Frederica of Baden

Infobox Swedish Royalty|majesty|consort
name =Frederica of Baden
title =Queen cosnort of Sweden


imgw =200
caption =Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden with his consort, Frederica of Baden
reign =1797 - March 29, 1809
coronation =
spouse =Gustaf IV Adolf
issue =Gustav, Prince of Vasa
Princess Sophie
Princess Cecilia
full name =Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina
royal house =House of Zähringen
father =Karl Ludwig of Baden
mother =Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt
date of birth =birth date|1781|3|12|mf=y
place of birth =Karlsruhe
date of christening =
place of christening =
date of death =death date and age|1826|9|25|1781|3|12|mf=y
place of death =Lausanne, Switzerland
date of burial =
place of burial =|

Frederica Dorothea Wilhelmina of Baden (March 12, 1781 - September 25, 1826) was Queen consort of Sweden from 1797 to 1809. Daughter of Karl Ludwig of Baden and Amalie of Hesse-Darmstadt, she was the younger sister of Empress Elisabeth Alexeievna (formerly Princess Louise of Baden), wife of Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

Biography

In 1797, she married King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden and became queen. Her husband had arranged the marriage himself because she was the sister of the Russian Empress, which made a form of alliance with Russia even after he refused to marry the Russian Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna, but mostly because he wanted a beautiful queen; in 1795, he refused a marriage with a Princess of Mecklenburg, Duchess Louise Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Schwerin because he had heard that she was not beautiful.

She had been given but a small education by an French-Swiss governess. She was treated with kindness by her mother-in-law, Sophia Magdalena of Denmark, who remembered how ill she herself had been treated by her own mother-in-law. She was described as stiff, shy, unfriendly and beautiful. The first years, she found it difficult to adapt to the strict court etiquette and played children's games with her ladies-in-waiting.

The marriage is often considered happy, but the king was much more interested in sex than she was. Many times, the king was delayed for hours after "having entered the queen's bed chamber" in the mornings, so much so that the members of the parliament had to interrupt and ask the king to "spare the queen's health," and she complained of the exhaustion it caused her. In the presence of others, however, he behaved very formal towards her. She was shocked and intrigued by the sexually liberal Swedish court and wrote home to her family that "everyone had a lover" and about the bisexual rumours about the royal Duchess Hedwig Elizabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp; she wrote to her mother, that the Duchess was said to have both male and female lovers and that she herself was probably the only woman of note who did not have three or four lovers. Her husband wanted to preserve her ignorance in sexual matters. When a frivolous play was performed for the queen at the Opera by a French theatre troupe, the king actually closed the Royal Swedish Opera down in 1806, (though officially because of the costs); it remained closed until 1809.

After the birth of her son in 1799, she became more comfortable in her position as queen. In 1800, she was crowned in Norrköping, and in 1801, she received a visit from her parents. During a trip to Finland, she crossed the border to Russia to visit her sisters Elisabeth and Amalie. In 1803-1805, she and her husband visited Germany and her home country, and the marriage greatly improved after this. In Sweden, they preferred the Haga Palace as their residence.

In exile

She was deposed with her husband in 1809; she and her children where first kept at Haga, and was reunited after the coronation of the new king. They were escorted out of the country in the three carriages; one with the adults, the second with the former crown prince, and the third with the smaller children. The family settled in Baden, but her husband was restless and did not want to stay. She herself refused further sexual intercourse as she "did not wish to give birth in exile." She also wished to live a life more in the style of an queen, while her preferred a more simple family life. They were divorced in 1812. Secretly, she supported him financially after the separation. She also kept a correspondence with her former mother-in-law, Sophia Magdalena in Sweden. According to her ladies-in-waiting, she turned down proposals from her brother-in-law Frederick William of Braunschweig-Oels and Frederik William III of Prussia. She was rumored to have had a secret marriage with her son's tutor, the French-Swiss J.N.G de Polier-Vernland. She travelled a lot, using the name Countess Itterburg. She died of a heart disease.

The communities of Fredrika (1799), Dorotea (1799) and Vilhelmina (1804) located in Lappland were named in her honor.

Children

# Crown Prince Gustaf, after 1809 known as "Gustaf Gustafsson of Vasa" (November 9, 1799–1877)
# Princess Sofia Wilhelmina (May 21, 1801–1865), married Grand Duke Leopold I of Baden
# Prince Carl Gustaf, Grand Duke of Finland (December 2, 1802–1805)
# Princess Amalia Maria Charlotta (February 22, 1805–1853)
# Princess Cecilia (June 22, 1807–1844), married August, Grand Duke of Oldenburg.

Gustav would serve as an officer to the Habsburgs of Austria, but would only father one daughter, Carola, the wife of King Albert I of Saxony, but she died childless.

Sofia Wilhelmina would marry Leopold I of Baden, and their granddaughter, Victoria of Baden, would eventually marry Gustav V of Sweden, thus connecting the House of Bernadotte with the previous Swedish dynasties.

References

* Herman Lindquist, "Alla Sveriges drottningar" (In Swedish)
* Georg Nordensvan "Svensk teater och svenska skådespelare" (In Swedish)

Succession