Sophia Magdalena of Denmark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sophia Magdalena of Denmark | |
| Queen consort of Sweden | |
 |
|
| Reign | February 12, 1771 - March 29, 1792 |
|---|---|
| Coronation | 1772 |
| Born | July 3, 1743 |
| Birthplace | Christiansborg Palace, Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Died | August 21, 1813 (aged 70) |
| Place of death | Ulriksdal Palace, Sweden |
| Buried | Riddarholmen Church |
| Consort to | Gustav III of Sweden |
| Issue | Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden Charles Gustaf |
| Royal House | House of Holstein-Gottorp House of Oldenburg |
| Father | Frederick V of Denmark |
| Mother | Louise of Great Britain |
Sofia Magdalena of Denmark and Norway (Christiansborg Palace, Denmark, 3 July 1743 - Ulriksdal Palace, Sweden, 21 August 1813) was a Queen consort of Sweden.
She was the eldest surviving child of King Frederick V of Denmark and Norway and Queen Louise. Her maternal grandparents were George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Ansbach.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
At the age of five (1751), she was betrothed to the heir to the throne of Sweden, Gustav, and she was brought up to be the queen of Sweden. The marriage was arranged by the parliament, not by the Swedish royal house, and was disliked by the queen, Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, who was since long in conflict with the parliament and who favored a match with her niece, Philippine of Brandenburg-Schwedt, instead. In 1766 she was married to Gustav by proxy at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen.
At the Swedish court, she was received with kindness from the king but she was hated by Louisa Ulrika, who was the dominating presence in the court, and completely ingored by her husband; her mother-in-law encouraged the distance between the couple. She was beautiful, brought the largest dowry a royal bride had brought since 1680 and was carefully educated to be a perfect queen and received many praises, but she never became very popular, and her strict upbringing made it difficult for her to adjust to the environment of the more vivacious Swedish court. Being of a reserved nature, she was considered cold and arrogant within the court. After King Adolf Frederick of Sweden died in 1771, Gustav III became King of Sweden. The following year Sophia Magdalena was crowned queen.
Queen Sofia Magdalena was a serious and shy person and she was never a member of the kings inner circle. She and her husband were very different in personality, which put even more distance between them. She did her ceremonial duties, but disliked the vivid lifestyle of the court that her husband was a center of. She was somewhat mocked by the more social wit, her sister-in-law Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp, when her social duties made her "Forced to meet people"; she preferred to stay at her private residence Ulriksdal Palace whenever she could. It is also said that she preferred the English fashion before the French because she found it less revealing.
[edit] The Question of the Succession
Sophia Magdalena is most known in history for the great scandal-affair of the consummating of her marriage and of the questioned legitimacy of her son. The marriage was a typical royal arranged marriage of political convenience, and Sophia is described by her husband as cold as ice. In fact, the marriage was not consummated until 1775, nine years after the wedding. This was a topic of gossip and ridicule among the European courts; there were rumours that the king was a homosexual or sexually undeveloped. The sexuality of the king, which had a strong influence on Sophia Magdalena's life, has been much debated, but judging from documents written from different people in his life, the most realistic thing to assume would be, that he was not homosexual, but bisexual; also, that he was very sexually inexperienced, either due to sexual immaturity, or, and this seems to have been the case, because he was simply not very interested in sex at all, perhaps even close to asexual; he was passionatly in love with the noblewoman Charlotte du Rietz in 1768, but it does not seem that they ever consummated their affair. When teenager, he also had a boyish crush on Axel von Fersen's mother, the beautiful Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie.
The status quo between Gustav III and his wife was furthermore nurtured by the queen dowager, who did not want to have any competition over the influence over her son. Throughout the Swedish history, it has always been hard for danish princesses to get rid of suspicions and get a high position in the swedish court (see also about Ulrike Eleonora of Denmark). Due to the alcoholism of Sophia Magdalena's father and her brother's mental disease her situation was even more precarious. Her religious upbringing and introvert character made her avoid the lively and spontaneous gustavian court life and that did not make her more attractive in the eyes of her outgoing husband.
It does not seem that king ever intended to consummate the marriage; in 1774, he arranged the marriage between his brother, the future Charles XIII of Sweden, and Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp to solve the question of an heir to the throne. The duchess did seem to have become pregnant in 1774, but after the sings proved to be a mistake, the king changed his mind, and decided for the consummating of the marriage and the produce of an heir.
In 1778, Sofia gave birth to Gustav Adolf, successor to the throne, and in 1782 she gave birth to a second son, Charles Gustav who only lived for one year. It has been suggested that the first son was fathered by someone else. When the heir was born, the father was named, by the queen dowager among others, as the count Adolph Frederick Munck af Fulkila, then chief of the royal stables. This rumor was widely believed by both the public and within the court and it led to a several year long total break between the queen dowager and her son.
