Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric

(#litres_trial_promo) But slow planning for the state funeral, and perhaps, too, some pity for their great King’s widow, stayed any firm response.

After many delays, and constant opposition by Maria Eleonora, the King’s body was at last interred on 15 June 1634, nineteen months after his death. Towards the Riddarholm Church in Stockholm, final resting-place of Sweden’s kings, the body was borne on a silver bier, encircled by military standards and captured enemy cannon and other symbols of the warrior King’s victories, including his bloodstained sword, just as it had been taken from the battlefield at Lützen. A vast crowd of people accompanied the procession, weeping, mourning, straining to see. And among the nobles and soldiers and court officials, some of them spied one very small figure – their new, seven-year-old Queen.

Within a day of the King’s interment, Maria Eleonora pleaded for the coffin to be opened again, asking that the King should not be buried while she lived.

Fourteen years before, when the handsome young ‘Adolf Karlsson’ had come to court her, the body of Maria Eleonora’s father had lain in state, months after his death, in the gloom of the castle chapel, while the drab accompaniments of a formal mourning oppressed his court. The King’s own mother, too, had lain unburied through the long northern winter, awaiting her son’s return from the conquests that would make his name feared and famous. But, even in an age of delayed burial and long months of mourning, Maria Eleonora’s grief at her husband’s death was felt to be excessive. Throughout the royal apartments, darkness reigned. Black fabrics draped the walls from ceiling to floor, and the windows were blocked with sable hangings; no daylight filtered through. Sermons and pious orations droned endlessly. The Queen mourned day and night, relieved only by her troupe of dwarves and hunchbacks, dancing in the candlelight. Bereft of her husband, she now turned her attention for the first time to her little daughter, smothering her with new-found affection, and forcing her to live alongside her in the macabre atmosphere. She dismissed Christina’s Aunt Katarina, who had looked after the child for the previous two years, and announced that from now on she herself would take care of her. The once rejected girl-child, ugly and ‘swarthy as a little Moor’, was now found to be ‘the living image of the late King’, and the Queen scarcely let her out of her sight. By day the little girl struggled to escape to her books and her horses; by night she was obliged to share her mother’s bed in the gloomy chamber, lying fearful and lonely beneath her father’s encased heart. The King’s death had set in train a melodrama of mourning in which Christina was to remain a virtual prisoner, until her rescue by the ‘five great old men’ who were now to serve as Sweden’s regents.

The Little Queen (#ulink_e8dda1cf-1da9-5e42-bb4e-16c94c57f986)

It was Victory which announced my name on the fateful field of battle – Victory, a herald at arms proclaiming me King.

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So, at least, Christina was to write, many years later, at a time when she needed to call upon her every credential of greatness. She was, she continues, ‘the link, weak as it was, which united so many good men, so many diverse and opposing interests, all dedicated to sustaining the rights of the girl who began to reign at that fatal moment’. All the generals, she says, all the men of the army, and ‘the great Chancellor’, too, submitted to the name of Christina.

In rhetorical terms, there is some truth in this tale, but in reality the crown did not pass to the little girl quite so smoothly. Gustav Adolf’s generals stood firm, and announced their loyalty to his fragile Vasa dynasty from their battlefields in Germany, giving the Chancellor, who now assumed power in the King’s stead, the means to continue the war. But in fact there was no guarantee that Christina would inherit her father’s throne at all. Only five years before, when she was just a year old and no male heirs seemed likely, Gustav Adolf had had to confirm her right, as a female, to succeed him.

(#litres_trial_promo) His own royal line was not so ancient that he could be sure of its continuance against all odds; his cousin Sigismund, the Catholic King of Poland, had his own, arguably greater claim to the Swedish throne. Moreover, heredity was not enough; for many centuries the Swedish monarchy had been elective, and the principle, established by Christina’s great-grandfather, applied to males only. It was by no means certain that the Estates would accept a woman – indeed, a little girl – as their ‘King’, as the Swedes always formally referred to their sovereign. There were even some who might have preferred to oust the monarchy entirely and install a republic in its place.

