Sophia Magdalena of Denmark
Template:Infobox Swedish Royalty Sofia Magdalena of Denmark and Norway (Christiansborg Palace, Denmark, 3 July 1746 - 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.
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. On 1 October 1766 she was married to Gustav by proxy at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. The two married in person in Stockholm on 4 November.
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.
Life as 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 around her outgoing husband. When she performed her duties as queen, her sister-in-law, Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp, described her as: "Forced to meet people". The Duchess described her in her famous diaries as shy, reserved and very proud. She preferred to stay at her private residence Ulriksdal Palace whenever she could.
In the famous diary of Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp, she is described as beautiful, cold, silent and haughty, very polite and formal, and unsociable. On formal occaions, she was at her best: she performed beautifully according to what the court etiquette demanded of her, and she was seen as dignified and impressive. She had two very intimate friends, Maria Aurora Uggla Ehrengranat and Baroness Virginia Charlotta Duwall Manderström, who stayed as her ladies-in-waiting after their marriages, which was not usual at the Swedish court. She loved solitude, spent the days in her appartements, and had dinner alone. She held a grand formal salon every 14th day, and loved the theatre, which she often attended. During the King's Italian journey 1783-84, she held a grand formal public dinner for the city every two weeks. Several of her ladies-in-waiting were well known Swedish women of the time. Among her famous ladies-in-waiting were The Three Graces, as Augusta von Fersen, Ulla von Höpken and Lovisa Meijerfelt were called, and the artists Marianne Ehrenström and Charlotta Cedercreutz.
She did not have anything to do with politics, except for one occasion; during the war of 1788, she was given the task of initiating the peace negotiations with Denmark, and she called upon the Danish ambassador, spoke to him and handed him a letter for the Danish King. During the war of 1788-90, there is a note that she met two Russian war prisoners in the park of the Haga Palace, and gave them 100 kroner each. It is said that she preferred English fashion because French fashion was too revealing.
The question of the succession
Sophia Magdalena is most known in history for the great scandal-affair of the consummation 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 rumors 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 by different people during his life, it seems that he was bisexual. Also, he was very sexually inexperienced, either due to immaturity or because he was asexual. One author has said that he did not worship at the altar of Venus. However, he was passionately in love with the noblewoman Charlotte du Rietz in 1768, although their affair was probably never consummated. As a teenager, he had a crush on Axel von Fersen's mother, the beautiful Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie.
The status quo between Gustav III and his wife was nurtured by the queen dowager, who did not want any competition for influence over her son. Her religious upbringing and introverted character made her avoid the lively and spontaneous Gustavian court life, which made her even less attractive in the eyes of her outgoing husband.
The king may not have intended to ever consummate their 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 appeared to become pregnant in 1774, but after the signs proved to be false, the king changed his mind and decided to consummate his own marriage and produce 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 Count Adolf Fredrik 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 years-long break between the queen dowager and her son.
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 rumors 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 rumors 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 rumours was spred all thorugh society: the witt Anna Charlotta Schröderhiem answered the king, when he made a joke about her own childless marriage and her latest love interest in one of the employees of his stable: "I am afraid I have to make do, your majesty, as my husband can not aford to by me a stable master".
The Queen dowager Louisa Ulrika of Prussia openly proclaimed that Sophia's child was illegitimate; 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 the queen in secret and married her to Munck and to make her agree to having Munck the father of 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 (1783), the marriage reverted to its former state of separation. A brief reconciliation (1787) was comented by the Duchess Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte in her diaries as temporary and with no hope of being complete and lasting, as the king was not "receptive to female charm"; again the idea, that he did not worship at the altar of Venus.
In 1787, Sophia Magdalena deposited a sum of 50.000 kroner in an account for Munck, which was seen as a "farewell gift". At this point, Munck had started an affair with the ballerina Giovanna Bassi, whom Sophia Magdalena showed great dislike to. The King was terrified when he heard of this, and tried to keep it a secret.
The whole affair of the consummation of the marriage and the succession scandal 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 Giovanna Bassi, who was rumored to be the child of Munck, bore a strong likeness to the prince.
Later life
Widowed in 1792, after her husband was murdered, Soohia 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 did not have any political influence after her husband's death, but during the reign of her son, she is described as very demanding in other aspects, such as etiquette and material affairs, demands she put upon her son, who did everything to satisfy her requests. In 1809, she witnessed 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 1810–1811, she was one of few in the Swedish court who were nice to Desiree Clary though Desiree's husband regarded her with suspicion; she stated, that she was not resentfull upon Jean Baptiste Bernadotte for taking the place of her son, but Bernadotte did not believe her. She spent her last years on her estate and did not visit the court very often.
It has been said of her: She remained one of the most tragic and isolated people in the history of the Swedish court.
Gallery
Ancestry
References
- Herman Lindquist: Historien om Sverige. Gustavs dagar (History of Sweden; the days of Gustav III) (Template:Sv icon)
- Herman Lindquist: Historien om Sveriges drottningar (History of the queens of Sweden) (Template:Sv icon)
- [[1]]Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon (Swedish biographical dictionary) 1906 (Template:Sv icon)
- http://susning.nu/Sofia_Magdalena_av_Danmark (Template:Sv icon)
- Herman Lindqvist: Historien om Sverige. Gustavs dagar (Template:Sv icon)
- http://historiska-personer.nu/min-s/p489065a1.html (Template:Sv icon)
- [[2]] Wilhelmina Stålberg: Anteckningar om svenska qvinnor (Notes on Swedish women) Template:Sv icon
- http://hem.passagen.se/minata/teb_munk.html (Template:Sv icon)
- http://historiska-personer.nu/min-s/pbcc3bfaf.html (Template:Sv icon)
- http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:YRYHdyiDzC0J:www.mustionlinna.fi/Press/Finska%2520gustavianer.doc+munck+gustav+III+sofia&hl=sv&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=se (Template:Sv icon)
- http://www.mimersbrunn.se/arbeten/11218.asp (Template:Sv icon)
- [[3]]Carl Georg Starbäck, Per Olof Bäckström: Berättelser ur svenska historien. Nionde bandet. Gustaf III. Gustaf IV Adolf (Tales from the history of Sweden) (1885-1886)(Template:Sv icon)
- [[4]]Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon (Swedish biographical hand-dictionary) (Template:Sv icon)
- [[5]]Magnus Jacobson: Gustav IV Adolf (Gustav IV Adolf) Populär Historia (Template:Sv icon)
- Ingvar Andersson (1979). Gustavianskt (The Gustavian age) (in Swedish). Fletcher & Son Ltd. ISBN 91-46-13373-9.
- Cecilia af Klercker (översättning och redigering) (1942). Hedvig Elisabeth Charlottas dagbok IX (The diaries of Hedvig Elizabeth Charlotte) (in Swedish). P.A. Norstedt & Söners förlag. ISBN 412070.
- Gerd Ribbing: Gustav III:s hustru Sofia Magdalena (Sophia Madalena, wife of Gustav III)