, of your hand.
Strangers here under the Northern Star
lack the warmth that shines from the Sun
over Mantua's laurel groves,
and over Lesbos' myrtle-covered sound.
Already 200 years ago, Franzén highlighted the dualities of Christina and her era: on one hand the pride of being a new European nation and the desire to become a leading cultural nation, on the other hand, doubt as to whether culture’s most beautiful flowers would flourish in a harsh Nordic environment.
The attitudes of poets, researchers and thinkers towards Christina and the period in which she lived has been — as is so often the case in history — deeply rooted in their own values. In fact, attitudes towards Christina shows one of the dimensions of European history’s central values: the dynamic between wealth, distinction and “extravagance” on the one hand, and on the other hand asceticism, frugality and scarcity. Europe’s history includes periods of celebrations, beauty and lavish social life, which are often violently contrasted by reactionary periods of “original simplicity” and “purification”. The latter is often directly associated with a hostile approach towards beauty and sophistication. The “autumn of the Middle Ages” was followed by the severity of the Calvinist and Lutheran Reformations, which in many places led to the vandalism and destruction of images, monuments and other beautiful objects. This was the case in the Netherlands in 1566, and slightly later also in Nordic countries to some degree, when those under the strict rule of Duke Charles fought against King Sigismund and the values he represented. Later the idea of “original simplicity” has led to vandalism or at least a strong repudiation of cultural sophistication in the realm of objects, behaviour and art, both during the French Revolution as well as the upheavals following both World Wars, particularly in Russia and socialist countries, and similarly in the 1960s in the so-called Western countries.
In the case of Sigismund and Christina, the relationship between being European and higher culture was also related to questions of creed. The resistance against Catholicism has historically united “populist” elements of society: the religion is associated with French, Italian and Spanish diplomats and prelates, it is foreign and scary, while also being associated with “cunning” people from court culture. In reality, the Catholic side also had its own traditions of asceticism and simplicity, which at many points were also near to Christina’s own thinking. Similarly, the ideology of simplicity also brought its own forms of waste. Public authorities could, with harsh taxation, forbid or “curb” private consumption (itself a problematic concept!), while in many respects deliberately wasting these accumulated funds. Therefore the moral of “wastefulness” is an issue, but it strongly shapes our understanding of the past, both of Christina’s era and the queen herself. This is further emphasised by the fact that Christina’s rule was preceded by an era of war and conflict, and was followed by two consecutive periods of nationwide centralisation and economization, first with Charles X Gustav’s “Quarter Reduction” and then Charles XI’s “Great Reduction”. This was a time of general economic and spiritual strictness, hardship and rationing, but also a period of governmental efficiency. The elevation of Charles XI’s absolutism as an ideal in the history books has inevitably led to Christina’s reign being condemned for its “extravagance”, “aristocratic domination”, and the “excessive” favouring of foreigners. Recently Swedish banknotes featured the picture of Charles XI, the “Greycoat king”, effectively elevating the ideals of strict frugality and autocracy, but Finland emphasised their European identity and civility — civility in general and also female civility — by releasing a stamp of Queen Christina. The past lives among us, and we often highlight those aspects of history which relate to our time and align with our own priorities.
Franzén’s verse reminds us of the most important, and often far too easily forgotten, description of Christina’s time — the international circumstances, “the golden wing of victory”.
The culture of Christina’s time was largely made up of the cultures during and immediately following the war. The victory presented opportunities and at the same time set the stage for Sweden to be seen as a superpower, both internally and externally. Sweden was a new European superpower which was aggressively expansive during the beginning of the 17th century, although throughout the latter half of the century it adopted a more defensive role. Russia, Poland and Denmark were not able to force Sweden to retreat during the reigns of Charles X Gustav or Charles XI — Denmark had just survived a bloody war —, but finally during the rule of Charles XII, the kingdom of Sweden was forced to return to the size that it was under the rule of Christina’s grandfather’s father, Gustav I Vasa, in the 16th century. Christina’s rule was the culmination of Sweden’s superpower status from both a politico-military and spiritual point of view, but it already included a warning of decline, not the least of which being the Queen’s abdication and conversion. Still, it is problematic to assert, as is too often still done under the guise of hindsight, that this “Golden age” was “artificial”, or that the pursuit of superpower status was unreasonable and even sometimes contrary to the interests of the kingdom and nation. At some points in history attacking was the best defence, because by trying to acquire spoils of war which are not vital to preserve, one could easily relinquish them in future negotiations. The victories over Russia, Denmark and Poland under Charles IX and Gustav II Adolf had to be secured by participating in the conflict which enveloped the whole continent, the Thirty Years’ War, in Germany. Participation also implied spiritual involvement.
