The Queen Who Was Crowned King

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Not Just the Tudors’ month-long season on Queenship continues with a look at the fascinating Christina Varsa, who was crowned King of Sweden on 20 October 1650.

Christina was one of the most learned women of the 17th century. She never married and after her abdication, she converted to Catholicism and is one of the few women to be buried in the Vatican. She was memorably played by Greta Garbo as a cross-dressing, swashbuckling adventurer. But who was the real Christina of Sweden? How did she come to be crowned King? And is there any truth in the many legends about her? Professor Suzannah Lipscomb tries to get to the truth with Julia Holm from Uppsala University.

The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. The Producer was Rob Weinberg. It was edited by Thomas Ntinas.

For more Not Just The Tudors content, subscribe to our Tudor Tuesday newsletter here >

If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

To download, go to Android > or Apple store >

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	On 20 October 1650, Christina Vasa was crowned King of Sweden. Born in 1626, she'd actually
0:12.4	been King since 1632 and had ruled in her own right after her majority since 1644. And
0:20.4	only a few years after her coronation, she abdicated. Christina was one of the most
0:26.4	learned women of the 17th century. She never married, and having converted to Roman Catholicism
0:32.4	after her abdication, she's one of the few women to be buried in the Vatican.
0:37.5	Doesn't she sound fascinating? So to discuss this extraordinary woman, and indeed how a woman
0:43.8	became King of Sweden, I'm delighted to be joined by Julia Holm. Julia Holm wrote her master's thesis
0:51.3	on the Sartorial Politics of Christina of Sweden and published it in a fascinating essay called
0:56.7	How to Dress a Female King, Manifestations of Gender and Power in the Wardrobe of Christina of Sweden
1:02.8	in the book Sartorial Politics at European Courts, which was edited by Erin Griffey.
1:08.0	Julia is a museum researcher and lecturer in textile history at London and Uppsala universities
1:14.5	and she's completing her PhD at the latter.
1:21.6	Julia, welcome to not just the tutors. I'm really excited to talk with you about how a woman
1:30.9	was crowned King of Sweden in 1650 and how she legitimized herself as King, but perhaps we should
1:39.1	back up a bit for those who aren't very familiar with Sweden in the 17th century. Can you give us some
1:44.6	context? Tell us what we should know about Sweden at this time. Oh absolutely, thank you so much for
1:49.6	letting me be here. Sweden at the 17th century had gone from a very small country up in the edges
1:56.0	of Europe, the cold north, to become one of the major power players in just a couple of decades and
2:02.1	it was quite a small country compared to England or France. For example, we had only about 1.2
2:07.9	million inhabitants and we were spread out. We also had a very small mobility compared to England
2:14.0	France and Germany and so on, but through 30 years war Sweden grew exponentially quite large.
2:20.8	Sweden has also been monarchy in that sense for only about just a little more than 100 years.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.