12 - The Broken Mirror: Gender Differences in the System of Royal Apartments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2021
Summary
Abstract
Gender played an important but changing role in the construction of the Swedish royal apartments. From at least the 1540s onwards, the apartments of the King and Queen mirrored each other. They were placed on the same floor, adjacent to each other. The 1580s marked the first real change with a further break came in 1626. In 1680 King Charles XI continued the model of separate royal apartments, this time even on different floors. This new division according to gender was more traditional than the old mirrored one. The new royal space was paradoxically more dependent on traditional gender roles than the discarded mirrored system.
Keywords: space, apartments, gender, family
In October 1620, Anna, Dowager Electress of Brandenburg, set sail for Sweden. She brought her daughter Maria Eleonora, the intended bride of King Gustaf II Adolf of Sweden, with her. At the court in Stockholm, there was frantic activity to get everything in order for the new Queen. Foreign policy in the form of negotiations with the Russian Tsar, as well as worries about outbreaks of plague, had to be pushed aside for now: everyone's energies had to be focused on the impending royal wedding. The King fired off a barrage of letters to governors, Councillors, and courtiers. His apothecary was instructed to prepare treats for the wedding party and buy silver dishes in Germany; tapestries were ordered from the Netherlands; a new crown, orb, and sceptre for the Queen had to be made by the Stockholm goldsmith Ruprecht Miller. The King's illegitimate brother, Carl Carlsson Gyllenhielm, was to take a Swedish flotilla to meet the Brandenburg ships off Kalmar. The Livonian nobility were told to send representatives to Stockholm to boost numbers at the wedding – ‘because We for that purpose need a large multitude of nobles with Us’. For the first reception at Kalmar Castle, Swedish aristocrats were also exhorted to attend, and the King wrote that the local nobility should be present to add to the magnificence of the reception of his princely visitors – ‘We would like to see them all received there with suitable Solemnity.’
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- Women at the Early Modern Swedish CourtPower, Risk, and Opportunity, pp. 253 - 264Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021