Russia was excluded from the beaches of the Baltic Sea due to the terms of the Treaty of Stolbova. The tsar and grand duke of Moscow, even when humiliated by Sweden and Poland, held onto his status inherited from the Byzantine tsars. Furthermore, he implied during Christina’s regency that he considered the House of Vasa to be one of parvenus, and refused to acknowledge Christina’s titles. Poland was ruled by the older generation of the line of Sigismund from the House of Vasa, which was not only richer and grander than the younger descendants of Duke Charles ruling Sweden, but also upheld its claim to the Swedish krona. The royal family in Poland and the Polish aristocracy were the subjects of envy and rivalry to the upper class in Sweden. In Denmark, Christian IV’s era took a significant step towards representativeness, which made its power visible and perceivable in a completely different way than in the past. While Russia and Denmark either lost their previous position or at most managed to preserve it somewhat during Gustav Adolf’s time, Sweden was able to develop further. This became even clearer during Christina’s reign: when German power, wealth and prosperity declined due to long-term war and destruction, Sweden’s position strengthened. Critics of Gustav Adolf and Charles XII — as well as Mannerheim — tend to easily forget that waging war on foreign soil is itself an important goal in order to safeguard your country and its civilians.
During Christina’s rule and after the Peace of Westphalia, Sweden was (in many respects) in a position to be seen as the heir to Germany’s political and military power. Significant new land ownership and income in Germany, as well as large amounts of looted and purchased goods, led to a feeling of prosperity (at least for a time).
In addition to Sweden, France also rose to prominence at the expense of Germany. During Richelieu’s time — he died in 1642 — France affirmed their position as a European power, especially in relation to the Habsburgs and England, and strengthened their internal unity. This was especially evident in cultural life, as a victorious France left behind Richelieu’s and then Louis (Ludvig) XIV’s previous cultural centres, Italy and Spain. Brilliance, creativity and expansiveness now defined France and what it meant to be French, and soon after the French language. The culture of nobility in France, a new ally of Sweden, became the most important role model for the rich and Europeanised Swedish nobility.
Cardinal Richelieu can, in many respects, be compared to Gustav Adolf’s most important assistants, chancellor Count Oxenstierna and treasurer Baron Skytte.
Richelieu and Oxenstierna made a concerted effort to unify and strengthen, and thus centralise the government with the help of internal administrative reforms. Just one-quarter of a century before Christina’s birth, Sweden endured a civil war. France had the same background of internal conflicts relating to religion and royal succession. This was not only a struggle between the Catholic and Protestant faiths, but these civil wars also reflected other central differences of opinion. Christina’s grandfather Duke Charles, later Charles IX, ruthlessly crushed the power and influence of the nobility which opposed him. He killed — in Finland also — large numbers of the descendants of Sigismund and left behind very much bitterness. Gustav Adolf and Oxenstierna were both, with the help of military successes and skilful politics, able to rally the nobility behind the royal family, but at the same time begin the conversion of the nobility from warriors into bureaucrats. The nobility received tasks and rewards, but they were increasingly pulled into serving the state. Local chiefs and low-level princes made up an internal management system designed to implement improvements.
Provincial government organisation, the establishment of a Court of Appeals and establishing a central government in Stockholm offered important work to the leadership of the nobility, but at the same time these positions required more thorough studies, language skills and European expertise.