In the Senate, or so Christina was later to write, it was a different story. All the senators declared themselves in her favour. They all felt that her right to the throne was ‘incontestable’. They were ‘only too happy’ to have this child, who was ‘their only strength and Sweden’s only hope of salvation at such a dangerous time’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Histrionic as the words may seem, they were probably true – indeed, the ‘strength and salvation’ phrase was the Swedes’ very definition of their monarchy. And it was certainly a dangerous time, with Swedish armies exposed in Germany and elsewhere, and the constant threat of the Catholic Poles taking power at home. It was no doubt this double peril which persuaded the senators’ now to support Christina’s succession, for they had much to gain by opposing it. For the noble families from which every senator was drawn, the three generations of the Vasa dynasty had meant, above all, a steady waning of power. Their own grandfathers had only grudgingly accepted the first Vasa King, Gustav I Eriksson. Though he had driven out the Danes by his energy and bravery, they had regarded him as an upstart with no very ancient lineage. Resentment had rankled into the next generation; Gustav’s son Karl IX had been determinedly opposed by the noble families. He had sought support instead from the common people, earning the nobles’ disdainful epithet of ‘the rabble King’. But the people’s support had allowed Karl to govern on his own terms. Power had drained from the noble families and collected around the crown. In 1600, the King had finally secured his position in the infamous ‘Bloodbath of Linköping’, where his five leading opponents, including four members of Sweden’s highest nobility, were beheaded in the town’s market square. It had required the extraordinary gifts and the no less extraordinary personality of Karl’s son, Gustav Adolf, to quiet the outrage of the noble families and persuade them to support their malefactor’s heir. But now the golden-haired King was gone, leaving no son to succeed him. His sole heir was female; the principle of heredity could at last be abandoned, and the nobles could reclaim their ancient right of electing their own grateful and manageable sovereign.

It says much for the senators’ patriotic spirit, or perhaps for their fear of Poles and popery, that they decided to forgo this right and give their support to a continuing Vasa dynasty. But, although the Senate stood unanimously behind the little ‘King’, she was not so quickly accepted by the men of the Riksdag, a socially more diverse group with differing views of the perils facing their homeland. The Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, comprised four Estates: the clergy, the nobles, the burghers, and the peasants. It was among these last, as Gustav Adolf had feared, that opposition to a female ruler now proved strongest. The story is told that, in March 1633, when the Riksdag was assembled to affirm Christina’s succession to the throne, the marshal was interrupted in the middle of his address by a member of the peasants’ Estate, a man bearing the almost symbolically Swedish name of Lars Larsson. The peasants, it seemed, were not convinced by the senators’ arguments. ‘Who is this girl?’ Larsson demanded. ‘We don’t know her. We’ve never even seen her.’ Larsson was seconded by a growing number of the men, and the child was sent for. Happily for her, and for the senators, Christina’s resemblance to her father was clear. Larsson recognized at once the great King’s forehead, his blue eyes, and, starting out from the solemn little face, his long, distinctive nose. The succession was assured. Christina was unanimously acclaimed Elected Queen and Hereditary Princess of Sweden – ‘elected’ as a warning to the Polish Vasas that their hereditary rights would not be enough to claim a Swedish throne.

The little blonde-headed girl, just six years old, now bore the titles of Queen of the Swedes, Goths and Vandals, Great Princess of Finland, Duchess of Estonia and Karelia, and Lady of Ingria, the last owing to the Peace of Stolbova concluded with the Russians a few years before. If Christina’s own story is to be believed, she bore them all, even at this early age, with appropriate aplomb. She did not really understand what was happening, she writes, but nonetheless she was delighted to see all the great men of the land – among them the Count Palatine, Johann Kasimir – on their knees at her feet, kissing her hand. Her delight is understandable, for Johann Kasimir was her uncle, and she had already spent a good deal of time in his castle at Stegeborg, in his care, no doubt kindly, but also under his no doubt authoritative eye. Here was a reversal indeed.

Christina has left a description, addressed to God, of the first convening of the Riksdag in 1633, following her acclamation. Before all the men of the four Estates, she ascended the throne of her great father:

The people were amazed by my grand manner, playing the role of a Queen already. I was only little, but on the throne I had such an air, such a grand appearance, that it inspired respect and fear in everyone…You had planted on my forehead this mark of greatness…Everyone said, ‘How can it be that a child inspires such feelings in us after we have seen Gustav Adolf on the throne?’ They noticed that You had made me so grave and so serious that I wasn’t at all impatient, as is the usual way with children. I never went to sleep during all the long ceremonies and all the speeches I had to sit through. Other children have been seen going to sleep or crying on occasions like this, but I received all the different signs of homage like a grown-up person, who knows they are his due…I remember very well being told all this, and being very pleased with myself about it.