[edit] The succession scandal
The truth, however, was somewhat different: it has been suggested by the letters of those involved, that the count actually acted as sexual instructor. The king was possibly a virgin, as was the queen, and did in fact need to be instructed in the ways of sexual intercourse, and Munck was called upon to help and was forced to physically show them how to consummate their marriage. Munck, a Finnish nobleman and at the time a stable master, was known for his affairs; he was at that point the lover of Anna Sofia Ramström, the queen's lady-in-waiting. The count and Ramström were to be present in a room beneath the bed-chamber, ready to be of assistance when needed, and were at some points called in to the bed-chamber. The count himself writes in his memoirs that he "had to touch them both with my own hands".
When this became known, the were many speculations exactly as to how this assistance was conducted. People imagined that the count helped the king by having intercourse with the queen to demonstrate, and that he had intercourse with the queen with his penis between the king's thighs. They were also caricatured this way.
That Munck acted as a sexual instructor is confirmed, but there is no proof whatsoever that he ever went as far in his assistance as the rumours suggested, or that he was the father of the Prince. Neither the king nor the queen has ever been described as having a large interest in sex. But the rumours became more persistent when the queen gave Munck a watch with her image, a pension and a diamond ring, and the king gave him a promotion. The circle around the king's brother, Duke Charles, the future Charles XIII of Sweden, who wanted the throne, encouraged the rumours.
The Queen dowager Louisa Ulrika of Prussia openly proclaimed that Sophia's child was a bastard; she accused Sofia Magdalena of being too cold to take a lover, if she was not ordered to do so by the king; she claimed that the king had hired Munck to impregnate the queen, and stated that the throne should not come to the hands of "a common nobleman's illegitimate offspring". There were even rumors that the king had divorced in secret and married the queen to Munck, to make her agree to having Munck father the heir. The queen dowager forced Duke Charles to interrogate Munck, and the word spread to the king, who was shocked. Sophia Magdalena was deeply shocked by the accusations; she swore she would never speak to the queen dowager again, and she kept this promise. The king arranged for his mother to make a public apology for her accusation in the presence of the rest of the royal family. This was a curious scene that gained a lot of attention. It also broke the bonds between the king and the dowager queen. The scandal somewhat disturbed the celebrations, as did the accident with the public banquet. The public was invited to a great feast to celebrate the birth of the heir, but too many people were let in, and the crowd panicked. Between sixty and one hundred people where trampled to death in the crowd.
Still, the years between 1775 and 1783 were probably the happiest in her life. Her relationship with the king was happier than ever before, and she was treated with respect after having done her duty to the dynasty. But after her younger son's death, the marriage reverted to its former state of separation.
This whole affair was portrayed in SVT's successful period drama production of "Gustav III:s äktenskap" (The Marriage of Gustav III) in 2001, where Sophia Magdalena was portrayed by the Danish actor Iben Hjejle.
An interesting bit of trivia on the subject is, that the child of the ballerina Giovanna Bassi, who was rumoured to be the child of Munck, bore a strong likeness to the prince.
[edit] Later life
Widowed in 1792, after her husband was murdered, Sofia lived a withdrawn life and spent much effort on charity. She was deeply horrified by the murder of her husband, but she also made a scandal by refusing to dress in mourning, and it was a great relief for her to be a widow and withdraw from public life. Her brother-in-law, Duke Karl, became regent, and she eschewed a political role.
In 1797, she insisted on skipping the protocol to make her new daughter-in-law, Frederica of Baden, to feel welcome, as she remembered how lonely she herself had felt when she arrived as a bride. She never had any political influence, and in 1809, she was forced to witness the abdication of her son, King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden, after Sweden lost Finland to Russia. He was sent into exile and replaced by his paternal uncle Charles XIII, but she remained in Sweden until her death in 1813.
In 1810–1811, she was one of few in the Swedish court who were nice to Desiree Clary, though Desiree's husband saw her with suspicison.
It has been said of her: "She remained one of the most tragic and isolated people in the history of the Swedish court".
[edit] References
- Herman Lindquist; "Historien om Sverige; Gustavs dagar. (History of Sweden; the days of Gustav III)", ((Swedish)).
- Herman Lindquist; "Historien om Sveriges drottningar. (History of the queens of Sweden)" ((Swedish)).
- http://runeberg.org/sbh/b0480.html, ((Swedish)).
- http://susning.nu/Sofia_Magdalena_av_Danmark, ((Swedish)).
- http://historiska-personer.nu/min-s/p489065a1.html, ((Swedish)).
- http://runeberg.org/sqvinnor/0379.html, ((Swedish)).
- http://hem.passagen.se/minata/teb_munk.html ((Swedish)).
- http://historiska-personer.nu/min-s/pbcc3bfaf.html ((Swedish)).
- http://www.mimersbrunn.se/arbeten/11218.asp ((Swedish)).
- http://runeberg.org/sverhist/9/0412.html ((Swedish)).
- http://runeberg.org/sbh/b0151.html ((Swedish)).
- http://www.popularhistoria.se/o.o.i.s/348 ((Swedish)).
|
Sophia Magdalena of Denmark
Born: 3 July 1743 Died: 21 August 1813 |
||
| Swedish royalty | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (Queen consort) |
Royal Consort of Sweden (Queen consort) 1771–1792 |
Succeeded by Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina of Baden (Queen consort) |
