To browse Academia. The study examines the often-overlooked influence of women at the early modern Swedish court, challenging stereotypes that reduce their roles to mere romantic intrigue. By highlighting individual figures such as Queen Katarina and her confidante, a Polish dwarf named Dosieczka, the paper reveals how these women wielded significant power and influence despite the lack of formal recognition in historical accounts.
The challenges of reconstructing female networks at court underscore the complexities of understanding women's contributions to decision-making during this era. What was possible for a woman to achieve at an early modern court? By analysing the experiences of a wide range of women at the court of Sweden, this book demonstrates the opportunities open to women who served at, and interacted with, the court; the complexities of women's agency in a court society; and, ultimately, the precariousness of power.
In doing so, it provides an institutional context to women's lives at court, charting the full extent of the rewards that they might obtain, alongside the social and institutional constrictions that they faced. Based on an extensive array of Swedish and international primary sources, including correspondence, financial records and diplomatic reports, it also takes into account the materialities used to create hierarchies and ceremonies, such as physical structures and spaces within the court.
Comprehensive in its scope, the book is divided into three parts, which focus respectively on outsiders at court, insiders, and members of the royal family. At the court in Stockholm, frantic activity ensued to get all preparations in order for the new Queen and the royal marriage. Foreign policy in the form of negotiations with the Russian tsar, as well as worries about outbreaks of plague, had to be partially pushed aside; energies needed to be focussed on the impending royal wedding.
The King fired off barrages of letters to governors, councillors and courtiers. His apothecary was to prepare treats for the wedding party and buy silver dishes in Germany; tapestries were ordered from the Netherlands; a new crown, sceptre, and apple for the Queen had to be made by the Stockholm goldsmith Ruprecht Miller 1.
