Kristina's birth and early infancy, and the question of intersexuality

Above: An imagining of Kristina as a toddler with her/his/their parents (and the entourage).

Sources:

Mémoires concernant Christine, etc., volume 3, compiled and edited by Johan Arckenholtz, 1759:

https://books.google.com/books?id=j7xfAAAAcAAJ&dq=johan+arckenholtz&source=gbs_book_similarbooks

Christina of Sweden, by Sven Stolpe, 1965

Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric, by Veronica Buckley, 2004

https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health/enlarged-clitoris

https://www.healthline.com/health/polycystic-ovary-disease

https://www.healthline.com/health/congenital-adrenal-hyperplasia#types

http://ncpamd.com/postpartum-depression/

Kristina was the only surviving legitimate child of Gustav Adolf and Maria Eleonora, but she/he/they was not their only child. The royal couple had suffered a miscarriage in 1621. Their first live-born child was a daughter, also named Kristina, who died in 1624 after a year. The stillborn child was also a girl, and the two sisters were followed in death by another miscarried baby in 1625. Gustav and Maria were, naturally, devastated every time.

Above: Gustav Adolf and Maria Eleonora.

In 1616, Gustav Adolf had an illegitimate son, Count Gustav Gustavsson of Vasaborg, with his mistress, Margareta Slots. He was the first of Gustav's children to survive to adulthood. But when it came to legitimate children, the king and queen would not have any child who survived infancy until 1626. That baby grew up to describe in her/his/their autobiography how she/he/they came to be, and how much excitement there was in anticipation of the birth (in my own translation):

"The King finally obtained what he had so much desired while on a journey to Finland, where the Queen, who accompanied him, was found to be pregnant with me in Åbo; which gave them both a false joy, since they persuaded themselves that Heaven would give them an heir. The Queen, my mother, assured me that all the signs deceived her, and persuaded her that by giving birth to me, she would give birth to a son. She had dreams which she thought mysterious, and the King had some as well. The astrologers, who are always ready to flatter princes, assured him that the Queen was pregnant with a successor: so one flattered oneself, one hoped, one was wrong, and one finally came to the end, Lord, that You have predestined to all who enter life. Already the court was back at Stockholm. The King was there too; but he was considerably ill, and the astrologers, who were present, unanimously assured that the timing of my birth, which they saw approaching, was such that it was almost impossible for it to not cost the King his life, or that of the Queen, or that of the child. They also assured that if this child could survive the first 24 hours, it would become someone very important."

Kristina's birth occurred during a rare astrological conjunction, and because scientific thinking was still in its early days, this caused everyone to wonder what the child, whom everyone was already convinced was a boy, had in store for the world. Infant mortality was very high in those days. Childbirth was the most dangerous time for both mother and child, even royal ones, as the midwives did not have the same understanding of hygiene for safety in medical situations as their modern counterparts, medicine and medical understanding and technology was nowhere near as advanced as it is now, with the whole concept still revolving around the now disproven and outdated concept of the four humours — and it would have been considered a milestone for a baby to survive the first day after being born.

It was 8 o'clock on a cold winter night on December 8 (O.S.), 1626 at Tre Kronor Castle that the royal baby was finally born, and its emergence and appearance caused great surprise for all who immediately beheld it:

"I was born covered with hair from my head to my knees; only my face, arms and legs were free. I was hairy all over my body and I had a coarse, strong voice. All this led the women who received me to believe that I was a boy. Throughout the Court they spread a false joy which, for a moment, even fooled the King. Hope and desire helped to deceive everyone; but it was a great embarrassment for the women when they found that they had been deceived. They agonised over how to disillusion the King. Princess Katarina, his sister, took charge of this commission."

"She carried me in her arms in such a condition to show me to the King, and to let him see for himself what she dared not tell him. She gave the King the means to undeceive himself. This great prince showed no surprise, he took me in his arms, he gave me a reception as favourable as if he had not been deceived in his waiting. He said to the Princess:
Let us thank God, my sister. I hope that this girl will be just as worthy to me as a boy. I pray to God that He will preserve her, since He has given her to me."

"The Princess, who wished to flatter him, reassured him that he was still young, as was the Queen, and that she would soon give him an heir; but the King answered her once more:
My sister, I am content. I pray to God that He will preserve her for me."

Above: Tre Kronor Castle, where Kristina was born.

Above: Princess Katarina.

It was decided to postpone breaking the news to Maria Eleonora, who was in no condition to bear being told the truth.

In addition to being a hairy newborn (lanugo is a kind of hair that grows on a baby's body during its time in the womb; it is usually seen outside the womb on babies who are born premature, and the hair soon falls off), Kristina was covered in a caul, a membrane of the amniotic sac. In this superstitious time, being born in a caul, which is a rarity, was seen as a sign that a child would have a successful future ahead of it, and it seems to have proven itself true and hopefully will continue to do so for others born in this way. I currently neither have nor can find any explanation for how a newborn baby could possibly have a "deep" voice (although the loudness of the first cry cannot be disputed and was surely taken as a sign of strength and health), and this is probably most likely an exaggeration on the part of Kristina and/or the people who told her/him/them the story of how she/he/they was born.