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Writing in her later years, Christina admitted that ‘it doesn’t take much to admire a child, and even less a child of the great Gustav, and perhaps flattery has exaggerated all this’. But in fact ‘all this’ reflects an idea that was to remain absolutely consistent throughout her life, the idea that sovereignty was something which she carried within herself. For Christina, kingship was a personal attribute which had nothing to do with the rights and regalia of monarchy. Her right to rule, she believed, was innate; she could not be divested of it. God Himself had planted ‘this mark of greatness’ on her forehead, and even in her childhood, it had inspired ‘respect and fear’ in all who saw it.

A large delegation of diplomats from Muscovy supposedly observed this inborn sovereignty at about the same time, and, we are told, it left them quaking in their fur-lined boots. The Russians had arrived to offer their condolences on the King’s death and to extend a formal greeting to the new monarch; they had also to ensure that the peace which Gustav Adolf had made with them at Stolbova, after eight years of fighting, would now be ratified.

(#litres_trial_promo) According to Christina’s ‘little story’, the regents were anxious that their six-year-old Queen would not be able to endure the rigours of the formal reception with the necessary gravitas:

I was such a child that they thought the Russians would frighten me with their strange clothes and their wild manners. They told me not to be frightened, and I was quite stung by this, in fact quite annoyed. Why should I be frightened, I said. Oh, they said, the Russians were dressed very differently from us. They had great big beards, and they were terrible-looking, and there were lots of them. As it happened, two of the regents themselves had big beards, and I laughed and said to them, Why should I be frightened by their beards? Haven’t you got big beards, too? ‘I’m not afraid of you, so why should I be afraid of them? Just give me the proper instructions, and leave it all to me.

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And when the Russians finally approached the little Queen, seated on her throne, looking ‘so assured and so majestic’, they felt ‘what all men feel when they approach something that is greater than they are’.

Closer to the truth, no doubt, is Christina’s subsequent remark that all her people were ‘overjoyed’ with her behaviour, admiring her delightedly ‘as one admires the little games of a beloved child’. Perhaps, despite her later, inverted interpretation of the event, she was herself awed into good behaviour by the strange-looking visitors and the solemnity of the occasion. Or perhaps she was induced to behave herself by the ‘magnificent presents’ which the Russians had brought for her, ‘according to their custom’. They were rewarded in any case with the ratification they sought, and were ‘sent off with the usual tokens’.

The ratification itself had been agreed by Christina’s regents, the ‘five great old men’ who had accepted the charge of government until their little Queen should reach her eighteenth birthday. Though it had been a mighty blow, Gustav Adolf’s death entailed no difficult transition for those who governed the country. During the King’s frequent absences on campaign, the regular business of government had been left in the hands of ten nominated men of the Senate, and now, despite their loss, they adapted easily to the new situation. The King himself had chosen five of them to form a regency in the event of his death, five noblemen who were also to hold the five great offices of state: Grand Chancellor, Grand Treasurer, Grand Marshal, Grand Admiral, and High Steward. The government was now dominated by what amounted to Sweden’s second royal family, the Oxenstiernas. The premier office of Grand Chancellor was held by Baron Axel Oxenstierna, the late King’s close friend and undoubtedly one of the ablest administrators of the age. The Grand Treasurer was the Chancellor’s cousin, Baron Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna, and the High Steward his younger brother, Baron Gabriel Gustavsson Oxenstierna.

(#litres_trial_promo) The office of Grand Marshal was held by one of Sweden’s finest generals, Count Jakob De la Gardie; to him Gustav Adolf had lost his former love, Ebba Brahe; their son Magnus was to prove a contentious figure during Christina’s own reign. The Grand Admiral was Christina’s uncle, Baron Karl Karlsson Gyllenhjelm, illegitimate half-brother of the late King. On his broad soldier’s shoulders, and on those of his four fellow senators, the burden of government now lay.