Councillor Skytte was comparable to Cardinal Richelieu in his capacity as an organiser of tax and financial policy, thus unifying and strengthening the kingdom. They had a strong and purposeful interest in culture in common. Richelieu founded the French Academy and contributed to the cultural life in many ways. He sought to transform the lives of the nation’s ranking members from that of duels and conflicts (as we know from the Three Musketeers) into ones directed towards scientific and artistic pursuits. By the same token, both Richelieu and Skytte were convinced of culture’s intrinsic value, but at the same time understood its value when came to pushing through large administrative and financial reforms. A new layer of leadership had to be created with the help of scholarship and European identity. Skytte worked actively from the beginning of the 1620s until his death in 1646 to renew and expand the Uppsala University. The Skytte Professorship in Eloquence and Political Science at Uppsala University, which was created through his donation and still exists today, was specifically aimed at those with noble upbringing in the spirit of Renaissance humanism and taking into account the needs of the state. It became characteristic of Sweden’s development that the education of nobility took place in universities, which was opposite from many other European countries, where this education often took place in knight academies. In the beginning, this applied only to Uppsala, but universities in Tartu (later Tartu-Pärnu) and Turku (later Helsinki) were also founded during this period. Sweden also controlled Greifswald and its old universities through the conquest of Pomerania, and the Treatise of Westphalia granted Sweden the explicit right to establish and maintain universities in German territories.
Richelieu’s strict centralism was met with rising opposition, and after his death this eventually led to the Fronde Revolt in 1648. That same year, King Charles of England suffered defeat at the hands of rebels led by Cromwell. It is worth remembering this international background when considering Christina and the conditions of her time and culture. In Sweden, the monarchy’s concessions to the nobility avoided a possible uprising; thanks to the war and its victory, Swedish nobility attained a glorified status. This period was followed in the mid-1650s by a re-centralisation of government, and strengthening of the absolute monarchy occurred in both Sweden and France. But at the time of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, both Sweden and France were ruled by relatively weak female rulers, the 21-year-old Christina and the young widowed queen Anne of Austria. The latter was assisted by Cardinal Mazarin, the former Chancellor of Oxenstierna, who remained in office throughout Christina’s rule, despite the fact that his influence was in decline. For many reasons (and particularly because of the influence of Oxenstierna), Christina’s reign can be considered as a kind of continuation of Gustav Adolf’s reign.
Christina herself was the best example of the new culture and education of nobility. By implementing the ideals of humanity and education found in Renaissance humanism, it was possible to Europeanise Sweden both inside and out. Skytte had already educated Gustav Adolf in the spirit of humanism at the time so that he was educated in the classics and learned multiple languages. Christina was brought up in the same way. Her mother, Queen Maria Eleonora, was mentally unstable and had a difficult character (according to Swedish standards), but her royal lineage from Brandenburg was undoubtedly important to Christina’s understanding of her ancestry and great destiny. Christina was named after her paternal grandmother, Charles IX’s wife Queen Christina of Holstein. Through her mother and grandmother, Christina was descended from many German royal lines; the close relationship with domestic high nobility had long strained the Vasa family’s reputation in the eyes of other European royalty.
Self-confidence was exactly what Sweden needed. In the 1620s, before the war with Germany and even in 1626 when Uppsala University adopted statutes which were later implemented in Turku, it was emphasised that the youth should be taught that each person must not undervalue him/herself or the kingdom, but rather maintain faith in his/her own ability and the ability of his/her country to do great things.
This required not only military successes and victories, but also the gradual increasing of other splendour, grandeur and cultural life. While the appearance as an authority and superpower was important, this had to have its roots in a deeper cultural understanding.
During the war, the Swedish army had become known for its strict discipline and aggressive fighting style — for many in Germany and Bohemia the idea of something being “Swedish” implied that it was horrible and terrifying. The Finnish cavalry — the so-called “hakkapeliterna” — was known for being both successful and ruthless. It was necessary to counterbalance this image so as to create a more refined understanding of the Kingdom of Sweden and its inhabitants. These brutal Nordic soldiers had to be replaced by the image of a civilised nation so that as a superpower Sweden would have the right to take part in determining the destiny of the European continent.
