Ah, the Swedes and their royal mistakes:
The gender of Queen Christina of Swedem (1626–1689) was in doubt after she was born at Stockholm castle, the fourth and only surviving child of King Gustavus Adolphus II and his wife, Queen Maria Eleonora. At birth she was greeted as male, but it was afterwards realized that a mistake had been made. How that mistake came about was—and still is—a mystery.
(Source: page 149 of The Untold History of the Kings and Queens of Europe, by Brenda Ralph Lewis. Cavendish Square Publishing 2017.)
The book goes on to explain that little Chris grew up to be a tomboy, and liked to dress and behave in masculine ways (of the time). Once Chris was old enough to marry, they[1] made the would-be boyfriend into a royal successor, then abdicated and ran away to Rome to get the Pope's blessing for converting into Catholicism. After some violent adventures, and possibly smoking substances whose precise nature has become lost to history, Chris fell into a sect of Christian mysticism, died quietly, and was buried pompously. The end.
[1] I'm not quite sure if Sweden had adopted the second-person-singular 'they' at the time, but some two centuries later, it was definitely a thing. Royalty might have gotten the 'they' earlier than mere gentlemen, too.
#retrogovernance #genderhistory
