Christina (1626-1689), Queen of Lutheran Sweden, who abdicated at the height of Sweden's power during the Thirty Years' War, converted to Catholicism, and spent the second half of her life in Rome.

Queen Christina is one of the most unusual monarchs in European history. Inheriting her throne at the age of six, she was raised by brilliant tutors to face a complex and dangerous political world. Intellectually gifted, with a highly complex personality, she confounded her advisors first by refusing to marry, then by voluntarily surrendering her throne, and finally by converting to Catholicism in an age of bitter religious warfare, although her Swedish kingdom was then leader of the Protestant powers. The 1933 movie Queen Christina, starring Greta Garbo, which made the queen's name familiar to 20th-century audiences is entirely misleading about the historical Queen Christina, but it is not alone; she has been the subject of extravagant...