Christina herself has left us a picture of her regents. Of Axel Oxenstierna, primus inter pares, she writes with respect and affection, indeed almost with awe: he was, she says, a man ‘of great capacity, who knew the strengths and weaknesses of every state in Europe, a wise and prudent man, immensely capable, and greathearted’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Tireless in the affairs of state, he nevertheless always found time to read, so continuing the studious habits of his youth. She notes that he was ‘as sober as a man can be, in a country and at a time when that virtue was unknown’, and adds that the Grand Chancellor was a great sleeper, by his own admission having spent the first sleepless night in his life after the death of his beloved friend and King. Christina describes him as an ambitious but loyal man, and incorruptible, if a little too ‘slow and phlegmatic’ for her taste, but she loved him, she says, ‘like a second father’.

The Chancellor’s cousin, Gabriel Bengtsson, Sweden’s Grand Treasurer, Christina regarded as ‘upstanding’, and ‘capable enough’ of his high office. Of the younger Oxenstierna brother, Gabriel Gustavsson, now High Steward, she writes that he was well liked and well spoken, but in the natural way of the Swedes, without the burden of much erudition, since he had ‘only a smattering of Latin’. But he was, she adds consolatorily, ‘a very good man’. The Grand Marshal, Jakob De la Gardie, is described as able and personally courageous; this pre-eminent soldier had distinguished himself in the Swedish campaigns against Poland and Russia. Christina notes that his personality was direct, even brusque, but that he liked to chat. He had been a favourite with her father, she says, and was always competing with Axel Oxenstierna for the King’s favour. In Karl Karlsson Gyllenhjelm, the Grand Admiral, ‘bastard brother of the late King and my uncle’, Christina recognized ‘a good, brave, old-fashioned man, a good Swede, bright enough’, but worn down by the twelve years he had spent in irons in a Polish prison, refusing to abjure his Lutheran faith for the despised Catholicism of his captors.

(#litres_trial_promo) He was ‘absolutely devoted to the house of Vasa,’ she writes, ‘and he loved me like his own child’.

For the next twelve years, the ‘five great old men’ were to rule in their little Queen’s name, though in fact Christina may not have been intended to rule at all, or at least not to rule alone. The steps which her father had taken to ensure her succession to the throne had been, as it were, an emergency precaution, anxiously put in place as he himself prepared to go back to the war from which he felt he would not return. The pious King, almost fearful of his extravagant successes in the sight of ‘a jealous God’, had had premonitions of his own death. The succession must be assured if civil war, or worse, were not to overtake his homeland. A long period of regency was certain, but in time the girl would marry; her husband would rule alongside her, or even in her place. Besides, Sweden’s name was now great in Europe; Gustav Adolf himself had made it so. A king’s daughter was an opportunity incarnate to forge new alliances, and shift the balance of power.

Negotiations for the little girl’s betrothal had consequently been in place for some time. The chosen prince was her own first cousin, Friedrich Wilhelm, her senior by seven years, the eldest son of the Elector of Brandenburg, and now, in the summer of 1633, thirteen years of age.

(#litres_trial_promo) The boy was Protestant, and seemed promising, and, crucially, he stood to inherit the duchy of Pomerania, whose long coasts were strategically important for both trade and warfare. Pomerania was now, insecurely, in Swedish hands – Gustav Adolf had concluded a treaty with its Archduke Boguslav XIV – but Boguslav’s heir was the Elector Georg Wilhelm, and in time the vital Pomeranian coasts would pass to his son, Friedrich Wilhelm. A marriage between Friedrich Wilhelm and Christina would thus ensure Sweden’s continuing access to them. It would make Brandenburg a safe neighbour and, moreover, would serve as a mighty cornerstone for the new bloc of Protestant powers once envisaged by Gustav Adolf, and now promoted by Christina’s regents. Above all, the marriage would give Sweden at last the almost mythical dominium maris baltici, the mastery of the Baltic Sea which had lain at the heart of Swedish policy for generations.

The King had promoted the match with some energy, travelling to Berlin himself, when Christina was only four years old, to suggest the project personally to the Elector.

(#litres_trial_promo) Maria Eleonora, too, had been very much in favour of it. Her nephew, it was planned, would abjure his Calvinist religion and become a Lutheran; this had been agreed by the Elector’s own theologian. The boy would move to Sweden for the rest of his education and for his military training, learning the language and the ways of the Swedes while still in his impressionable years.