Christina was very successful in leading this transition; one could even say that Oxenstierna and Skytte brought her up precisely for this task. As a young and learned woman, she was a perfect fit to give other countries a fresh impression of Swedish nobility (contrasting the military image), although both her domestic and foreign prestige was built around the army’s military successes.
This prestige, which became emblematic of Christina’s era and especially Christina’s own reign (1644-1654), had naturally been attained earlier.
This is the case with a phenomenon which, for good reason, became representative of Christina’s reign: court celebrations, the “importation” of scholars, the preservation of civilised noble culture, even the complete translation of the Bible into Finnish.
The Finnish Bible as a whole appeared for the first time in 1642 in an ornate edition with a full-page decorative portrait of Queen Christina in the beginning. The New Testament and a quarter of the Old Testament had already been published one hundred years earlier. Christina’s era could here to continue to carry out something which had been stamped out by late 16th century spiritual confinement, internal quarrels of the royal family, religious crusades, and prolonged wars with Russia and Denmark. Perhaps one could say that Christina’s reign marked the late Middle Age’s revitalisation of the European identity and cultural splendour.
It is very understandable (especially from a cultural point of view) that Queen Christina, who was so fond of culture, was not able to endure her countrymen’s way of life, especially their drunkenness. She eventually moved to Italy, where she became a Catholic. There were also other reasons for her abdication of the throne in 1654, the most important of which was probably dynastic. Christina was an only child and knew what dangers were involved, especially because she did not have any male first cousins who had a legitimate right to the throne. Succession was questionable because Christina had no children — she had only her cousin Karl Gustav, the son of Gustav Adolf’s half-sister Countess Palatine Catherine, and her half-brother, Gustav Adolf’s hot-headed illegitimate son and Count of Vasaborg Gustaf Gustafsson, who also died in 1653. The next closest kin was a Polish branch of the family, but their claim to the throne would have endangered Sweden’s international position and could have led to civil war, among other things. Christina was therefore forced to either have children (preferably many), or to arrange a successor ahead of time. She chose an irreversible path: by converting to Catholicism she could neither return nor pose a threat to her successor’s dynastic claims. When researching Christina, it is advisable to keep the Vasa family history in mind. Christina’s grandfather had difficulties ascending to the throne after the overthrowing of the legitimate king Sigismund, and in between was Sigmund’s half-brother Duke Johan from Östergötland (originally a part of Finland), who gave up the throne to make way for his uncle Charles and then again for his cousin Gustav Adolf. Only after Johan’s death in 1618 and Sigismund’s death in 1632 did the younger branch of the House of Vasa become the indisputable ruling family in Sweden, but then Gustav Adolf fell in 1632 and left the five-year-old Christina as the only legitimate heir to the throne. Dynastic survival was one issue which worried Oxenstierna and those responsible for leading the kingdom for many years.
It is perhaps worth pointing out that the rulers from the House of Vasa were very close to the kingdom’s aristocracy, and this made it difficult to consolidate the centralised monarchy. Members of the Brahe, Stenbock, and De La Gardie families were constantly vying for the crown if it seemed that it might become free; in this respect Oxenstierna was less dangerous, not to mention Skytte with his bourgeois origins, nor did the generals pose much of a threat.
Christina’s rule must, therefore, be considered against the background of the preceding circumstances. Many of the achievements during her reign were based on Gustav Adolf’s internal and external centralisation of government.
Ecclesiastical unification and the creation of a homogeneous church culture was an important part of the centralisation efforts during the first half of the 17th century. The Lutheran Church of Sweden was finally established at the Uppsala Synod in 1593, which not only aligned the church and its clergy with Duke Charles, but also began a long series of measures in the ecclesial and cultural fields. From that decision came the establishment of Sweden’s university system — first the University of Uppsala was re-established — and with that as a foundation, enhancing ecclesiastical discipline and education everywhere.
