Princess Cecilia of Sweden

Princess Cecilia of Sweden, also "Cecilia Gustavsdotter Vasa" (Stockholm, November 16, 1540 - Brussels, January 27, 1627), was Princess of Sweden and daughter of King Gustav I and his second wife, Margareta Leijonhufvud, a Swedish noblewoman.

Princess Cecilia is often talked about as the "Black Sheep" of her family; she was an adventurous woman who lived an exciting and often scandalous life.

As a child, she was delicate and often sick, but she soon became a ravishing beauty with a great hunger for life. Several negotiations were made to marry her off, but the scandals she was involved in prohibited the plans for several years; at the wedding in Vadstena between her eldest sister Princess Katarina and Edzard II of Ostfriesland in 1559 her brothers observed a man climbing into her window several nights in a row, and when they decided to investigate the following night, they caught the brother of the groom, John of Ostfreisland, in Cecilia's bedroom without any pants on. This caused a great scandal; after having refused to marry Cecilia, the count was thrown in jail for a year and some sources indicate that he was castrated. Cecilia herself was so beaten up by her father that she accused him of having ripped her hair off, but her brothers printed a coin which pictured her as Susanna in the bath, indicating that she was as innocent as the legendary Susanna.

Princess Cecilia continued to have fun; people gossipped about what technique of contraception she used, claiming that she spat in the mouth of a toad to avoid pregnancy, and her half-brother Eric XIV wrote a new protocol of movement of the court when he caught her having a nightly party in her private rooms.

She finally married, in 1564, to Christopher II, Margrave of Baden-Rodemachern (1537 - 1575). Immediately after the wedding she travelled to England in an attempt to convince Queen Elizabeth I to marry her half-brother King Eric XIV. While there she delivered her first child, Edward, who was carried to his christening by Elizabeth - Edward is an eleventh generation ancestor of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom through her great-grandfather, Francis, Duke of Teck.

She stayed in England for about a year, learned English and wasted so much money that she attempted to escape from her creditors, but she was caught in Dover in 1565 and a great deal of her jewellery and wardrobe was taken by the creditors; she was pregnant at this point, and when she finally reached Rodemachern (now Rodemack) her son was born handicapped, for which she blamed her creditors for the rest of her life.

In 1571 Cecilia and her family felt threatened by the religious war in the Netherlands and the troops of the Duke of Alba nearby and moved to Sweden. When she arrived, she was told that an English merchant, John Dymosh, had arrived in the country recently; this was one of her old creditors from England, and Cecilia took revenge by confiscating his ship and having him put in jail; he remained there five years.

Cecilia was given the city of Arboga as a fief and she lived there ruling the city under the title Countess of Arboga, supporting herself by its taxes, financing a fleet of pirates on the sea to plunder foreign ships and hiding the profit from her brothers; she also engaged in mining and merchandise. After her husband's death in 1575 she converted to Catholicism to secure the domains of her sons, which had been captured by Catholic troops. At this time, Elizabeth I of England for some reason offered her the hand of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, but Cecilia was advised to decline.

In 1578 Cecilia became involved with the Spanish ambassador, Francisco de Eraso, to give her fleet of pirates to the Spanish King in exchange for the post of governor in Luxemburg or some other Spanish province; she was suspected of plotting against her brother the King, as the Spanish ambassador often visited her, and one night, she was captured visiting his house incognito in Stockholm. She left Sweden in 1579 and returned to Rodemack, where she gave birth to the child of Francisco de Eraso, a girl she called Caritas and left in a convent.

Princess Cecilia now gave her sons to be educated by the Jesuits and began to rule the estates of Baden-Rodemachern as a Catholic. She was often present in her seat at the empirical German-Roman assembly, met the pope on several occasions and travelled between the Catholic courts of Europe. Protestant propaganda accused her of hosting a brothel in Brussels in 1594, and she had many problems being hunted by creditors, nearly killed by one of them and chased into the house of the archbishop of Trier in Luxemburg in 1610. She died at a very advanced age for that time and is buried under the floor in the church in Rodemack.

ources

*"Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon" (1906), Cecilia. [http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/sbh/a0171.html]
*Herman Lindqvist, "Historien om Sverige"