biography
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1626–89)
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| biography:
| Queen of Sweden (1632–54), born in Stockholm, Sweden, the daughter and successor of Gustav II Adolf. She was educated as a prince on her father's orders during her minority, when the affairs of the kingdom were ably managed by Axel Oxenstierna. When she came of age (1644) she negotiated the Peace of Westphalia, bringing to an end the Thirty Years War (1648). She patronized the arts and attracted some of the best minds in Europe, such as Hugh Grotius, Salamasius, and Descartes, to her court. In 1654 she suddenly abdicated and proclaimed Charles X Gustav her successor. She was received into the Catholic Church (proscribed in Sweden) and went to Rome. She aspired to the throne of Poland vacated by her cousin, John Casimir (1667), but failed. For the rest of her life she lived in Rome as a pensioner of the pope, and was a generous and discerning patron of the arts. She founded the Accademia dell'Arcadia for philosophy and literature, and sponsored the sculptor Bernini and the composers Corelli and Scarlatti. |
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