This is seen particularly clearly in the quest to strengthen and unify the empire in Estonia and the 1629 annexation of Livonia. At the end of Gustav Adolf’s reign in 1630, a Court of Appeals and high school were founded in Tartu. This high school was promoted to a university in 1632, and its first task with this status was to organise the obsequies after the King’s death. During Christina’s reign, Canon Heinrich Stahl’s thousand-page extensive ecclesiastical manual Hand- und Hausshuch fiir die Pfarrherren, und Haussväter Estnischen Fiirstenthums was published in both German and Estonian. If anywhere, the battle against drunkenness was a central task in Estonia. Similar efforts were undertaken by Bishop I. Rothovius in Finland. In Turku there was also a Court of Appeals established in 1623, which included this part of the kingdom in the centralisation efforts; finally, another Court of Appeals was established in Götaland in Jönköping (1634) and at the University of Lund in the latter part of the century. The University of Turku was founded in 1640 (as is well known) and is sometimes called Christina’s University.
The expansion of the university system within the Kingdom of Sweden — in particular from 1620 to 1655 — was primarily motivated by the kingdom’s centralisation and cultural needs, but also partly by the economic climate. German universities, who played a leading role at least in the Protestant world, were increasingly difficult to operate as a result of the war, and some of them had to completely (or almost completely) cease operations.
In the 1620s, an education system was established in Sweden in which the central university, Uppsala, developed considerably, and each diocese set up their own area of higher education, “gymnasiums”. In Tartu and Turku, these “gymnasiums” were later promoted to universities. This meant that in addition to personnel from their own diocese, they received professors and students from across the whole kingdom. They dedicated themselves to things other than the education of clergy and, through their work with the Latin language, printed dissertations, promotional celebrations, higher education degrees and the creation of province-based student associations, they were able to join in the European academic tradition and its forms.
As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland, Christina’s University received a new national mission in 1809, and was transferred to the newly-built Finnish capital of Helsinki in 1828, where it was known as the “Finnish Imperial Alexander University”. The University Act of 1923 officially changed its name to the “University of Helsinki (founded in Turku in 1640)”.
Even in the 1620s, Nordic countries were seen as uncivilised periphery compared to Germany, but already in the 1640s (when Germany was shattered and impoverished) France, Poland and Sweden experienced a political and cultural rise which, especially in the case of France, remained for the long term. In France during the time of Richelieu and especially Louis XIV, the system of nobility transitioned from a network of noblemen with local importance according to the principle of decentralisation to a class of nobility made up of soldiers and civil servants in service to the monarchy, with a duty to show respect to the king by participating in courtly functions. Court life had a great cultural and political significance in countries focused on the development of centralisation and sophistication.
In both the courts and the universities, acting played an important role. The universities included drama as a fundamental part of the curriculum, the purpose of which was for young nobility and other lay people to develop their expressive skills. Students would play a role for their own enjoyment, as well as for that of their colleagues. They would learn to perform, move and speak elegantly, as well as to memorise verses and thoughts for future use. In addition, they practised writing poems and congratulatory speeches, as well as practising public speaking, French, fencing, music, dance and drawing. This was of the highest importance for international court culture, which now has risen to replace war culture. The nobility and scholars became examples to the masses of culture and refinement. In universities, these exercises were related to political science and morality, which were, alongside theology, dominant sectors in education at the time. In courts, the study of performing and floridity was related to the training in the service of bureaucracy, courts of law and diplomatic service.
During Christina’s reign, these facets of court life were present even before the Queen herself took control. The period of court ballets began in 1638 when the work Le Ballet des Plaisirs de la Vie des Enfans sans Soucy, danze devant Sa M. La Royne de Suede was performed. The true golden era of court life began at the beginning of Christina’s reign at the end of 1644, at the same time when the opportunities for peace and victory in Germany began to emerge.