The Berlin meeting had not borne much fruit. The Elector distrusted Gustav Adolf; he had not wanted his sister to marry the King, and he did not want his son to marry the King’s daughter. Unwilling to state the matter so plainly, he prevaricated: the religious clause was objectionable, he said; he had hoped instead for some kind of union between Calvinist and Lutheran believers. Besides, his son was too young to be sent away from home, and Gustav Adolf might yet have a son of his own. Privately, Georg Wilhelm had sought the advice of other German princes, most of them still smarting from the Swedes’ riding roughshod over their own territories in the recent years of fighting. Their advice was consistent: the Elector should not pursue the plan; the pair were too young, and the political situation might be different by the time they had come of age. The Swedish climate was too harsh, and the Swedes themselves ‘not very nice people’, who would not welcome a German king. Besides, Sweden’s enmity with the Holy Roman Empire might drag Brandenburg into the same fearful morass. And the marriage would make Sweden much too powerful; the German princes, and many others even within Sweden itself, feared that Gustav Adolf would use it as a stepping-stone to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. Despite encouragement from his own Chancellor and renewed attempts on the part of the Swedes, the Elector had decided to let the matter drift.

At the end of 1632, when the news arrived of Gustav Adolf’s death at Lützen, the Danish King Kristian IV had decided to try his luck in arranging a marriage for his own son, the Archduke Ulrich, now in his early twenties, to the little Queen of Sweden. It was a second attempt on Kristian’s part; the previous year, his hopeful embassy had been rejected by the Swedish King himself. Now, it seemed, a window had opened in the house of his old enemy, through which he might insert some Danish influence. A measure of dissension among the land’s new governors would serve his interests well; an official embassy of condolence would provide the perfect opportunity. Barely a week after the news had arrived, his envoy received instructions to seek a private audience in Wolgast with the late King’s grieving widow.

Kristian hoped, at the very least, to create a rift between Maria Eleonora and Sweden’s five regents, already in office for some time on account of the late King’s long absences on campaign. Early in the new year, Chancellor Oxenstierna, still in Brandenburg, received a letter from the Danish King, relaying his renewed hopes of the match. Oxenstierna, unpleasantly surprised, replied that Christina was too young for any marriage plans to be made for her as yet, and added that there were ‘many other considerations’ besides. But he took the precaution of writing at the same time to the regents in Stockholm to ensure that, if consulted, they would give the same reasons for declining Kristian’s offer. The Danes were near neighbours, after all, and their alliance was very recent. It would be unwise to offend them, for they might also prove to be uncertain friends.

Meanwhile, amid the increasing chaos of the castle at Wolgast, Maria Eleonora was able to master her grief sufficiently to begin negotiations of her own with the Danish envoy. Though Friedrich Wilhelm was her nephew, that did not ensure her constancy now to his cause. As fervently as she had wished for the match while her husband was alive to promote it, so now, in the first months of her widowhood, she turned determinedly against it. She decided, or was persuaded, that it would never do; Christina was the daughter of a king: only a king’s son could be a suitable husband for her.

An anxious Chancellor Oxenstierna wrote to Wolgast, urging the widowed Queen to caution. Denmark was Sweden’s oldest enemy, he reminded her. The two would never be brought together ‘without great bloodshed or the complete extinction of one or the other’. The Queen should speak to the envoy, or indeed anyone else, ‘only in the most general, non-committal terms’.

(#litres_trial_promo) She replied, duplicitously, that she had ‘given no yes or no’ to anyone. But throughout the winter and the spring, she kept constant company with the Danes, and the rumour spread that the young Archduke Ulrich himself was soon to visit Wolgast.

In April, at home in Stockholm, the Senate met to discuss the matter. There could be no better prince than Friedrich Wilhelm, said the Count Per Brahe. Sweden could find no better supporter, and the marriage would make Sweden formidable among all nations. On the contrary, said the Chancellor’s cousin, Gabriel Oxenstierna, it would be better to choose a poor Swedish nobleman who would be more dependent on the Senate. Foreigners in the past had only tyrannized the country. He would rather have a local man. But, said Per Banér, if the foreigner were the husband of a Swedish princess, he would not tyrannize anyone. No foreign ruler had ever married a Swedish princess before. Quite true, said Jakob De la Gardie. A Swedish consort would only sow dissension, having his own support among the local people. However, said Gabriel Oxenstierna, a Swede would be more easily constrained by the law. On the other hand, a royal marriage was an excellent way for a nation to increase its power, and certainly a connection with Brandenburg would be politically advantageous, particularly in relation to Poland. It might be wise, then, said Per Brahe, to come to a decision soon. If the Brandenburgers thought they were being led around by the nose, they would turn their backs on Sweden and embrace the Poles instead.

