Christina and Me
By D. A. Arthur
I had just gotten done watching a program on HBO. I don't remember its exact title, but I remember there was a young actress playing the princess who would become Queen Elizabeth I. She had long reddish blonde curls cascading down her back and wore an emerald green gown that reached to her feet. The amber lighting made her look like a Rembrandt painting.
The next day at work I typed in "Elizabeth I" on one of their computers and pressed 'search.' After wading through the search engine's returns, I began reading a web page about queens, princesses, and other members of royal families in days gone by. While I read about Elizabeth, I found a write-up on the bottom of the page about Christina, Queen of Sweden. I'd never heard of her. But I had to find out more. Who was she?
After looking at faded paintings on the Internet I had a face to attach to the name, and she had nothing in common with the person I'd seen the day before. She had large blue eyes, messy brown hair that hung loose on her shoulders, a yellowish complexion, and wore a costume that I certainly hadn't seen. She wore a regular off-the-shoulder gown, and underneath this appeared to be a silk shirt fastened by a blue ribbon around her neck. In addition to this peculiar attire, she possessed something of a nervous energy. It had to have been difficult to get this woman to sit down to have her portrait painted. I could not forget that face.
What was it about this strange-looking woman from long ago that intrigued me? Over the course of the next few days, weeks, and months I found out everything I could, reading everything I could get my hands on and looking at every painting I could see. What I learned about Christina was astonishing. If one should look up the word maverick in a dictionary, which denotes a person who is independent in thought and action, her picture should be next to it. Born to King Gustavus II Adolphus and Queen Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg in 1626, she ascended the Swedish throne upon the death of her father when she was six years old. Before he left Sweden to command forces in the Thirty Years' War, King Gustavus II Adolphus left behind stunning orders for his daughter's education. She was to be raised as a male prince, learning how to ride, fence, shoot, speak multiple languages, and everything else required of an heir to the throne.
Ironically, I hated history in school, but as time has gone on, I've realized that history is not just about dates -- but people. Behind the cold hard facts was a little girl in a circumstance I couldn't possibly imagine. Raised as a boy to rule a country, she lost her father at a tender age. I tried picturing my tiny niece in that situation and it was STILL difficult. So I said, okay. I remember my own father walking out of my life when I was nine. It came to me that I had to try to imagine the sense of bewilderment and grief this child must have endured, as I had all those years ago. I also wondered what life must've been like before she lost her father. Were they close? I found out later that they were.
Continuing to read, I then wondered where her mother fit into this picture. I was very close to my mother and couldn't imagine what it would be like for her to lose her husband. The more I read about Christina's mother, though, the more I disliked her. Maria Eleonora seemed to me to have been a vain, selfish woman, but most of the research painted her as intensely unhappy and emotionally disturbed. However, she deeply loved her husband, and fell into a depression when he died. She and her only child, Christina, had a difficult relationship.
The five regents and several court ladies in charge of her upbringing had very little control over her. Tomboyish and perpetually in motion, Christina refused to do anything her guardians wanted her to do or expected her to do -- which included getting married. She rode her horse recklessly, swore constantly, laughed boisterously, and gestured wildly, things women in those days were not supposed to do. As she got older she took to wearing male clothing most of the time. By the time she came of age in 1644 and was ready to assume her duties as ruler of Sweden, she had a thorough grounding in statecraft, excelled in many so-called masculine pastimes, and was interested in many intellectual subjects.
I went back to the paintings, placing this information with them. In my dreams, the paintings came to life. In my mind's eye I saw a slender, athletic-looking girl in breeches on horseback, with several boys chasing her around the grounds of a frozen mountaintop castle. As time went on, the images grew clearer. In one dream, I even sat opposite her, scribbling notes as she spoke, as if I were a reporter who'd landed the interview of a lifetime -- or merely the palace scribe. It was as if she was begging me to tell her story. At this point, I started writing.
My original intention was for this to be a short story. But the near-psychotic obsession with it and the voluminous amount of material I'd produced in a brief flourish of composition dictated otherwise. Not that I was anywhere near finished researching, of course. Upon ascending the throne of Sweden, Christina developed intense interests in art, religion, and philosophy, and soon paid more attention to those than to her state duties. She corresponded with many of the leading scholars of the day and invited many of them to her court, including the world-renowned philosopher, Rene Descartes. She frequently clashed with her council and especially her chancellor over her politics, and while they begged for her to marry, she determined not to and also to have her cousin, a man by the name of Charles Gustavus, as her successor.
At the same time I was formulating my book, I added my own dimensions. Soon she became a distinct character, with distinct people surrounding her, in a distinct environment. Some things stayed the same when I began writing, but others changed. Christina Wasa became Kristina Valborg; Sweden became Vidaria; Three Crowns Castle became Valhalla; Maria Eleonora became Marta; Stockholm became Asgard; Upsala became Ulfsholm; and so forth. It was no longer Christina of Sweden's tale -- it was my own novel. I had thirty pages, then fifty, then a hundred. I couldn't stop.
The interest, for me, actually was the fact that she was a woman living in a man's world -- a society so patriarchal that a word didn't even exist in the Swedish language for a female regent, and they didn't know how to react now that they had one. Another thing that intrigued me was that she carried a secret that in many ways wasn't a secret at all. There was a distinct reason why she didn't marry.
In learning about Christina and writing this book and its upcoming sequel, I've learned some surprising things about myself. First and foremost, that God placed me upon this earth for a specific purpose: I'm meant to be a storyteller. I've found my true calling. Second, I've also learned I have several things in common with this woman. I consider myself independent -- the word my proofreader friend used was "fiercely" -- and she also said I resent people trying to fit me into the lines of a picture. I guess that's true, in a way. I also believe I'm intellectual and love reading books of all kinds. I also like intellectual discourse and tend to get involved in something I'm passionate about.
There are a lot of things we, as 21st century men and women, can learn from Christina's story. She was a woman who spent a lifetime breaking boundaries -- between northern and southern Europe, between male and female, between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Even though the boundaries that exist today are more broadly defined than they were in her day, they nevertheless must be broken, for in God's eyes we are all one.
D.A. Arthur was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has a B.A. in English from Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, LA. Her first novel, The Maverick Princess, will be published in July by Publish America. When she's not writing, she likes to go to rummage sales and spend time with her family.