The allegorical court plays and ballets which, like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, often associated the antique pantheon with contemporary everyday life, were of Italian origin and arrived at the French court in the 1570s. The purpose of the court plays, like the academic plays, was to amuse and teach; they were part of the curriculum, with which the nobility wanted to shape a new kind of elite required for a new kind of state. The virtues of a military officer were expected to be first and foremost supplemented by administrative and moral skills, which were connected with literary sophistication and artistic refinement. Court plays and ballets constituted a part of the flow of time, which included central Renaissance works such as Count Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, the educational excerpts from Rabelais’ novels and, during the following century, Corneille’s already highly refined moral dramas. Satire was also a part of this education, represented by Rabelais’ works as well as Cervantes’ Don Quijote, and subsequently Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, a stage play by court writer Molière. Christina’s court often presented ballets, whose allegorical texts were modified from the original French by Georg Stiernhielm to include the Queen — as was done with rulers in other times — in order to develop and maintain the court culture of the time. Christina’s era was a key period for acting in both courts and universities. Later the new period of war brought about economic frugality and the tightening of religious thinking, which in turn reduced the role of cultural expression. Despite this, the memory of these celebrations and some of the quality programs remained.
Although many of Europe’s most famous scholars were attracted to working in Sweden during the peak of Christina’s rule, this interest did not last long. But it is still an extremely important example of the effort to raise the intellectual as well as administrative and educational standards in Sweden with the help of the best possible forces. The most celebrated legal authority at the time was Grotius, the Swedish ambassador in Paris from 1634 to 1645 and on the payroll of Oxenstierna; near the end of his term he returned to Sweden to submit his resignation and received great gifts from the recently crowned queen, but succumbed to the stresses from the Nordic region. Comenius, an important pedagogue in this time, had already been in Sweden earlier — at the invitation of De Geer — but came again at the invitation of Christina in 1649; he had made plans for the development the Swedish school system; he was in correspondence with both De Geer and Oxenstierna. Comenius was one of the prominent figures at that time who took on issues of lasting peace, universal wisdom and unity between faiths.
Freinshemius of Strasbourg, who was considered the most outstanding Latinist at the time, was invited in 1642 to take up the Skytte Professorship in Uppsala, which had a central role in the education of nobility. He specialised in the texts of Livius, in which Queen Christina was particularly interested. The Queen invited Freinshemius to become her librarian and gave him such great gifts that Schefferus (Freinshemius’ successor in Uppsala) made an example of this generosity in his work, which addresses moral teachings from Swedish history. Schefferus of Strasbourg, a great historian, bibliographer and scholar of the Laplanders stayed in Sweden and founded a noble family. Freinshemius was among those for whom the Nordic winters were too much, and he returned to his hometown. Loccenius, Schefferus’ father-in-law, lawyer and historian was invited to Sweden already in 1625, and he held the Skytte Professorship until 1642. He was subsequently in charge of the education of nobility, including being the teacher for the future Charles X Gustav.
Christina’s own interest in scholarship alone was not enough to create an intellectual atmosphere in the court and in Stockholm so that eminent scholars would enjoy living in Sweden for a long time. The intellectual and financial resources were still too small, and the victory in the great European war was not enough to solve the nation’s economic and political problems. In 1653 there was already famine and a peasant uprising, and later — after Christina — Sweden went on the defensive into new wars.
Great philosophers and jurists were important both for the development of Sweden, but especially to solve problems regarding the unification of Christianity and stopping European fragmentation which concerned Gustav Adolf as well as Oxenstierna and Christina. Military, philosophical, legal, and of course theological means had to be used to strive for spiritual unity and lasting peace. These efforts also contained hints of the period’s mystical and esoteric elements, the role of which in the overall image of the 17th century has received relatively little attention when rationality is often highlighted.
Even Charles X Gustav gave thought to the idea of Christian unification. In 1656 he created the Order of Jesus, which Christina had already planned, highlighting Jesus’ example as a unifying force for all Christians. The order was not very effective due to the Polish war; its star-shaped emblem would have carried the initials of Gustav Vasa, Charles IX, Gustav II Adolf and Christina. Nonetheless, a period of Protestant-Orthodox spiritual strictness soon began. Already in the 1660s, the restraints of such a spiritual life were evident.
