Maria Eleonora ~ The Mad Queen Mother
Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, was one of the most beautiful, wealthiest, and most eligible women in Europe.
When she married King Gustav Adolphus of Sweden, her life was far from a romantic fairytale.
From her violent mental deterioration, to her private heartbreaks, Maria became known forever, as the mad queen mother.
Maria Eleonora was born in 1599 to John Sigismund, the Prince electorate of Brandenburg and his wife Anna~Duchess of Prussia.
Maria grew up in the lap of luxury, and as she got older she grew into a famous beauty.
Monarchs fell over themselves to marry her.
Some of her most powerful suitors included William of Orange and the future King Charles I of England.
Maria had extravagant tastes.
She was excessively fond of entertainments of all kinds, plus she had a notorious sweet tooth.
Maria was never much of a scholar, pleasure always came before learning.
Even though she was a German princess, she never even learned how to properly write in German.
Instead, she spoke and most often wrote in French, which was the court language of her day.
After hearing of Maria Eleonora’s great beauty and intelligence, 22-year-old Swedish King Gustav Adolphus started seriously trying to woo the 17-year-old Maria.
Around 1617, King Gustav was so certain that he was going to marry Maria, he even re-decorated rooms in his castle to suit a more feminine taste.
Maria took a genuine liking to King Gustav Adolphus.
Multiple witnesses say that even in public, she couldn’t hide her attachment to the young man.
On 25th November 1620, King Gustav Adolphus and Maria Eleonora were married at the Royal Castle in Stockholm, with much pomp and circumstance.
As per the custom of the time, after the ceremony they retired to a plush, red-and-gold embroidered bed, to publicly eat bon-bons, listen to speeches, and drink wine.
A year after Maria’s coronation, everything changed.
Maria suffered a tragic miscarriage, and suddenly her jovial demeanor turned jealous, tempestuous, and even at times manic.
In 1623, she managed to carry a baby girl to term, but it was stillborn.
Then in 1625, she was pregnant again, only to lose the baby in a brutal manner.
Maria had decided to accompany her husband to see a royal yacht, but the waters suddenly turned dangerously choppy.
Jostled violently about on the boat, Maria’s attendants ferried her quickly back to the safety of the castle, but it was too late.
She apparently cried out “Jesus, I cannot feel my child!” and lost the baby, a hoped-for son, shortly after.
It was imperative that Sweden have a male heir – their Polish enemies were primed with boy heirs who could easily snatch away the throne if King Gustav died childless.
It didn’t much help either that Gustav kept going to war and putting himself in mortal danger.
In April 1626, Maria was pregnant for the fourth time, and everyone had a good feeling about this one.
She was treated like a china doll, all while royal astrologers predicted that the babe would be a longed-for boy.
The birth of Maria’s only surviving child did not go as she planned….
The baby came out covered in dark, downy hair from its head to its arms.
Only its face and lower legs were bare of the fur.
According to the reports, the baby’s nose was also very large.
All these characteristics led people to assume the baby was a boy.
It wasn’t.
Maria Eleonora had given birth to a very hairy baby girl!
When King Gustav was informed that his heir was actually a little girl, he was disappointed, but still in good spirits.
He even named the girl Christina, after his own beloved mother.
Maria, however, was not so happy.
When she saw the baby she cried~
“Instead of a son, I am given a daughter, dark and ugly, with a great nose and black eyes.
Take her from me, I will not have such a monster!”
Maria may have suffered from a severe form of postpartum depression after her daughter Christina’s birth.
Maria Eleonora was so disappointed with her “monstrous” daughter, she took every opportunity to punish the child.
Disturbingly, Princess Christina was alarmingly “accident-prone” as a baby.
One time, she somehow tumbled down a full flight of stairs.
In another instance, a beam fell into her cradle, and she was even once dropped on a stone floor, which permanently deformed her shoulder.
These strange incidents all happened in the presence of Maria….
After all these “accidents,” Maria Eleonora was barred from almost any role in the young princess’s life.
Instead, little Christina was raised by her aunt.
Things got worse for Maria when her beloved Gustav was killed on the battlefield.
While fighting in the Battle of Lutzen in 1632, Gustav got shot in the back, and then the head.
When his loyal soldiers found his body, it was face down in the mud, and Gustav’s enemies had stripped the king of everything but the literal shirt off his back.
Wracked with grief, Maria had to make sure everyone else was miserable too ~ especially her hated daughter, little Christina.
For a full year, Maria tormented her daughter with a brutal punishment.
She forced Christina into blacked~out, darkened rooms to mourn her father in solitude, for unforgivably long periods of time.
Maria also reportedly hung King Gustav’s heart in a golden casket on the ceiling above Christina’s bed.
She made the girl sleep directly underneath her father’s “blessed” remains.
Maria reportedly wept almost continuously for actual years after Gustav’s death.
She refused to allow his body to be buried, and would regularly visit it.
After 18 months, the Swedish Chancellor stepped in and had him buried.
In 1636, Maria Eleonora was so out of her mind, the government separated her from Christina and “placed” Maria in Gripsholm castle, hoping she couldn’t do any harm there.
But nobody could hold her down for long.
Maria Eleonora and her lady-in-waiting snuck out of a window, and quickly boarded a ship to Denmark and “freedom.”
Maria Eleonora eventually got sick of life in Denmark and came back to Sweden.
When she arrived back in Sweden, she found out her daughter Christina had abdicated the throne in favour of her cousin, Charles Gustav.
She was dismayed and heartbroken at the news of the loss of her title as Queen Dowager.
Christina still provided financially for her mother, but a little over a year after Christina’s abdication, Maria Eleonora died at the age of 55.
She was buried at the Ridderholmen Church, close to the Royal Palace in Stockholm, Sweden.
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