Queen Christina

by Georgina Masson

Book Overview

Fascinating, engrossing biography of Sweden's Queen Christina, one of the most enigmatic & paradoxical women in history. She would have preferred to be a man, and went to great lengths to behave like... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0006BQGJM
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• Length: 405 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.

Customer Reviews

That Most Baffling Seventeenth Century Queen

Masson is an excellent biographer, and few subjects are as generous to the biographer as the strange story of Christina's life. Born the only child of the legendary Gustavus Adolphus, who was killed fighting the Thirty Years' War, she was raised under the tutorship of Axel Oxenstierna for much of her childhood. Upon reaching her majority she reigned only briefly, not before hosting some of the brilliant minds in Europe at her palace in Stockholm (including the unfortunate Descartes, who promptly died upon his arrival in the icy north). But, paradoxically, her only goal as Queen was to plan her abdication, which she did meticulously. Upon fleeing Sweden she embraced French and Italian culture, converted to Catholicism, and had and alleged affair with a Cardinal. (She also had several probable homosexual relationship with the women surrounding her). A flamboyant, baffling woman emerges from this spectacular life tale.