The “gloom and doom” experiences from the Thirty Years’ War brought many apocalyptic predictions to light, but millenarian expectations dealing with Messianic issues and the millennial kingdom were also characteristic of this period. Gustav Adolf was already known as the “Lion from the North”, perhaps even the awaited “Great Monarch”, and stars and omens prompted both hope and fear. Millenarianism also always involved the Jewish question. During their time, Comenius and Stiernhielm discussed these matters, and Johan Nordström in the 1920s and 1930 and Susanna Åkerman nowadays have all shed light on this facet of history.
From the Finnish point of view, it is also interesting to note how, in his novel "Safeguarding Stars" (which deals with Christina, education of women, and pacifism), Topelius skilfully evokes mystical themes that go beyond rational intelligence, in which humanity has always had an interest, and which have a special significance always when reality’s “senselessness” — the destruction of wars — shows both the limits of human rationality and the possibility of destruction which it contains. Topelius writes about the desire for knowledge, the power of money, longing for fame and glory, but shows in the end that mankind’s greatest and most divine essence is love.
Love is also at the core of Topelius’ strong views regarding female education. Women must learn and know, they must be able to benefit from everything that is humanly possible. Gender-based constraints are wrong and humiliating. But the emancipation of women should not weaken and reduce what is already the best in women, love and affection, care and compassion. The price of knowledge and learning is too high if it costs them these values.
Christina and Hagar, two royal girls that were born on the same night and were star students, were both equally inquisitive and acutely aware of their own freedom and independence. They advanced to the peak of secular society, but they were not happy because they only lived for themselves and their reputation. The third child, Hagar’s twin brother Benjamin grew up as a child of war without love. Although his heroism took him far, he was not happy either.
Topelius’ starting point was the rare astrological formation on Christina’s and the fictional Jewish twins’ birthday. Even in her autobiography, Christina refers to astrological predictions from her birth. But it seems that the expectations brought by this important astrological event could have had an impact also on her decision to abdicate the throne and its timing.
Topelius was also born on the night of a rare astrological conjunction, and also had Jewish blood. These factors made him sensitive to these often forgotten features in the prints left by the past. He was able to sympathise with the young Queen Christina better than her other researchers, as well as to sufficiently highlight the overall pan-European situation from which Christina as a person and her time must be evaluated.
Still, Topelius did not forget the circumstance that Christina herself mentioned, namely that Gustav Adolf and Maria Eleonora were in Turku when the Queen was conceived. Queen Christina would likely have been familiar with the predictions of Tycho Brahe, a famous Danish astronomer. In his work De nova stella, he predicted that in 1572 a great prince would be born in Finland under the influence of a comet, he would put Germany in disarray and die around 1632. This was assembled from some of Tycho Brahe’s more general predictions and apparently was familiar to Christina. In any case, Brahe’s prophecy that Gustav Adolf would become king came true, even though when he was born it seemed unlikely, and the king died in 1632 when it was thought that the astrological influence had weakened. But Gustav Adolf was born in Stockholm, not Finland. Christina, who was born on almost the same day as her father — December 8th (or the 7th, she was born at night) while Gustav Adolf was born on 9 December — may have considered it important that the beginning of her life was in Finland. “I was born under such a constellation on December 8th, 1626. It was inevitable, fate determined the time of my birth.”
Although Queen Christina has gone down in history as a learned woman, Latin expert and friend of philosophy, her true interest in life was not religion or philosophy, but politics. Her reign shows great consistency and determination, and her reflections from later in life essentially focus on diplomacy and morality.
In essence, Queen Christina grew and was brought up to admire her father’s memory and continue his work. She did not mourn the memory of Gustav Adolf the Great like her mother, nor was she able to follow in the footsteps of her father and become a military leader. But also for her father, war was a tool used to strengthen the value and power of the kingdom, which in the deepest sense attempted to realise a divine world order. Christina pursued the same goals but with the help of peace and political wisdom, striving to fulfil her royal obligations as completely as possible.