[For context, Christina, the tomboyish queen of Sweden, had recently grown bored of the throne and literally abdicated in favor of the man her advisors had always hoped she’d marry. She stipulated that she’d like to retain the title of Queen, however, which they consented to, as well as a generous annual income. Then she went gallivanting across Europe.]
She eventually made her way to Brussels, where she converted to Catholicism; from there, she went to Rome for her first audience with the pope. Just as she’d wasted no time casting off Lutheranism, Christina quickly engaged in some un-Catholic behavior. The night of her conversion, she was overheard making fun of transubstantiation, which she’d just sword an oath to respect. She had a habit of talking in church, and her taste for nude paintings and sculptures had little to do with the contemplation of divinity.
Christina was also hemorrhaging money. Ensconced in a borrowed villa in Rome, she was so broke she couldn’t afford to pay her servants, who took to stealing the silver. Even more scandalously, she had fallen in love with Cardinal Decio Azzolino, the pope’s young, clever, not-hard-to-look-at representative.
[…]
By now Christina had turned to other worldly matters, including political intrigue. She set her sights on becoming a real queen again by taking the throne of Naples, the southern Italian kingdom, France and Spain were perpetually squabbling over. In early 1656, Christina secretly agreed with French spymaster Cardinal Jules Mazarin to take the Naples throne, with the help of 4,000 French soldiers, and keep it warm for young Philip of Anjou. Excited, she bustled up to the top of Castel Sant’Angelo and fired off a cannon… only she’d forgotten to aim, and the cannonball lodged itself in the side of a building. Oops.
But political winds shifted, and within a year and a half, the plan to make Christina the queen of Naples was shelved. She took out her anger and frustration on one of her own: Gian-Rinaldo Monaldeschi, her master of the horse (an accurate appellation because she really did have just the one horse).
[…]
At only 32 years old, Christina had worn out the goodwill of most of Europe’s political powers. Her occasional forays into world politics were met with smirks, and she ended up spending much of her time in a garden at her villa in Roma. By the end of her life, she cut a small, portly figure in her men’s clothing, short hair, and wispy lady whiskers. For a woman who desperately wanted to be taken seriously as an intellectual, a leader, and a political force, it must have been galling to know that she was viewed as faintly ridiculous.
That is, if she ever realized it. The somewhat admirable thing about Christina was that, throughout her life, she steadfastly believed the myth of her own importance. In her unfinished autobiography she wrote, “My talents and my virtues raise me above the rest of mankind.” When she died in April 1689, her will revealed just how inflated her ego truly was: she left legacies, jewels, and property to various servants, retainers, and ladies-in-waiting. In reality, little of it was hers to give.
Source:
McRobbie, Linda Rodriguez. “Christina, The Cross-Dressing Princess.” Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History-- Without the Fairy-Tale Endings. MJF Books, 2013. 160-61. Print.
Further Reading:
Cardinal Jules Raymond Mazarin 1st Duke of Rethel, Mayenne and Nevers
If you enjoy this type of content, please consider donating to my Patreon!
Swedes are assholes who think they can pose as egalitarians and the world will imagine them righteous. How's that working now? Maybe the King of Sweden will reincarnate as a deadly virus and exterminate the invasion from the south.