Revisiting The Story of Queen Christina of Sweden: A spoiled Brat and a dilettante
Christina [1] wanted to be a man, but was born a woman. She longed to be king but shunned her royal duties. She brazenly relinquished her Swedish throne, but schemed to become again a monarch. She scorned female wiles, but she used them with excess during her footloose and nonconformist life. Because of the ambiguity of her gender and sexual orientations, as well as the mystery behind her political and religious decisions, Christina’s persona and behavior keep fascinating historians, psychologists and film makers, even more so now in our reality show-crazed and people-watching society. For most of us, Christina is remembered through Greta Garbo, the Swedish film goddess who played her in the 1933 iconic but fanciful film Queen Christina . In the recent and more faithful film The Girl King (2015), the young queen looks more like she actually was: an uncouth, sloppy and troublesome tomboy. In the captivating biography written...