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9 - Cecilia of Sweden: Princess, Margravine, Countess, Regent
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
Cecilia Vasa (1540–1627)—Princess of Sweden, Margravine of Baden- Rodmachern, and Countess of Arboga—is perhaps best-known for her (in)famous trip to England in 1565–1566 to visit the court of Elizabeth I. Little else of Cecilia's life is discussed or analysed in the current Englishlanguage scholarship, despite the fact that she lived to be 86. This chapter presents a biography of Cecilia that focuses on the way her gender caused her to exist on the edge, demonstrating that no matter the royal, political, or social authority Cecilia managed to wield at various points in her life, she was ultimately defined by the men—present or absent—in her life.
Keywords: marriage; dower; pregnancy; debt and debtors; royal visits
In 1865, William Brenchley Rye published England As Seen By Foreigners In The Days of Elizabeth and James the First, an edition of accounts of aristocrats and traders who visited England in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. In his introduction, Rye boasts—in the great Whiggish tradition— of the way that Elizabeth's reign caused an increase in the visitors to England, ‘their curiosity […] naturally excited to behold with their own eyes those much-vaunted charms, extraordinary virtues, and princely qualities with which the maiden Majesty of England was endowed’. Of all the people who visited England during Elizabeth's reign, Rye devotes the most attention in his introduction to Princess Cecilia of Sweden. He recounts how:
One of the most extraordinary of these visits was made by a woman—by no less a personage, no meaner beauty, than Cecilia, daughter of the great Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden, and sister of that Eric who was one of the disappointed suitors for the hand of Elizabeth. This Swedish lady, who is a very prototype of the wayward and eccentric Christina, had an intense longing to travel.
Perhaps without meaning to, Rye laid the foundation for the way that Cecilia, and indeed her visit to England, would be characterized in English historiography. Despite being a princess, the ‘Swedish Lady’s’ political role was defined by her father and by her brother (himself defined by his unsuccessful bid for Elizabeth's hand).
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- Women on the Edge in Early Modern Europe , pp. 179 - 202Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019