A word about Kristina's autobiography

Above: Kristina.

Above: Princess Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, Dowager Queen of Sweden, Kristina's mother.

Above: Kristina as a child.

From my two-part analysis of Kristina's childhood and adolescence:

... Kristina's autobiography is often and rightly regarded as an unreliable source, with her/his/their firsthand and secondhand retellings of events at a distance of decades from when they happened being filled with exaggerations, half-truths and sometimes even outright fabrications, some of which likely originated in whole or in part from flattering and exaggerated versions Kristina was told by adults during childhood and adolescence — stories which the young monarch accepted as fact even while and after knowing or learning the truth. In fact, with instances such as, for example, Kristina willfully interpreting what was in reality the standard Lutheran baptismal gesture as the Catholic one and taking it as a foreshadowing of her/his/their conversion to Catholicism in adulthood; as well as other examples we have seen regarding Kristina's claims of innate majesty, the divine right and predestination to be ruler, and examples we will see later concerning her/his/their upbringing and her/his/their intensely negative portrayal of Maria Eleonora's behaviour and influence, it can be argued that the relevant chapters of the autobiography are filled with confirmation bias.

According to its most basic definition, confirmation bias is when someone looks for, interprets, favours, and recalls information in a way that reinforces, confirms, or supports their pre-existing beliefs or values. People display confirmation bias when they select information that supports their views, either ignoring evidence or information to the contrary, or interpreting ambiguous evidence as corroborating their views. The effect is strongest when concerning desired outcomes, emotionally charged issues, and deeply-held beliefs; and such beliefs often only grow stronger when confronted with contrary evidence or information. In Kristina's case, the baptism episode, for instance, is specifically an example of magical thinking or the effect known as illusory correlation, the latter of which is when a person falsely perceives an association or connection between unrelated or random facts or situations. Similarly, magical thinking, also known as superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected regardless of the absence of any link between them, especially when interpreted as the result of supernatural forces. It is also possible that quasi-magical thinking was at work here, which is when a person is aware that a superstitious belief is false, but continues to behave as if it is true and makes no effort to correct it.