User:Kassidysheppard/Queen Christina of Sweden

Already at the age of nine Christina was impressed by the Catholic religion and the merits of celibacy. She read a biography on the virgin queen Elizabeth I of England with interest. Christina understood that it was expected of her to provide an heir to the Swedish throne. Her first cousin Charles was infatuated with her, and they became secretly engaged before he left in 1642 to serve in the Swedish army in Germany for three years. Christina revealed in her autobiography that she felt "an insurmountable distaste for marriage" and "for all the things that females talked about and did." She once stated, "It takes more courage to marry than to go to war." As she was chiefly occupied with her studies, she slept three to four hours a night, forgot to comb her hair, donned her clothes in a hurry and wore men's shoes for the sake of convenience. Her unruly hair became her trademark. Her closest female friend was Ebba Sparre, with whom she shared a bed and possibly a sexual relationship. Christina, said to possess charm, called her "Belle" and most of her spare time was spent with la belle comtesse. She introduced the passion of her youth to the English ambassador Whitelocke as her "bed-fellow" and praised both her mind and her beauty. When Christina left Sweden, she continued to write passionate letters to Sparre, in which she told her that she would always love her. However, such emotional letters were relatively common at that time, and Christina would use the same style when writing to women she had never met, but whose writings she admired.

As a child, Christina's mannerisms could probably best be described as those of a tomboy. Her father insisted she should receive "the education of a prince", and some have interpreted this as acceptance, on the part of the king, that she had masculine features or that there was some form of gender ambiguity in her upbringing. She was educated as a prince and taught (and enjoyed) fencing, horse riding and bear hunting. She was said to have preferred these masculine hobbies to more feminine ones.

Bargrave recounted that Christina's relationship with Azzolino was both "familiar" (intimate) and "amorous" and that Azzolino had been sent (by the Pope) to Romania as punishment for maintaining it. Buckley, on the other hand, believed there was "in Christina a curious squeamishness with regard to sex" and that "a sexual relationship between herself and Azzolino, or any other man, seems unlikely". In today's terms, Christina likely would have identified as asexual. Based on historical accounts of Christina's physicality, some scholars believe that she may have been an intersex individual.