Customer Reviews

Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric

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Buckley has done a wonderful job with her first book and I am hoping that others will follow. This is a well-researched and well-documented biography of Christina. The queen is placed within her time period and Buckley wisely refrains from enforcing a modern view on the queen's lifestyle and decisions. Instead the author leaves the reader to make up their own mind.

And excellently written work, Buckley gives those of us with little knowledge of seventeenth century Sweden a context from which to view Christina's life. And the discussion of Karl Gustav, Christina's father, the man who made Sweden a powerful military nation, is an important part of understanding Christina's idea of herself.

For a pleasurable and enlightening look at one of the many high born (I would hesitate to call Christina powerful, except in her own mind) women floating around seventeenth century Europe, this is as great place as any to start.

I have read a number of Christina biographies, and am familiar with seventeeenth century Scandinavia. When I saw this book I was excited that someone, an English-speaker, had something new to say about this extraordinary queen and her times. Perhaps I was expecting too much. If a reader knows nothing about the history of the times, and is an admirer of the works of Carolly Erickson or Jean Plaidy, he will probably enjoy reading this book. Anyone who knows a bit about seventeenth century Europe, and wants some scholarly rigor to heighten and challenge his knowledge base, will probably feel -- as I did -- cheated.

One never gets the sense from this biography that Christina was a real human being. She certainly was notable and eccentric, even considering her position and unusual personality. She was an appalling individual, both by present day standards and the standards of her own time. Even so, it must be asked why she was as she was. And, further, how she was typical of and different from what might have been expected of a royal figure in Europe at that time. Did she also possess traits that might make her easier to understand as a fellow human being? I did not find these questions adequately addressed by this book. She remains a circus freak, a human deformity.

This biography might well serve as an introduction to the subject for someone who has never heard of Christina, and who is not troubled by romance-novel writing. Still, I would rather recommend Georgina Masson's or Sven Stolpe's "Queen Christina" to such a reader.

In any event, it is heartening to see Scandinavian history being brought to an English-reading public. Personally, I am still waiting for a satisfactory biography of this troubling figure.

Here is an interesting book about a relatively little-known historical figure, Christina Queen of Sweden in the 17th century.

Christina was the daughter of a great Swedish King, Gustav Adolph the Great. She was intellectually gifted, spoke languages, conversed with great men of her day, and early on gained a reputation across Europe as a kind of enlightened ruler.

Her invitations to visit the Swedish Court were gladly accepted by Europe's famous figures, but the results often proved not so happy as might have been expected. One of the century's greatest intellects, Rene Descartes, made the trip, reluctantly at first but giving in finally to her blandishments, and died at her court. She kept the rooms cold and expected the great man to meet with her at dawn to discuss philosophy.

That event certainly was an early indicator of her rather bizarre personality. And so too, her behaviour after Descartes' death: she was full of superficial grief and vowed to build an impressive monument, but it was all forgotten shortly, a pattern of behaviour she repeated many times.

Christina proved an inept ruler, indeed she abdicated because she had no interest in the genuine work of ruling. She proved a person of less than shining ethics, a generally confused person, likely suffering from mental illness.

Christiana decided to become a Catholic, and her abdication of the throne of stoutly Protestant Sweden is closely associated with that fact. After carefully arranging matters like the succession and the revenues she would receive for the rest of her life, Christina travelled to Rome to meet and be welcomed by the Pope, who, naturally in view of the times - the Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648 - viewed her conversion as a victory for Catholicism.

The Pope and every other great person she met contributed to her extravagant and expensive lifestyle - Christina was never ashamed to take large handouts from the great and powerful, and indeed she actively solicited them.

Almost everyone who had close dealings with her came to regret it. Her appearance at times was outlandish and bizarre, her behaviour was quite offensive at times, and there seemed no consistency to her except the need to be deemed royal, treated as royals should be treated, and to do in most things pretty much as she pleased.

Her exploits included having a servant who displeased her killed on the spot, quite a scandalous episode in its day. After all her talk about Catholicism and taking the Pope's hospitality, at times Christina talked as though she were no longer interested in being Catholic. After abdicating the throne of Sweden, she played many intrigues in Rome and in France to try landing herself another crown. When she thought she was being cheated by Sweden on her lifetime payments, she travelled all the way back in an effort to get what she felt entitled to.

Christina's example perhaps best tells us how good it is that we are beyond the times of powerful rule by inheritance. The good of her people played virtually no role in her thinking, and her conviction that royal blood meant a lifetime of privileged treatment even when you weren't assuming any of the responsibilities associated with the privileges is one that is utterly alien to us.

The writer does a sound and competent job on an interesting subject, but the writing is not elegant, and one definitely gets the feeling that the author avoids saying things directly, things which should be said. For example, Christina's sexual life is left rather ambiguous. There are clear signs that she was homosexual, including a pronounced mannish appearance, but I think the author needed to examine this more carefully if she was going to deal with it at all.

So too her relationship with Cardinal Decio Azzolino, called the great love of her life, is left to me unsatisfactorily explained. One definitely questions whether Christina was capable of loving anyone.

This is a wonderful book - rich in historical detail, intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging. The author has a deep sense of humanity - and a dry sense of humour - which provides wry and insightful commentary on the mores of the time, and the excesses of the incredible Christina. The outcome is a warm and ultimately forgiving portrayal of a woman who would have been controversial in any age. The philosopher Descartes, the great artist Bernini, the composers Scarlatti and Corelli -they are among the many who have surprising walk-on roles in the drama of Christina's life.

While Buckley has admirably and extensively researched and detailed her portrait of Europe in the 1600's, her characterizations of Christina of Sweden are irritatingly judgemental and peevish. If you are looking for a curmudgeonly psuedoanalysis of the extraordinary Queen, you will be happy. If you are looking for an impartial biography or an exciting story, you won't find it here. Buckley cobbles the flow of her own narrative by nitpicking Christina's motivations at every turn. YAWN!

Unfortunately, there was a lot of Swedish history to slog through at first. When I finally got to Christina's misadventures, things picked up. But this was not a really compelling biography--I kept counting how many pages I had left til the end. If you want a biography you can't put down, go read "A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey.