Everyone knew that Christina disliked being a girl. As she wrote in her autobiography, “I despised everything belonging to my sex, hardly excluding modesty and propriety.” Though she was petite – barely five feet tall – and delicate, Christina walked and talked like a man. She strode around in flat shoes, swore like a sailor in a deep gruff voice, and tended to smack her servants around. She slouched, preferred short shirts and trousers to overstuffed female fashions, and had no time or patience for things like embroidery and etiquette. She was often too busy to comb her hair and none too keen on bathing (in her defense, no one really was back then).
Christina was so determinedly boyish that in her own lifetime, she was dogged by a persistent rumor that she was a hermaphrodite. Her mannish ways gave rise to other, more titillating rumors, which she nothing to quell. She often slept in the same bed as her favorite lady-in-waiting, whom she called Belle on account of the woman’s beauty. This was normal enough for two unmarried women at the time, but Christina like to insinuate more than just sleeping was going on. She once embarrassed the English ambassador to the court by whispering in his ear that Belle’s inside was as beautiful as her outside.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Christina, The Cross-Dressing Princess.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 158. Print.
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