Christina is one of those few sovereigns who have made history by sheer force of personal character. In the whole range of the seventeenth century, there is no crowned head who can pretend to equality with her in the rare gifts of originality and distinction. A sworn foe to conventionality in all forms, with a mind uncompromisingly logical, she went straight to the root of a matter, to the horror of diplomatists and courtiers. The salient point of her character is her straightforwardness. There was nothing artificial about her and singularly little which was not original. She formed her own conceptions of policy, of religion, of culture, of manners. She adhered to them at all costs. She carried them out unhesitatingly. When one of them came into collision with another, instantly she surrendered the less to the greater. She abdicated the crown of Sweden because she was convinced that she ought to become a Roman Catholic. She procured the recognition of Charles Gustavus as her successor because she was determined not to marry. At the age of eighteen she forced the all-powerful Chancellor into making a peace which he loathed. Ten years later, after her abdication, she murdered her steward Monaleschi through a wilfully mistaken view of her sovereign rights. Throughout her life she was the same,--clear-minded, self-willed, of keen decision and petulant temper, warmhearted and true to those she loved, malicious to those she disliked, a hater of humbug, a despiser of conventionality, cynical in speech, generous in action, prodigal with money, avaricious of fame, hating and hated by women, always attractive to men. In truth Christina was one of nature’s mistakes. She was intended for a man. Masculine in intellect, masculine in will, masculine in bodily endurance, masculine in the roughness of her sensibilities, she showed her sex mainly in her dislike of women. She knew herself to be a man, and resented bitterly the freak of nature which had clothed her with a woman’s form. She dressed like a man, rode like a man, at times swore like a man, and confessed that one of her greatest desires was to see a battle. No noble at the Swedish court could tire her when hunting, or could surpass her presence of mind in the hour of danger. She knew not what fear was, she was never seen in tears. Yet there was something feminine in her love of intrigue, her passion for notoriety, her want of shame. At the French court she busied herself in making mischief between the young king and his mother by encouraging his infatuation for Marie Mancini. She delighted in shocking the etiquette of the royal circle by the freedom of her conversation and the unconventionality of her attitudes, and she went out of her way to outrage all sense of propriety by choosing the famous courtesan Ninon de L’Enclos as the only Frenchwoman to whom she would be decently civil. When a queen demeans herself thus, she must expect to make enemies, and Christina had only herself to thank if she was