Kristina 1626-89
Queen of Sweden

She was born in Stockholm, the daughter and successor in 1632 of Gustav II Adolf. At her orders she was educated like a prince during her minority. The affairs of the kingdom were managed by her father's Chancellor, Axel Oxenstjerna, who continued Swedish military involvement in the Thirty Years War. When Kristina came of age (1644), she brought to an end the war against Denmark with the Peace of Westphalia (1648). She recklessly dispensed Crown lands to the nobles and patronized the arts, attracting Hugo Grotius, Claudius Salmasius and Ren� Descartes to her court. Headstrong, vain and intelligent, she was hunchbacked and bisexual by nature; she refused to marry her cousin, Karl X Gustav, but proclaimed him Crown Prince. Having secretly turned to Catholicism, and impatient of the personal restraints imposed on her as a ruler, she stunned Europe in 1654 by abdicating. She went into exile, was received into the Catholic Church and settled in Rome. When Karl X Gustav died (1660) she returned to Sweden, but failed to have herself reinstated. In 1667 she aspired to the throne of Poland. For the rest of her life she lived in Rome as a pensioner of the pope, collecting Venetian paintings and sponsoring the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini and the composers Corelli and Scarlatti.