Product Description

She was born on a bitterly cold December night in 1626 and, in the candlelight, mistakenly declared a boy. On her father's death six years later, she inherited the Swedish throne. She was tutored by Descartes, yet could swear like the roughest soldier. She was painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist; in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label. She was learned but restless, progressive yet self-indulgent; her leadership was erratic, her character unpredictable. Sweden was too narrow for her ambition. No sooner had she enjoyed the lavish celebrations of her officialcoronation at twenty-three than she abdicated, converting to Catholicism (an act of almost foolhardy independence and political challenge) and leaving her cold homeland behind for an extravagant new life in Rome. Christina, Queen of Sweden, longed fatally for adventure.

Freed from her crown, Christina cut a breath-taking path across Europe: spending madly, searching for a more prestigious throne to scale, stirring trouble wherever she went. Supported and encouraged in turn by the pope, the king of Spain, and France's powerful Cardinal Mazarin, Christina settled at the luxurious Palazzo Farnese, where she established a lavish salon for Rome's artists and intellectuals. More than once the cross-dressing queen was forced to leave town until a scandal died down. She loved to buckle on a sword and swagger like the men whose company she adored, but the greatest mystery in her life was the true nature of her elusive sexuality, which biographer Veronica Buckley explores with sensitivity and rigor. For a time it seemed there was nothing this extraordinary woman might fear attempting, until a bloody tragedy of her own making foreshadowed her downfall.

Pairing painstaking research with a sparkling narrative voice and unerring sense of the age, Veronica Buckley reclaims a protean life that had been preserved mostly as myth. Christina was a child of her time, and her time was one of great change: Europe stood at a crossroads where religion and science, antiquity and modernity, peace and war all met. Christina took what she wanted from each to create the life she most desired, and she dazzled all who met her.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #588415 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-01
• Released on: 2004-09-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Christina abdicated the throne of Lutheran Sweden in 1654, at age 28, presumably in order to convert to Catholicism. Buckley presents a wide-ranging, entertaining exploration of the dynamics of the queen's decision and unusual life. The author, in her debut, convincingly demonstrates that it wasn't religion that drew Christina to Rome, but a love of art and the ancients. Nor did a true love of philosophy encourage her fateful invitation to Descartes to come to Stockholm, but a restless, clever mind and a belief in her own great potential. Nor, says Buckley, did homosexuality lead her to decline marriage but a larger sexual ambivalence. Attracted to both men and women, yet disgusted by the idea of sex, Christina was most comfortable in masculine garb, critical of women and bitterly aware of the limitations society placed on women. Buckley weaves these threads together in a lively portrait, laying out the background to her story in fluid prose, from political and military aspects of the Thirty Years' War to machinations of the papal and French courts and the fragile state of the monarchy in Sweden. Against this background, Christina emerges as a complex and difficult character who transcends the attempts of others to mold her to their uses and expectations. Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
One of the standouts in a long line of self-indulgent European royals, Christina, with her eccentricities, merits Buckley's close attention. From the moment of her birth in 1626, when she was mistakenly identified as a boy, to the time of her death in 1689, she ardently pursued an extraordinarily extravagant life characterized by an emotionally contrary nature. Many have speculated about her seemingly ambiguous sexuality, but, as Buckley discerns, her refusal to even contemplate marriage evidences both an independent temperament and an essentially asexual orientation. Formally ascending the Swedish throne in 1644, she proved to be a lavish and fiscally irresponsible monarch, leading Sweden to the verge of bankruptcy in six short years. Restless and bored, she longed for intellectual and physical warmth, cultural enlightenment, and adventure. Abdicating in 1654, she converted to Catholicism, moved to Rome, and undertook a bold and ultimately disastrous plan to seize the throne of Naples. Proud, impulsive, and willful, Christina was convinced she had the divine right to lead her life by her own rules. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Veronica Buckley was born in New Zealand. She studied in London and Oxford, where she did her postgraduate work on Christina Alexandra. She now lives in Paris with her husband, writer Philipp Blom. This is her first book.

Customer Reviews

An excellent examination of a life.
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.

Scholarly bio of a Drama Queen
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.

Superficial and Disappointing
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.