Christina, Queen of Sweden by Veronica Buckley

More than once the cross-dressing queen was forced to leave town until a scandal died down. Supported and encouraged in turn by the pope, the king of Spain, and France's powerful Cardinal Mazarin, Christina settled at the luxurious Palazzo Farnese, where she established a lavish salon for Rome's artists and intellectuals. Freed from her crown, Christina cut a breath-taking path across spending madly, searching for a more prestigious throne to scale, stirring trouble wherever she went.

Christina, Queen of Sweden, longed fatally for adventure. No sooner had she enjoyed the lavish celebrations of her officialcoronation at twenty-three than she abdicated, converting to Catholicism (an act of almost foolhardy independence and political challenge) and leaving her cold homeland behind for an extravagant new life in Rome. She was learned but restless, progressive yet self-indulgent her leadership was erratic, her character unpredictable. She was painted a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist in that tumultuous age, it is hard to determine which was the most damning label. She was tutored by Descartes, yet could swear like the roughest soldier. On her father's death six years later, she inherited the Swedish throne.

She was born on a bitterly cold December night in 1626 and, in the candlelight, mistakenly declared a boy.

Christina, Queen of Sweden by Veronica Buckley