A letter from the Chancellor, favouring Friedrich Wilhelm, was then read once again to the assembled noblemen. They were duly impressed. Per Banér noted that the boy’s father had been very friendly to Sweden, at least since the beginning of 1632, and Admiral Klaes Fleming wondered aloud whether it would be wise to overrule the wishes and plans of His Holy Royal Majesty, their late lamented King. Various senators now remembered that a Brandenburg marriage would keep Pomerania in Swedish hands jure perpetuo. That would be good security against the Dutch, and against the city of Jülich as well. They reassured one another that Friedrich Wilhelm would have a duty to appoint all his officials exclusively from Swedish families. All things considered, the Elector’s son was to be preferred to any other foreign prince.

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In short, the little Queen was to serve as a chattel in the crudest old terms. One senator did remark that she might not actually want to marry Friedrich Wilhelm when she grew up; at only six years of age, she could hardly be consulted now. This was agreed, and a message sent to Axel Oxenstierna in Berlin, conceding him full powers of negotiation, but suggesting that he proceed slowly. He took the senators at their word, and kept the discussions going for a further fifteen years.

In the meantime, the Danish assault continued. From the Brandenburg court, the Chancellor relayed his growing concern to the senators at home: the Danes, he wrote, were trying to bribe the ‘weak women’ in Wolgast with presents and flattery, ‘though I am sure that the Queen would never disgrace Sweden, in word or deed’. And as a gallant, if improbable, afterthought, he added, ‘I am equally sure that of her daughter’s marriage Her Majesty has spoken little or not at all’.

(#litres_trial_promo) He urged the senators nonetheless to send one or two of their number quickly to Wolgast to oversee matters there – the King’s body had still to be brought back to Sweden – and at the end of May 1633, his own cousin Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna, Sweden’s Grand Treasurer, presented his hawk-eyed compliments to Her disconcerted Majesty.

It was just as well, for Maria Eleonora was soon declaring, ‘in decided tones’, that the match would never be made between Friedrich Wilhelm and her only daughter: the prince was a Calvinist, and they were too closely related. The first objection could be quickly overruled; the Queen’s own Calvinist father, after all, had permitted his wife and children to be Lutheran.

(#litres_trial_promo) Besides, the Reformed Church in Brandenburg had already given its consent to the boy’s abjuration. The second objection might have appeared more pressing, but in fact no one seems to have been concerned about it at all.

From Maria Eleonora’s point of view, in fact, both objections were simply red herrings. The truth was that she liked the Danish Archduke, and she wanted her daughter to marry the son of a king. Moreover, it was a golden opportunity to undermine the powerful Oxenstierna family, for whom she bore little affection. When Gabriel Oxenstierna reminded her that the Brandenburg marriage had been the deeply held wish of her late husband, she replied that this was not so at all; his letters and envoys and personal visit to the Elector had been no more than a diplomatic tactic, unelucidated then by the King, as now by his widow. Besides, she said, it was her right and her duty as a mother to arrange the marriage. The Baron Gabriel pointed out that the little Queen’s betrothal was a political issue which affected the country in the most profound way. The Swedes should not raise Danish hopes, nor make any promises. It was a matter for the Senate and the Riksdag. It was they who had the greatest interest in the question, as well as the most important voice. Maria Eleonora insisted that her interest as a mother was much greater. Baron Gabriel replied that no arrangement would be ratified, in any case, until both children had come of age and could append their own consent to the match; the Queen Mother should make no promises to anyone, he warned, because the Riksdag would not support it. If, in spite of this, Her Majesty did take steps prejudicial to Sweden’s interests, he added, the ‘warm affection’ that her subjects felt for her would be likely to cool, and there might even be conflict over her daughter’s right to inherit the throne at all.