For centuries, it has been speculated that Kristina might have been a hermaphrodite, or, as we now would say, an intersex individual — a person who has both male and female genitals and hormones. There are several physical and hormonal conditions that can cause intersexuality or hormone imbalances; and there are also several conditions that cause genital malformation, one of which is clitoromegaly: an abnormally enlarged clitoris. In an infant, it would resemble a penis, and could explain why the midwives initially believed Kristina to be a boy. One of Kristina's biographers, Elis Essen-Möller, speculated that Kristina was a "pseudo-hermaphrodite", someone with genitals that match the gender they were assigned at birth but with the hormones of the opposite sex; this theory was later popularised by Sven Stolpe. On the other hand, another Kristina biographer, Veronica Buckley, agrees with the possibility that Kristina was merely born with malformed genitals.

In 1965, an anatomical investigation was made to examine Kristina's remains so as to either confirm the questions and rumours of her/his/their intersexuality or put them to rest. The examination was inconclusive other than that Kristina had a normal female skeletal structure and body (and Kristina's doctor's reports mention that she/he/they did menstruate); but because the body had deteriorated to the point that there were no longer any soft tissue remains, intersexuality cannot necessarily be ruled out.

I have read of two particular hormonal disorders, both of these proposed being linked with the instance of an enlarged clitoris, that Kristina probably had. One is polycystic ovary/ovarian syndrome, which causes an excess of androgen (testosterone) as well as obesity, infertility, male-type hair growth, and also clitoromegaly, as well as compounding and contributing to long-term health problems such as diabetes and heart disease. It could consequently account for Kristina's obesity and "tufts of beard" in later adult life, and she/he/they probably did have diabetes.

The other hormonal disorder that I speculate Kristina might have had is congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), which causes an infant to produce too much androgen. It too can cause clitoromegaly. Particular symptoms of different forms of the disorder that Kristina may have had and that can be "confirmed" or rather merely assumed based on what we know about her/him/them are or include:

• Having a deep voice (classical and non-classical/late-onset CAH)
• Increased facial hair growth (non-classical/late-onset)
• Infertility (non-classical/late-onset. This may be a possibility: Kristina often made cryptic statements about her/his/their "constitution" and is said to have experienced a prolapse of the uterus in her/his/their later years.)
• Obesity (non-classical/late-onset)

It may never be known whether Kristina had any of these disorders, but it is nevertheless an interesting possibility to explore.

We now return to Kristina's infancy. Buckley has also reasoned that Gustav Adolf's calm acceptance of the fact that his child was not a son was more likely the result of his fever or relief to have at least one living child. He must have decided that if this child was to be a daughter, then he might as well make the most of it. He ordered for there to be the same celebrations that there would have been if a male heir had been born, and the baby was soon baptised. In her/his/their autobiography, addressing God, Kristina made a claim that she/he/they saw as proof that she/he/they was destined to turn to Catholicism:

"The Lutheran minister who baptised me (he was the King's Great Chaplain), marked me with the baptismal water with the sign of the Cross, and did not know what he was doing when he enrolled me in Your militia in that happy moment. For it is certain that what he did was against the ordinary ceremony of the Lutherans."

In reality, making the sign of the Cross over a baby's forehead was just as much a Lutheran baptismal practice as it was a Catholic one.

Gustav Adolf is said to have remarked about baby Kristina: "She will be clever, for she has fooled us all."

If Gustav Adolf's reaction to his baby's sex was acceptance, the same cannot be said for Maria Eleonora. Upon discovering that, after four pregnancies and three infant deaths, she had given birth to a daughter and not a son, she was "inconsolable". She thought Kristina was ugly, and, according to some sources, called the newborn a monster and tried to attack her/him/them. Her mental health began to take a serious turn for the worse, and she probably suffered from postpartum depression (PPD) after Kristina's birth. For those who do not know, postpartum depression usually begins about a week after a woman gives birth and is characterised by extreme sadness, low energy, anxiety, crying episodes, irritability, and changes in sleeping or eating patterns. The mother going through this blames her troubles on her child, and in a more serious form of the disorder, postpartum psychosis, she has paranoia, mood swings, and hallucinations that convince her to try to harm or kill her baby.

Indeed, Kristina as a baby was subjected to several "accidents", probably at her/his/their mother's orders:

"It came to pass that, two days after my baptism, a big beam fell and almost crushed the cradle where I lay asleep, and I was not harmed in the least. In addition to this accident, I was also exposed to other attacks. I was intentionally dropped onto the floor, someone tried a thousand different ways to kill me or at least cripple me. The Queen, my mother, had her own explanations for this, and could not be persuaded otherwise. However that may be, I was not harmed other than that there is a bit of an irregularity on my back that I could have had corrected or at least concealed, if I had wished to give myself the trouble."

Although it cannot be confirmed, Kristina did believe that one of her/his/their nursemaids, Anna von der Linden, dropped her/him/them on purpose. The fall broke her/his/their collarbone, and the break never healed properly, leaving one shoulder standing higher than the other for the rest of Kristina's life. The difference in the height of her/his/their shoulders can be seen in this portrait drawing of Kristina as an adult:

Above: The acquired shoulder deformity is clear.

In contrast to her/his/their deeply troubled relationship with her/his/their mother, Kristina had a much better relationship with her/his/their father, whom she/he/they seems to have been very close to.